This team is dressed for success

PORTLAND – This time the lights didn’t go out.

The Player of the Year didn’t go down in a heap.

The other team didn’t throw in a Meadowlark Lemon hook shot at the buzzer.

No swoon from the crazy cocktail of anticipation, desire and this-time-for-sure pressure whipped up by a hometown crowd as it was last year. No flinching at the defining moment. No calamity to waylay the destiny the Gonzaga Bulldogs have been trying to fulfill for five seasons now and finally did Sunday at Chiles Center on the University of Portland campus in a 64-47 rout of Loyola Marymount in the finals of the West Coast Conference women’s basketball tournament.

“Hey, it almost happened,” coach Kelly Graves corrected. “They didn’t have our uniforms. They washed our uniforms and didn’t have them for us – they took them to Howard Hall across campus. So it crossed my mind at one point.”

Wouldn’t have mattered. The Bulldogs crawled inside Loyola’s unis from the opening tip, so they were covered.

But you might have thought the Zags would have brought out some landing mats for the net-cutting ceremony, in case somebody fell off the ladder.

Take no prisoners, but take no chances, either.

For all that’s gone right in the program since Graves took over six years ago, something has always gone wrong at the worst time. So joy had to dig in for a foothold against relief when Gonzaga earned its first trip to the NCAA tournament on Sunday, like an aspirin digs in against a headache.

“It’s a little bit of both, really,” admitted senior Stephanie Hawk, a veteran of several of the previous traumas. “We finally got over that hump. But at the same time, the joy way outweighs the relief.”

As it should. It’s an achievement, after all, and not a consolation.

Especially this year. Gonzaga didn’t just squeak by its biggest exam with a no-study C. The Zags handled three opponents, and handled them roughly – Portland, San Francisco and Loyola shooting an aggregate 28 percent, which surely must be some sort of tournament record.

“It’s funny – we couldn’t guard you up until Christmas,” Graves said. “Defense has always been our signature. I didn’t know what the problem was. We were switching defenses a lot and finally we decided we were going to play man-to-man – that’s what we do, what we’ve been good at and we’ve just gotten better and better.”

But, of course, the point is to be your best at the right moment – and this has been Gonzaga’s singular challenge.

“I hate the ‘monkey on the back’ talk or cliché,” Graves said, “but obviously it’s big for the program to take this next step. As a coach, I think about it a lot more than the players do, I’m sure.”

That makes sense. Heather Bowman, this weekend’s tournament MVP, is just a freshman anyway. Jamie Bjorklund, the hot shot of Saturday’s semis, is a sophomore who was being carted to the hospital for x-rays last year when the Bulldogs were taking their first-round pratfall in Spokane. But Hawk and point guard Rachel Kane have lived the heartbreak, yet have managed not to be consumed by it.

Over the last five years, Gonzaga’s WCC record – 57-13 – is a full nine games better than their closest rival, Loyola.

But as a No. 2 seed in 2003, they lost to No. 3 Santa Clara in an overtime semifinal – the game in which the lights went out when Anne Bailey launched a shot (it didn’t count, though no one could be sure it didn’t go in). That was also the year Kayla Huss forced the overtime with that dubious hook, and the Zags missed two point-blankers to win it.

In 2004, the Zags lost to No. 1 Loyola in the title game. The next year, Shannon Matthews blew an ankle in the semis and GU – 14-0 in the WCC’s round-robin – lost the championship to Santa Clara. And last year the Bulldogs were out almost before the tournament started.

“It’s important to win it because eventually you have to take that next step,” said Hawk. “It shows what coach Graves has done with the program. You look back five or six years ago and Gonzaga women’s basketball was at the bottom of the totem pole.”

But Graves, quite rightly, refuses to see it as validation.

Like his counterpart in the men’s program, Mark Few – and countless other coaches – Graves despairs a bit over the magnified importance of making the NCAA tournament, and that the regular season has been relegated to a glorified exhibition series.

“We’re known regionally as a great program,” he said. “Now maybe we have a chance to put that more on a national stage, and that’s great – it’s the next step in the evolution.

“But I think we have a model program. We put three kids on the All-Academic team. We’re the winningest team in the Northwest the last several years and we won three regular season titles in a row. We’re doing all the things we need to – and hopefully we’re not done. And I’m not talking about the future, I’m talking about now. I like this team. If we defend like that, we can play a lot of people.”

Just make sure the uniforms get to the right gym.