and Yvonne Ejim inches closer to the all-time points leader at Gonzaga
Coming off the heels of their first defeat in nearly two months, the Bulldogs righted the ship for the most part against the Pacific Tigers on Thursday with a 72-56 victory on the road.
The win was important as Portland ended up winning their match on the road against USF and so both teams remain tied for the regular season WCC standings. However, thanks to Gonzaga’s two wins against the Pilots earlier in the season, the Bulldogs hold the tie breaker so they will need to win their game later today against Santa Clara to take home the WCC regular season championship.
The 16 point victory represents Gonzaga’s largest margin of victory in their last 8 games, but it doesn’t really represent how the game played out as the Bulldogs looked like a wildly different team in the second half compared to the first.
In the first twenty, the Bulldogs looked nigh unstoppable with 45 points compared to just 24 from Pacific. As a team, GU shot 16-30 overall and 5-11 from beyond the arc. They shot more free throws that UofP with 8-9 and 3-4 margin. And they out-rebounded their opponents 24-11 including 7 offensive rebounds. The only knock I would place on the Zags would be their inability to stop making turnovers as they coughed it up 9 times.
In the second twenty, the Bulldogs looked eerily similar to the team that lost against USF, squeaked out victories against St. Mary’s and LMU, and had generally regressed compared to their mid-season form. The shooting fell off with a 9-22 mark overall and 2-6 from deep. The free throws pretty much dried up until the fourth period with 7-10 compared to Pacific’s 11-17 mark. And the turnovers deteriorated with 8 alone in the third period and 13 in the second half. Thankfully, the rebounding dominance continued as the Zags held a 21-12 margin, but that isn’t too surprising given that they lead the WCC in this category.
After a match that featured 22 turnovers, the fifth highest of the ‘24-25 campaign, it looked. rough. Fortier commented that “In the third quarter, we were trying to push tempo in transition and we just got a little bit ahead of ourselves and going faster than we wanted to go, that’s where the turnovers came from. They were turnovers trying to do the right thing.” It’s true that not all turnovers are bad, Pacific only converted those mistakes into 19 points, but they’re killing the momentum this team can generate and they struggle to get it back when lost.
One thing that is cool for the program is that Yvonne Ejim is now well within reach to take over the all-time lead in career points as she is just 15 points away from passing Drew Timme’s 2,307 points. Such a cool thing that we will likely get to witness.
All in all though, it was good to see this team show some killer instinct in the first half coming off that defeat and show just how good this team can be when everyone is on the same page. I hope you can catch the final game of year that starts later today at 2pm PST.