nice win to close out a tough non-conference run
On Saturday, hours before the Men tipped off at Madison Square Garden, the Women prepped for their matchup against the Easter Washington Eagles.
Not only was this a matchup against a local rival struggling with the loss of key contributors from last season’s squad, it was an opportunity for the Bulldogs to snap a 4-game losing streak, the school’s first in 19 years.
The matchup started interesting, at least from a television viewer’s angle, as the SWX crew seemed to have issues with their audio feed and the game played without commentary for about 3-4 possessions. I mean this with all due respect to the commentators out there, but I’m not so sure I missed them in those few minutes. It was kind of nice just watching a play take shape and make my own commentary without almost instinctually listening to someone else. I’m never going to watch a game on mute since I at least want the noise from the floor, but I think this showed that maybe we don’t need the talking heads to talk all the time (*he says as he writes nearly 100 words that no one cares to read*).
So while media presentation had an interesting wrinkle, the Bulldogs also showed a wrinkle in the first quarter: actually feeding Ejim the ball in the post effectively. In just five minutes, the Becky Hammon POTY nominee dropped 11 points on 5-7 shooting. Given that offensive firepower, it was really disappointing to see her pick up her second foul at the 6:30 minute and get pulled from the game until the second quarter, particularly since the Zags coughed up an 11 point lead and so only lead by 5 at the break.
Coach Fortier continued to limit Ejim’s minutes in the second as she only played three, which needed to happen, but it led to a poor second quarter where the Zags could only match the 13 points that Eastern scored and five of those came from Yvonne. It was an otherwise ho-hum period broken up by one of Christabel Osarobo’s rainbow-arc corner three assisted by none other than Yvonne Ejim right before the 5 minute mark. Her outside shooting, while admittedly limited, looks markedly better than Esther Little’s and I’m pushing for the Spanish freshman to get those crunch time minutes on the offense end instead of the English senior as she can at least force the defense to respect her shooting.
The third quarter was all Claire O’Connor’s as the sophomore from Bellevue dropped 11 points aided by her three rainmakers and helped extend a 5-point lead to a 13-point lead. This, along with 6 points apiece from Yvonne and Allie Turner fueled a 26 point quarter, a total that ranks second on the year sitting behind the 31 points they dropped in the first period of the first game of the season against Montana. That might be a depressing statistic, but one that’s meant to give this team credit for pulling it all together. Unfortunately, much of this performance was marred by technical difficulties that resulted in my feed not being shown for about 4:30 minutes of game time and various glitches across the remainder the quarter. Could you imagine this happening to the Gonzaga Men at this point in time…
Heading into the final quarter, the Bulldogs led the Eagles by 13 points and during the intermission, I wondered if this group would have flashbacks of their blown lead against Colorado State just six days earlier. However, this team dispelled such concerns as they rolled out a 15-6 scoring run over the first 6:30 of the period to essentially put this game on ice. Allie Turner would go on to knock down 2 shots from deep, but the Zags would fail to score in the final two minutes which thankfully went unpunished by the Eastern Eagles.
I think a lot of the relevant game points have already been covered in previous game threads so I won’t go into detail. The biggest thing that stuck out to me this match relates to just how physically dominate Yvonne Ejim is on the court. She’s simply amazing at fighting her defender down low, finding the right angles to try for her shot, and using her driving/dribbling ability when appropriate. However, these same positives are also contrasted by how even teams at Gonzaga’s level can negate her by simply sagging off her and forcing the ball into the guards’ hands, which has worked at some points this season, but not on Saturday as you’ll see shortly. I hope this proves to our backcourt (*I’m using that term correctly, right?) that they need to assert themselves to a larger degree come conference play.
Notable Individual Statistics
- Yvonne Ejim: 22 min, 28 pts, 11-16 FG, 3 rbds, 5 ast, 2 st, 0 to
- Allie Turner: 32min, 19pts, 7-13 FG (5-10 3FG), 5 rbds, 3 ast, 3 to, 1 bl, 1 st
- Claire O’Connor: 25 min, 18 pts, 7-12 FG (4-5 3FG), 4 rbds, 4 ast, 0 to, 1 st
Notable Team Statistics
- Turnovers: Gonzaga 17 || Eastern 15
- Rebounds: Gonzaga 46 (11/35) || Eastern 30 (9/21)
- Shooting: Gonzaga 30-61 (12-24) || Eastern 18-56 (1-13)
I’ll catch y’all soon with a couple articles I have in mind prior to this team’s game against USF that will tip off at 6:00pm this Thursday as the Bulldogs travel to the City of Fog in what marks the first of a two game road trip.