Shooting Out Of The Rough Gonzaga Women Attempt To Save Uneventful Season

Consider this a mulligan.

A 40-minute secondchance at salvaging the season.

Gonzaga’s women’s basketball season, which finished with a 9-16 and 4-10 West Coast Conference record, disappointed coaches and players alike.

But with the WCC opening up its postseason tournament to all eight teams - doubling it from years past - the Bulldog women get another chance to tee it up.

“It’s been a frustrating season, but now it’s time to drop the baggage and move on,” GU coach Kellee Knowles said Wednesday after her team’s practice at Santa Clara’s Toso Pavilion. “We told the kids that the slate is clean, everybody is 0-0 and what we do from here on out is the way this team will be remembered.”

One problem: The Bulldogs have to take on Portland, a team that is seeded No. 2. But if San Francisco is No. 1, the Pilots deserve to be no lower than 1A, having lost to USF in overtime last week.

At 21-5 and 12-2, the Pilots have been receiving Top 25 votes.

Portland upset GU in the title game of last year’s tournament, but this season, the Pilots have owned the Bulldogs in their two meetings.

And maybe, from Knowles’ perspective, that will work in GU’s favor now. ‘ ‘I’m not convinced we’re a seventhplace team,” she said. “We haven’t played up to our potential, but we’re going to come out and be more hungry than most because of it.”

The meeting, tipping off at 2 p.m., shouldn’t lack offense, as it features the top two scorers in the WCC: Portland’s Amy Claboe - the league’s MVP and Bulldog Ivy Safranski. Claboe’s 17.9 points per game average came in slightly above Safranski’s at 17.3.

Knowles said she expects to play the Pilots honest on defense - at least until it stops working. “If our regular defenses don’t work, I might throw some junk (defenses) at them,” Knowles said. “Sometimes when you do that, the players seem to get some energy from it.”

Portland coach Jim Sollars, meanwhile, said he’s hoping the Bulldogs don’t finally put it all together. “They shoot the ball really well and they’re good offensively,” Sollars said. “Ivy Safranski is a streak shooter who can light it up anywhere, any day. And Sarah Christensen is a tough, strong inside player who shoots with decent range. Once they get on a roll offensively, they’re tough to shut down.”

Portland leads the WCC in field-goal percentage (46.5), scoring defense (61.5 points), and scoring margin (13.2).

The tournament gets re-seeded after the first day, with the highest remaining seed playing the lowest remaining seed.

In other first-round games:

No. 1 San Francisco (13-1, 21-4) vs. No. 8 Loyola Marymount (2-12, 6-20): USF is in top form, claiming the league title on the final night with an overtime win over No.2 Portland. USF set a league record for consecutive victories at 13. The Dons defeated LMU by an average of 25.5 points in a pair of games this year.

No. 3 Santa Clara (9-5, 16-10) vs. No. 6 Pepperdine (4-10, 10- 15): These clubs split the regular-season meetings, each claiming a win on the road. This is the first time the Broncos enter the tournament without the No. 1 seeding.

No. 4 San Diego (6-8, 11-14) vs. No. 5 Saint Mary’s (6-8, 12- 17): These two teams, which have never met in postseason play, split this season. USD’s Michelle Brovelli, daughter of San Francisco men’s coach Jim Brovelli, had a double-double in the Toreros win over SMC.