Gonzaga Women Hold Off Saint Mary’s, but Fall Short on Senior Night Against San Francisco

after a narrow win on Thursday over the Gaels, the Zags couldn’t beat the Dons

Well, it was a bit of a rough week for both the Men’s and Women’s teams this past week. Both ended up winning their midweek game with the latter winning 69-58 against St. Mary’s, but both also dropped their senior night games with the latter losing 68-70 against USF.

Despite these matches ending with different outcomes, a thread extending across these contests that is concerning at this stage in the season is the preponderance for mental lapses on and off the ball leading to far too many turnovers and defensive lapses preventing the team from capitalizing on their strong play to win confidently.

St. Mary’s might’ve started the game shooting 2-6 and tallying just 6 points, eerily similar to their poor offensive in the first quarter of the previous match just two weeks prior, but the Zags couldn’t capitalize on their opponents poor start. The Bulldogs scored only 12 points in the first ten minutes and committed 13 turnovers alone in the first half against SMC, which the Gaels thankfully didn’t punish, that yield just a 7-point lead entering the half.

The Zags seemed to kind of just coast along in this match with quarterly point totals of 12, 14, 16, and 18 points. Thankfully, this was pretty much all that was needed against a St. Mary’s squad seemingly stuck in the mud for the first thirty minutes, but when they dropped 22 points in the fourth period, the game momentum shifted hard to the Gaels and I had some creeping fears of an upset at home.

Midway through the fourth period, the Bulldogs lead was cut to just 4 points, the closest since the first quarter, and the win probability per ESPN dropped to a game-low of just 86%. Now, I understand that this may not seem particularly aberrant, but this number does represent the lowest figure of the game after coming into the match with a 92% win probability. So, I might urge you to recognize the level of underachievement seen this past Thursday from these Zags.

In the postgame interview, Head Coach Lisa Fortier basically admitted just as much “Sometimes you’ve got to win ugly. We’ve lost plenty, we’ve won plenty – and a bunch of different ways. So it was an ugly win, but it was gutty. Our team figured it out.” Yes, the team won, but looking at this match in the context of the previous 6 matches, it’s fair to question if this team was performing at a level where they could win games without such gutty/ugly victories given that the margin of victor was less than 10 in all but 1 of those 6 contests.

Part of this owes to an uncharacteristically poor performance by Yvonne Ejim as she finished the match with just 12 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 blocks, 1 steal and 4 turnovers. Not only that, the star senior shot just 5-14 from the floor and went 2-4 from the charity stripe. While it’s incredibly reasonable for a person living to have down days with regards to their performance, Vonny’s contribution to this team essentially means that she cannot have these types of game and have strong hope to win. That’s an immense amount of pressure and I think it’s fair to say that not many of us can understand this role.

With Ejim struggling on the offensive end, Allie Turner stepped up and took home the leading scorer of the game with her 16 points fueled by her 4-5 shooting from beyond the arc. The freshman did cough up 4 turnovers compared to just 3 assists, but when you’re running a true freshman a team-high 32.9 minutes per game across a full season, there are bound to be moments of error either from physical or mental fatigue. So, while the Missouri native led the Zags in turnovers, I don’t think she deserves that much blame for the team’s turnover issues that reared its head in this contest.

Maud Huijbens had a decent match despite starting on the bench as she finished with 24 minutes, 11 points, 8 rebounds, and 1 steal. She did struggle with her outside shot going 0-2 and she did contribute 3 turnovers for the Gaels, but as the third leading scorer for the Zags in this match, it’s hard to critique the senior forward.

However, outside of these three players, there isn’t much to be excited about from a whole-game performance with the remaining players. Esther played anything but Little as she contributed 11 rebounds, but her lack of willingness to shoot from basically anywhere on the court restricts her offensive contributions for this team. Ines Bettencourt had a nice 3 assists and 4 steals, but in classic fashion for the flair player, the Portuguese junior also dished out 3 turnovers. Tayla Dalton played a tough and physical match in her 27 minutes against her formal team, but she could only contribute 6 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, and 3 turnovers. I do like the transfer senior, but her incredibly slow shot release strikes me as something limiting her outside contributions.

Probably the only real positive thing from this match, outside of walking away with a W, was Bree Salenbien returning from an apparent injury early in the second quarter as she limped to the locker room and was there for about 5 minutes of action before returning to play a total of 19 minutes. For someone with her history, I’ll take whatever the outcome as long as Bree can continue to play this beautiful game, if she wants to do so.

I’ll conclude this game review with a quote from Maud Huijbens: “Lisa said it in the pregame speech – we just have to be us. We’re at this point in the season, we’ve shown our identity, we just have to be out there and have fun and be us.” Well, that may be true, but hopefully that identity is not one of a mistake-prone team moving into the tournament season.

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While that above thought may be the goal, the game against USF certainly did not ease the worries of fans like myself. On an emotional senior night that saw a surprise inclusion of Bree Salenbien in those honored, at least to me, the Zags struggled to overcome the pregame celebrations.

With a unique starting lineup to start the match, the Bulldogs actually competed well in what looked like a track meet with neither team looking to slow the pace and play half-court offensive sets. Unlike in the St. Mary’s game, the Zags looked pretty locked in across the first 20 minutes as they dropped 17 and 17 in those two quarters compared to USF’s 15 and 10 performance.

Heading into the second-half with a 9-point lead and just 8 turnovers, which was at least an improvement over the St. Mary’s match, the Zags looked to be on the right course as outside of leading scorer Freja Werth, the Dons looked thoroughly locked down offensively with a 9-34 shooting performance and 8 turnovers of their own.

However, things clearly can’t be easy for this Zags’ team as they allowed the Dons to score 27 points (!) in the third quarter and the Bulldogs essentially blew their lead built up over the first twenty minutes. Things looked to stabilize as the Zags extended the lead in the opening moments of the fourth quarter, but USF roared back and had Gonzaga fighting on the ropes across the final ten minutes with a back-forth type game with no team clearly securing victory until the final minutes

The game was, shall we say, physical. USF clearly got the message from other WCC teams that if you basically foul all game long, then the WCC referring crew will basically eat their whistles for the better part of an entire game before vomiting them up in the final minutes in which they essentially took control of the game by violating the consistent no-calls in the preceding minutes. Honestly, I don’t think the refs called a single shooting foul in the first thirty minutes. I could be exaggerating, but given the comments from the announcing crew and my own eyes, I think I’m closer to right than not.

It was a pretty bullshit performance from the officiating, but one in which the Zags should not be taking solace in as they allowed the Dons to get into a place where the refs could be at fault. You can’t allow your defensive assignment an easy drive to the hoop, close out slowly on perimeter shots, or needless slack off your defender to provide “help” defense, which in all honesty, wasn’t needed outside of Freja Werth. You can’t keep turning over the ball, particularly in the fourth quarter in a close game, and expect to win. You can’t win a game like this when you can’t beat your opponent to their offensive rebounds. And you can’t win this type of match when you go on a nearly 5 minute scoring deficit in the final period.

It was ugly and while nobody wants their team to lose, it’s possible this defeat, which snapped a 14-game win streak, was entirely needed before heading into the post-season action. As mentioned above, this team seemed to be cutting it close with some of the more recent victories in this win streak and having such a negative experience with a loss on Senior Night should hopefully inject this squad with a certain degree of “we gotta go get this with everything we have.”

So, while the team will be coming off their first defeat in nearly 2 months heading into Thursday’s game against Pacific on the road, let’s start to instill some positivity by looking at the amazing moments from this Senior Night.