WNIT is A-OK with Gonzaga
Once the basketball is in play, initials won’t matter.
That’s what the Gonzaga women’s team is counting on for tonight’s matchup with UC Davis in the first round of the Women’s NIT at McCarthey Athletic Center.
“It’s cool to play in the postseason, even though (the WNIT) wasn’t our goal from the start,” freshman point guard Courtney Vandersloot said. “We wanted to get in the big tournament, but any tournament is fine.”
Despite a 24-8 record and dominating the West Coast Conference regular season, the Bulldogs didn’t receive an at-large bid for the NCAA tournament after losing the conference tournament title game to San Diego, and with it, the automatic berth.
“I think our attitude is good – they’re hungry,” GU coach Kelly Graves said. “I don’t know if we’re going to go in with that attitude we have something to prove. I think every team in the NIT plays that way. We’re just attacking it as another game. We want to do the best we can. It gives us another chance to play together, play in front of our fans.”
It’s also another chance to play the Aggies (19-11).
The teams met in Davis in early December with Gonzaga rolling 71-58. They also played in Spokane last season with the Bulldogs pulling out a 73-70 win.
“They’re tough to play against because they do two things,” Graves said. “First, they run the Princeton offense and they run it well. They spread you out and they take advantage of weaknesses. They make you look bad. When they score it’s usually by a layin, so it tests your mental toughness defensively.
“Defensively they run what we call the buzz defense. It’s a 2-3 (zone), they’re always running two people at the ball, trying to trap all over the floor. They funnel you to the middle. It’s unique. You don’t see it often, so it’s hard to prepare for.”
But at least they’re familiar.
“It’s good that we played them before so we know what to expect, but we’re definitely going to have to wake up our defense and play harder than we did in league,” senior Michelle Elliott said. “You never take a break on defense. They’re constantly moving.”
The Aggies, out of the Big West Conference, are led by a pair of 5-foot-11 senior forwards. Jessica Campbell averages 15.1 points and 4.5 rebounds. Heather Bates adds 10.2 points and 5.3 boards. Junior guard Haylee Donaghe adds 12.7 points a game.
Sandy Simpson is in his 11th season coaching the Aggies, building a 195-114 record. This is the first season for the former Division II power as a playoff-eligible D-I program.
“I really like him. He’s a great guy and he gets it,” Graves said. “He runs a good program – good kids, good students – they do it the right way. They compete hard. He’s widely considered in our profession as a really good coach.”
Elliott has had two big games against Davis, scoring 19 this year, with WCC MVP Heather Bowman leading the way with 23, and 14 last season. Bowman, a sophomore who averaged 20 points and 8.5 rebounds this season, needs three points to became the 13th Zag with 1,000 career points.
The lone senior and co-captain is confident GU won’t have an emotional letdown.
“I don’t know if it’s easier to accept, but it makes it not as hard because you’re still playing,” Elliott said. “When we came back from San Diego we were hoping we’d get a NCAA at-large bid, but we weren’t depending on it. I think everybody had a good mind-set going into it, knowing we probably wouldn’t get into it and being excited we were still playing.”
The winner of this game plays at Colorado (16-13) on Monday.
Tip-ins
This is the fourth WNIT for GU. In 2005 the Bulldogs beat BYU at home before losing at Missouri State. They lost by five at Oregon State in the first round in 2004. Their initial appearance was in 1994. … Gonzaga has 20 wins for the third time in four seasons and the fourth time in school history. … Gonzaga had the best RPI of any team left out of the NCAA tournament at 41, according to the NCAA rankings. Among teams that received at-large bids, Georgia Tech (22-9) was 43, Iowa (21-10) was 45, Florida State (18-13) was 59 and Auburn (20-11) was 60. … GU was 0-3 against top-50 teams but FSU was 1-11. That means the Bulldogs were the highest-rated team in the WNIT, but of the 16 teams in the 48-team tournament that earned a first-round bye, only TCU (21-11, RPI 56) is not from a BCS power conference. Only three BCS teams, South Florida (16-15, 77), Villanova (15-15, 81) and South Carolina (15-15, 92) have first-round games. … Davis is 143 in the RPI, Colorado 85. … Of the 32 teams playing first-round games, 23 have at least 20 wins. TCU and Boston College (20-11, 71) are the only 20-win teams among the bye teams.