the Owls travel to Spokane after their away game last season
The Gonzaga Women will face off tonight against the Rice Owls in a home match that will start at 9pm EST and be featured on ESPN+.
The Zags’ schedule list this as the “Red Shirt” game so one would assume the team would wear red uniforms, but when they faced off against South Dakota State last year in such titled game, they wore their standard white uniforms. As such, I have no idea what the terminology of “Red Shirt” means in this context. However, I still like those old red uniforms that I recall seeing the men wear years ago in the Pargo era so it’ll be interesting if those get trotted out tonight.
Rice heads into Spokane riding a four game winning streak with victories over North Carolina A&T, South Alabama, Houston, and Sam Houston. Their only lose thus far came in their opening match of the season against the South Dakota State Jack Rabbits. This will be their first away match of the season
Tonight may be another match similar to Wyoming where not a lot of points are scored as the Owls are only averaging 65 points per game and only allowing 58 per game to their opponents. Additionally, Rice has yet to see their AAC Preseason All-Conference Team player Malia Ellis take the court, which is a big loss considering she was second on the team last year in points.
As such, Dominique Ennis has taken the lead scoring option with her 12.8 points per game and she will be the team’s leading deep threat as she’s taking 6.4 per game and knocking them down at a respectable, and team-high, 34.4%. Additionally, she’s the only player averaging more than 30 minutes per game as Coach Lindsey Evens has opted to spread court time among the rest of the roster so expect a lot of substitutions and reasonably distributed scoring.
At current time, Rice has nine players averaging 15 or more minutes per game, five players averaging between 6-8 points per game, and only two players averaging double digit scoring. That helps because the Owls foul their opponents quite a bit as through four games, they’re committing 18.4 fouls per game and rank in the top 100 nationally in total fouls committed.
As per usual, there have been absolutely zero updates about the availability of Zag players like Tayla Dalton, Esther Little, and Lauren Whitaker. I’m not including Bree Salenbien because I’m under the impression that the earliest time she would return, if at all, would be around February or so. Having at least one of those three players back would likely make this whole “new team, who ‘dis?” act we see from time to time, which isn’t meant to be an insult, but the current squad is essentially just 2, maybe 3, players who understand Fortier’s system.
Regardless of who’s available, the Zags need to continue putting the pieces together, enacting the game plan practiced this past week, and securing the ball. Let’s hope tonight is more reminiscent of the opening match against Montana than that against Cal.
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