Arizona women’s basketball takes from the Devils, lands ASU transfer Jade Loville

The old saying is that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. For Arizona women’s basketball, this week it’s if you can’t contain ‘em, get ‘em to join you. That’s what Adia Barnes and her staff did by convincing former ASU and Boise State wing Jade Loville to travel down I-10 and join the Wildcats.

The commitment would seem to round out the Arizona roster for next season. In April, Barnes said that she hoped to add three transfers to her roster of five returners and four freshmen. On May 1, assistant coach Ashley Davis tweeted three sets of “Bear Down” emoji, implying that there were three commitments.

Since that tweet, Arizona has announced commitments from Oklahoma State transfer Lauren Fields and West Virginia transfer Esmery Martinez. The third commitment was rumored to be Loville, but it was not made official at the same time as the other two. Loville and the Wildcats have now made it official.

Loville scored 27 points against Arizona when ASU upset the then-No. 6 Wildcats 81-77 in Desert Financial Arena on Feb. 11. Two days later, she scored eight points on 3-of-7 shooting when UA pulled out the four-point victory in McKale Center.

The 5-foot-11 wing was the second-leading scorer in the Pac-12 last season with 16.6 points per game. She shot 41.7 percent from the floor and 43.3 percent from 3 and averaged 2.7 rebounds per game for ASU.

Loville improved on parts of her game that weren’t strong prior to transferring to ASU. She hit 39 of 90 3-point shots last season. That was a dramatic improvement over the first three years of her career when she went 26-126 over 87 games at Boise State. In her one year as a Sun Devil, she connected on at least 50 percent of her outside shots in 11 games.

Prior to landing in Tempe, Loville averaged 17.1 PPG and 3.2 RPG in 31.2 MPG for the Broncos as a junior. In three years in Boise, she averaged 8.9 PPG and 2.2 RPG in 18.4 MPG.

Loville has one season to play for Arizona.