Adia Barnes talks about the game between Arizona women’s basketball and Oregon State

Arizona head coach Adia Barnes met with the press while in transit on Wednesday afternoon. Her team will face Oregon State for a rare Thursday night game before moving on to Eugene for a Saturday matchup against Oregon. What did she have to say?

Scroll to the bottom for the video of the entire press conference.

About Oregon State emerging from a 25-day layoff

“We’ve all kind of been through that. You saw the results when we went through that. Coming off of 25-30 days off is tough. You’re rusty, and I think a lot of the kinks you can work out during the game...I’m interested in how we’re going to respond after a loss. I think (the Beavers) are going to come out strong because they’ve been out for a while.”

On getting back into game shape after a layoff

“It takes time. I think just because if you’re practicing the difference is, you’re not in game shape. I think you saw on Friday, we were tired, but just getting back in rhythm. And then you saw on Sunday, we were completely exhausted. Not an excuse, because USC just traveled to Colorado, but it takes I think a month or three weeks to get back into the game shape.

On whether Lauren Ware and Shaina Pellington made the trip

“Shaina and Lauren are not available for tomorrow. They could be available on Sunday or possibly next week. We haven’t decided that, but they’re not available tomorrow.

Follow up on Lauren Ware’s injury and the timeline for her return

“I didn’t feel the need to rush her back. And then we were on pause so why rush her back? For me, I’m looking at the big picture and long term so instead of having her come back in two weeks, we had that pause which gave her another three weeks. So for now she’s not ready to come back, but I’ll bring her back as soon as I feel that she’s in better shape. I’m not going to bring her back when she’s not in shape, so that’s why she’s not available tomorrow. But...structurally, her knee is fine.”

On what Oregon State does well

“Oregon State has a lot of size...They shoot the ball well. We’re going to have to guard a lot of middle on-ball (screens)...But they’re a little bit younger. Less experience in the back court, but they have all of their bigs back...And then I think the challenging thing is that they play a completely, drastically different style than we play.”

Full press conference