At times it appeared the Gonzaga women's basketball team was playing against the jersey, which shouldn't be surprising since the first round oppenent in the NCAA Tournament game was at North Carolina.

And there were moments it appeared the Bulldogs might be over-whelmed by the big, fast and athletic Tar Heels.

But in the end they proved they were an outstanding basketball team, emphasis on team, in an 82-76 win. The unedited game story is below.

By Dave Trimmer

davet@spokesman.com; (509) 927-2154

SEATTLE – Sometimes the size was intimidating and the speed was always a concern but the Gonzaga women’s basketball players never doubted they were going to beat storied North Carolina in the first round of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament.

The seventh-seeded and 18^th-ranked Gonzaga put on a show for the ages and a partisan crowd of 3,656, defeating the 10^th-seeded Tar Heels 82-76 at Bank of America Arena Saturday night.

“We haven’t had a close game in about 3 months,” Gonzaga coach Kelly Graves said. “I know there were some concerns about how we would play down the stretch but I was proud of our team and how they responded.

 “It was certainly a game that could have gone either way. If I was a fan instead of the coach I would have thought that was a great basketball game.”

The Zags, advancing past the first round for the second-straight year on the same court, face ninth-ranked second-seeded Texas A&M (26-7) Monday at 6:30 p.m. in a rematch of a December 80-76 Aggie win

There were a number of reasons the Bulldogs (28-4) made their 19^th-straight win what Graves called their first signature win.

“This is a great day for our institution,” he said. “North Carolina is really the standard by which a lot of college basketball programs are judged so we feel very fortunate and very blessed today.”

It starts with the seniors, two that desperately wanted that signature win against a program that manhandled them 101-63 when they were freshmen.

Heather Bowman, the Zags’ all-time leading scorer, had 14 points, five rebounds and three steals and Vivian Frieson had 16 points, 13 rebounds, three assists, three blocks and a major dose of grit.

Then there was Tiffany Shives, a senior who transferred to GU after one season at Michigan State. Invisible for more than 30 minutes, crediting Shives’ 16 points for the victory is not a reach.

She made her first basket with 8:59 left, then hit four 3’s in four attempts in three minutes, reviving a Bulldog offense that had stalled. The first 3, at 7:25, gave GU a 63-62 lead. The next forced North Carolina Hall of Fame coach Sylvia Hatchell to call a time out.

When the Tar Hills (19-12) went inside to 6-foot-1 sophomore Laura Bloomfield, who had 16 points and 14 rebounds, for a three-point play, Shives got that back 12 seconds later.

Chay Shegog, a 6-5 sophomore who had 19 points and nine rebounds, and Bloomfield scored inside around a GU turnover, tying the game at 69 with 5 minutes left but then Shives connected again on the next possession to give the Zags the lead for good.

The first-half spark was provided by redshirt sophomore Katelan Redmon, who came off the bench to put on more of the most amazing offensive shows in recent memory – pre-Shives.

Redmond scored 14 of her 18 points in a 4:25 span that helped the Bulldogs erase UNC’s early 13-5 lead. In a 13-0 surge, that awoke the crowd and produced an 18-13 lead, she scored the final seven, then had five more, including her second 3, in an 8-0 spurt to produce GU’s biggest lead, 24-15. She finished 8 of 11 shooting.

 “The thing that’s so great about this team is we have so many different weapons so you never know when you’re going to get called on,” said Shives, who finished 5 of 8 from the field. “Redmon started us out, then Kelly (Bowen, seven points, five rebounds off the bench), then Viv followed, then Heather. Everybody was just playing their role so it was finally time for me to knock down some shots.”

UNC junior guard Cetera DeGraffenreid, who had 11 points, six assists and four steals, said, “We tried to switch up defenses, I think we got a little confused. We needed to match up in transition better.”

Credit – or blame – Gonzaga point guard Courtney Vanersloot. She guided the Bulldogs from beginning to end, finishing with 15 assists and five steals to go with nine points and just six turnovers against the aggressive Tar Heels.

“Courtney did a great job pushing the tempo,” Redmon said. “She was getting us open on the wings and we were making some easy shots.”

Shives added, “Courtney is so special she just demands so much attention. When teams focus on her then I get the benefit of that.”

That led to 48 percent shooting, 50 percent in the first half when the Bulldogs led 48-44.

“Give Gonzaga credit, they’re an excellent shooting team,” UNC coach Sylvia Hatchell said. “Whenever we sort of had some things under control they came down and made big baskets.

“I tell the players, ‘Good shooting cures a multitude of sins.’ I look at going to the foul line, I look at rebounding, I look at a number of things, normally you win games when your numbers are like that, but when a team shoots like they did, that really makes the difference.”

North Carolina was 12 of 18 from the foul line to GU’s 4 of 8 and had a 48-42 rebounding advantage, including 17-11 on the offensive end, but the Tar Heels only shot 38.5 percent, 32.4 in the second half.

After the frantic first half, Gonzaga only had eight points in the first 11 minutes of the second half, and UNC built a lead of just 59-56, which was less than 30 seconds before the first Shives basket.

At that point GU was shooting 28.6 percent for the half, athough they finished at 45.

 “From time to time we’ve had lulls like that,” Graves said. “I thought North Carolina did a good think, they changed into that zone and we struggled with it a little bit, we started to stand around. They also ran a little box-and-one on Courtney, we haven’t see that this year. It took us a little bit around but we did adjust to it.

“But at that point our defense stepped up.”

 

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