Gonzaga grounds Pilots

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Not all halftime adjustments involve chalkboard diagrams or game-plan revisions.

Some, such as those Gonzaga women’s coach Kelly Graves made Thursday at the midway point of his top-seeded Bulldogs’ West Coast Conference Tournament opener against Portland, are purely mental.

When they work, they can dress up even the ugliest of first-half performances, as the 23rd-ranked Zags illustrated at Santa Clara’s Leavey Center by blasting the eighth-seeded Pilots 77-42 behind a 51-point, second-half outburst.

The win stretched GU’s nation-best winning streak to 22 games and moved the Bulldogs (26-3), who ran away with the WCC regular-season title by finishing a perfect 14-0 against conference opponents, into Saturday’s semifinals, where they will face fourth-seeded Pepperdine at noon.

Portland (6-22) ended its dismal season with a ninth consecutive loss, despite overcoming another pathetic start to throw a first-half scare into the heavily favored Zags.

The Pilots, after missing their first 12 shots and falling behind 12-2 midway through the opening period, closed the half with a 14-2 run that included 11 unanswered points and sliced GU’s lead to 26-22. When Whitney Grant, who led UP with 16 points, knocked down a 3-pointer to open the second half, there was reason to think things might stay interesting.

But only until the Bulldogs kicked up the defensive intensity and got back to using the same kind of aggressive, inside-out offensive approach that had made them the class of the conference during the regular season.

Senior Shannon Mathews and Ashley Burke fueled GU’s second-half stampede and finished with 18 points apiece, while Stephanie Hawk and backup center Delphine Lecoultre each added 14.

After settling for too many 3-point attempts and shooting 32 percent (11 of 34) in the opening 20 minutes, the Bulldogs emerged as a different team after intermission, exploring the inside on nearly every possession, limiting their number of 3-point tries to five and making 19 of 31 field-goal attempts.

“It was definitely a tale of two halves,” GU coach Kelly Graves said. “I don’t think we had bad looks in the first half. We were just a little more aggressive in the second, and with that intensity, those shots started to go down.”

Graves said the plan was to take the ball inside against Portland’s undersized front line from the opening tip. Instead, the Zags burped up 12 3-pointers, making only three and letting the Pilots hang around longer than most thought they would.

“We wanted to look inside in the first half, too,” Graves explained. “That’s where we always want to get the ball. But sometimes, what happens when you’re missing shots, you get a little flat-footed. We just weren’t moving that well and so, therefore, we felt like we needed to take those 3-pointers.”

Mathews said she and her teammates weren’t as concerned with Portland’s late first-half run as they were with their own general apathy.

“I didn’t look at the three points (halftime lead) as a big difference,” she said. “They made a couple of really long 3s right there at the end. I was more worried about our play, rather than them.

“We weren’t knocking down shots, we weren’t playing as good a defense as we could and we were lacking the intensity we usually have.”

In the second half, the Zags found plenty of heroes, including the 6-foot-4 Lecoultre, who played only 17 minutes but managed to make 7 of 13 shots on a variety of wonderful moves – including a jump hook from near the free-throw line.

“Lecoultre hasn’t played a lot and yet she comes in and looks like an All-American,” lamented Portland coach Jim Sollars. “She could have drop-kicked it in from center court. A jump hook from 15? You can’t really defend that.”

Sollars said his team’s big finish in the first half gave him hope.

“But we were realistic enough to know they didn’t shoot very well in the first half,” he said of the Bulldogs. “We threw a zone in we had never run before and I thought it worked pretty well. But they’re going to make adjustments, and when they did … “

Sollars said his real hope was that “they would get uptight, nothing would fall, we’d get every break in the world and the shots were going to keep going in for us.

“It didn’t work out that way, but I can’t fault my kids for that. Gonzaga is just so deep. I look at them and I think they’ve got nine kids that are pretty much interchangeable. I look at their first four kids off the bench, and I think they could start for almost anyone in our league. They really could.”

(24) Gonzaga 77, Portland 42

Portland (6-22) – Bermingham 4-10 0-0 10, Medley 5-15 3-5 13, Botto 1-8 0-2 2, Grant 4-13 7-7 16, Fernandez 0-2 0-0 0, Stratton 0-1 0-2 0, Rowe 0-0 1-2 1, Sauer 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 14-49 11-18 42.

Gonzaga (26-2) – Burke 6-8 6-6 18, Jewell 2-7 0-0 4, Hawk 6-8 2-2 14, Mathews 7-13 1-1 18, Laney 0-3 0-0 0, Harris 1-1 0-0 3, Kane 0-0 0-0 0, Ridenour 0-2 4-4 4, Renius 0-1 0-0 0, Prichard 0-1 0-0 0, Bailey 1-8 0-0 2, LeCoultre 7-13 0-0 14. Totals 30-65 13-13 77.

Halftime—Gonzaga 26, Portland 22. 3-point goals—Portland 3-16 (Bermingham 2-5, Grant 1-6, Medley 0-1, Botto 0-2, Fernandez 0-2), Gonzaga 4-17 (Mathews 3-9, Harris 1-1, Laney 0-1, Ridenour 0-1, Bailey 0-2, Jewell 0-3). Fouled out—None. Rebounds—Portland 24 (Botto 6), Gonzaga 51 (Jewell 10). Assists—Portland 8 (Grant, Fernandez 3), Gonzaga 15 (Bailey 4). Total fouls—Portland 15, Gonzaga 17. A—411.