ANN ARBOR – Kim Barnes Arico made a life-changing decision in April 2012 when she accepted the Michigan women’s basketball head coaching job after a 10-year stint at St. John’s.
Now nearly 14 years later, she’s the winningest coach in Michigan basketball history – men’s or women’s – and continues to add to her total.
After the seventh-ranked Wolverines throttled Rutgers 94-60 for Barnes Arico’s 300th career win on Thursday, they needed a big push in the fourth quarter against USC on Sunday to get victory No. 301.
Michigan went cold in the third quarter as a 13-point halftime lead turned into a five-point deficit, but it opened the fourth with a 13-0 run to propel the team to a 73-67 victory.
“What an amazing basketball game,” Barnes Arico said postgame. “I think the fans made a difference for us in the fourth quarter, and it’s great to keep growing that fan base. But what an incredible basketball game. A game of runs. They’re a really good team that we couldn’t stop in the third quarter, but then they couldn’t stop us in the fourth. I thought our team really stuck together in that fourth quarter.”
Since arriving in Ann Arbor, Barnes Arico’s program has been a model of consistency. The Wolverines reached the 20-win mark in 12 of her first 13 seasons and qualified for the NCAA Tournament eight times.
But this year’s group has a chance to reach new heights. Sunday’s win puts the Wolverines at 17-3 overall and 8-1 in the Big Ten. They are a top-10 team in the country and looking to finish higher than third place in the Big Ten for the first time in program history. They currently sit third behind Iowa and UCLA, who are both 9-0 in conference play.
“I’ve said this throughout my time coaching, but (UConn coach) Geno Auriemma said to me a long time ago, ‘It’s easy to get to be a top program. The hard part is staying there year in and year out. You can be a one-time thing and then fall off,’” Barnes Arico said. “I was a young coach when he said that to me, and that’s something that always stuck with me: ‘Can we be a consistent program year in and year out?’
“So when I heard 300, I did the math and was like, ‘Wow, that means that we’re pretty consistent. Obviously, we’re trying to win championships, so we still got a lot of goals to accomplish, but it means we’re heading in the right direction.”
Because of Michigan’s youth, Barnes Arico believes the team is still on the rise. The team’s three leading scorers are all sophomores, and the trio played a pivotal role Sunday. Olivia Olson had a team-high 24 points on 10-of-20 shooting, while Mila Holloway had 13 points, six rebounds and a team-high eight assists. Syla Swords had 10 points and four steals.
Fifteen of the Wolverines’ victories this season have been by double digits, but they haven’t fared as well in close games. Two of their losses, against top-five teams in UConn and Vanderbilt, were decided by three points.
Against USC, Michigan persevered in a close game in the fourth quarter.
“I think it’s just time we’ve put (in) together,” Holloway said of closing out USC. “We have a phenomenal core of three sophomores, and (junior) Ashley Solifkanich came up big. Playing with each other and being able to stack practices and days with each other helps. We’ve come back from a lot of games, and we haven’t been able to turn that page. I think a lot of that just goes with maturity and experience because coach has really been challenging us with that.”
For Barnes Arico, the challenge this season has been balancing the quest for perfection versus gauging progress.
“That’s something that I reflect on every single day,” she said. “Are we getting better and where are we getting better and where do we still need to improve? My assistant coaches are phenomenal. They’ll say to me, ‘There’s a lot of teams that are at their ceiling right now.’ We are a team with our young people, with our people that are new to our program that is going to continue to get better throughout the season. For me, that’s so exciting. I’ll leave practice sometimes and I’ll be like, man, we’re not a great team. Then I look and I’m like, we’re 17-3 and ranked No. 7 in the country. Then I’m like, ‘but we need to get better at this, this, this and this.
“There are so many things that we can continue to get better at, but our work ethic and our talent and our passion and our drive, all those intangible things are there.”
One thing Barnes Arico, a New York native, knows for certain is that she made the right decision nearly 14 years ago to leave the east coast and come to Ann Arbor. She remembers learning to detest the colors green and red. She recalls the moment she met her first Michigan team – a group that finished 22-11 and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, helping set the foundation for the program.
“Moving my three children and my husband across the country was a huge risk for me and a huge commitment, and I didn’t know what to expect,” Barnes Arico said. “But the Ann Arbor community and that first team, I can’t thank them enough. It speaks volumes to the University of Michigan and the people in Ann Arbor. It’s rated one of the best places to raise a family. It’s rated one of the greatest universities in the world. It has all these ratings because the people are absolutely incredible. I didn’t know what it was like to go to the supermarket and have someone in line want to talk to you for 10 minutes. That wasn’t something we did on the East Coast. But I just think I was so welcomed by that first team, it made my life so easy, and it made my transition to Ann Arbor absolutely incredible.”