hard to make adjustments when you’re playing back to back to back
Yesterday, the Gonzaga Women wrapped up their final game in the Paradise Jam tournament that took place in the Virgin Islands. I hope they got to enjoy the sun, warm water, and unique experience of traveling with your teammates thousands of miles to play basketball because the team’s success in this tournament has to leave an emotional bruise.
Let’s just start with the obvious, going 0-3 with subsequent games featuring larger margins of defeats is not a good look. That being said, the recent words of known crybaby, UConn Men’s Basketball coach Bobby Hurley, are ringing in my ears:
“When you come to a tournament like this, and it’s three games in three days, it starts to go bad, there’s no way of fixing it because there’s no time to [do so]. You just have to deal with the situation. It was a humbling trip obviously for the program that’s accomplished what we’ve accomplished.”
As such, I think it’s important to step back and realize the daunting task this tournament presented for this young and inexperienced team. My gut takeaway from the Paradise Jam is that the 1 point defeat against Missouri State in the opener served as a metaphorical punch in the mouth that this group couldn’t rebound from in their next two tough matchups against Texas Tech and Florida State.
Let’s take a look at how this team performed in their Caribbean vacation.
Gonzaga vs Missouri State: 64-65
- Overall Reaction: The scoreline highlights a close ending, but it obscures that the Zags had two abysmal periods, which basically handcuffed this team. In the first and third quarter, Gonzaga scored just 26 points and allowed 41 points, but in the second and fourth quarters, the Bulldogs scored 38 and held the Lady Bears to 26 points. If they can set the floor of play quality a little bit higher to avoid these big drop-offs in performance, that could go a long way to helping this group edge out the tight ones.
- Notable Statistic: Gonzaga managed to match the Lady Bears in total rebounds, they gave up 12 offensive rebounds, which allowed Missouri State too many easy points or chances to recycle possession that limited the Bulldogs’ offensive chances
Gonzaga vs Texas Tech: 49-67
- Overall Reaction: We saw this issue with last year’s squad and it’s unfortunately continuing to rear it’s head across this season: Gonzaga cannot punish, or even really threaten opponents, who elect to employ a full-court press. The only answer the Bulldogs seemed to have against the Red Raiders’ press was to pass it back to Yvonne after the entry pass and watch her dribble through the middle. While that’s great and all, having just one consistent option to break a press bodes very poorly in my mind for this team’s ceiling of success because without this capability, the Zags are essentially starting their offensive sets with 10-15 seconds off the shot clock. This needs to change, ASAP.
- Notable Statistic: While the Zags couldn’t break a press to save their life, the shooting was nearly as equally rough. On the evening, the gang shot 9-27 from two point range, 7-22 from deep, and 10-20 from the free throw line.
Gonzaga vs Florida State: 54-95
- Overall Reaction: well, after a back-forth first five minutes, the Seminoles woke up and essentially stomped the Bulldogs as the Zags routinely trailed by 15-20 points and would never climb back within 10 points. It’s hard to find much positive about a 41 point loss, but it was nice to see Ejim get back to her scoring ways as she finished with 20 points on an efficient 10-18 shooting, a number that looks better if you exclude her 3 missed deep balls. Allie Turner concluded the tournament with her third double-digit scoring performance and continues to prove that, at current time at least, she is Gonzaga’s only consistently capable deep threat on offense.
- Notable Statistic: Turnovers. I’m going to address this more down below, but dude, this was rough. The Bulldogs committed 24 turnovers, which FSU converted into 43 points. Oof.
General Notes
The guards are picking up their dribble too early. This happened too much last year for my taste as well, but that squad’s off-ball movement was much more connected so teammates were generally arriving into place at the right time for the next pass. As such, their offense would flow better, but when that timing didn’t occur, you’d see the offense grind down to a near halt, which isn’t dissimilar to what we’re watching with this season’s squad thus far. It also helps to explain why this current group can string together strong stretches where they’ll drop 20 points, but then post a stinker that sees them only score 6 points.
This offensive inconsistency goes further though as this group still appears unable to reliably enter the ball into the post. This isn’t too surprising given the amount of attention Yvonne Ejim, she’s basically drawing a double-team every time, but it’s concerning because the Zags aren’t consistently showing either the ability or understanding of the next steps in this offense. Unfortunately, the inconsistency in running alternate sets has seemingly made it quite easy for teams to setup their defense, which has essentially been: (a) slow the Bulldogs bringing the ball up the court (b) pack the pain to deny entry (c) force the perimeter players to generate offense. This approach has proven quite effective for multiple reasons ranging from the injuries, inexperienced guards, and often fielding one or more perimeter players that the opposition has essentially ignored when playing defense if that player takes up a perimeter position.
These factors are playing a major role leading to turnovers, both given up and taken away, which is killing this team. Prior to this three game stretch, the Zags were averaging just over 16 turnovers per game, a number that’s a bit inflated due to their 24 turnovers against Cal, while only forcing 9 turnovers in the previous six games. Those are not great numbers overall, but when comparing against the Zags’ performance in the Paradise Jam, these statistics look, well, at least a little bit closer to paradise.
In the three games over the holiday, the Bulldogs committed 18, 24, and 24 turnovers while only able to force their opponents into 9, 15, and 9 turnovers. The biggest issue with these mistakes is that they’re coming in live play, which allows teams to generate easy points. Missouri State were credited with 22 points from turnovers, Texas Tech with 14, and Florida State with a mind-boggling 43 points off the Bulldogs’ errors. On the flip side, Gonzaga only generated 15, 12, and 5 points from their turnovers in the Paradise Jam. With Lisa Fortier’s offense averaging just 65 points per game, I don’t think the Zags can afford to be so careless with the ball if they want a chance to break into March Madness.
On the defensive end, I like the effort shown, but I don’t think they’re doing the little things right yet needed to support this group amid the offensive droughts. Defenders not making clean switches or fighting through traffic to keep up with their assignment. Close outs are coming at the wrong angles or extending too far out, which opens up the middle for penetration. Not showing enough dynamism to pressure their opponents into mistakes, something that can be clearly seen in the lack of turnovers generated. It’s intriguing watching this group deploy the 3-2 defensive zone and I like it as an option when Ejim is off the floor.
This next part may be a moot point, but I’m pretty disappointed with the media presentation this tournament. The broadcast showed Tayla Dalton’s face and name in the lineup card for all three matches. During the Texas Tech match, the announcers highlighted the Red Raiders travel demands to arrive in the Virgin Islands, a team that had not played a road game to date and highest profile wins came against WSU and New Mexico, while completely ignoring the Bulldogs’ extensive travel needed to reach St. Thomas nor highlighting their stronger non-conference schedule to date. They finally started to acknowledge this in the Florida State matchup, but the west coast disrespect is wild.
All in all, it’s not comforting to see the Zags go 0-3 at any stage, let alone in a higher profile setting than what they’ll face for some time, but not all is lost. This team needs these types of experiences to progress and develop together both on and off the floor. As Fortier said earlier in the season, if you’re peaking now, you’re in trouble. As such, I still remain optimistic for this team’s season, particularly since we’re still expecting to see players like Tayla Dalton, Lauren Whitaker, and potentially, Bree Salenbien return this campaign.
The Bulldogs will face their next test on 12/08 in an away match against Colorado State. Unfortunately this does not look like it will be broadcasted on ESPN+ like most matches, but will instead be streamable on the Mountain West Network. Tune in soon for a preview of that game later this week. Catch you around.