Bulldogs women cruise

The weather outside was frightful, the basketball inside was almost as bad.

Gonzaga shot 33 percent but had no trouble dispatching Wyoming 67-36 Monday night before 1,462 hardy fans at McCarthey Athletic Center in a non-conference women’s game.

The Bulldogs go into Christmas with three straight wins. Their next game is against eighth-ranked Tennessee (9-2) at home a week from today.

“I miss the band and the cheerleaders,” GU coach Kelly Graves said. “There was not a lot of excitement out there. It was kind of a defensive struggle so there wasn’t a whole lot for the crowd to get up.

“But we’re 11-3, and against the schedule we’ve played that’s pretty good.”

It was the second time the Bulldogs handled the Cowgirls (6-5) this season, the first being a 68-58 decision in Laramie.

As in the first game, Gonzaga scored 35 points in the opening half, but Wyoming, which lost four starters off last year’s 24-7 team that lost to Pittsburgh in the first-round of the NCAA tournament, was worse. The Cowgirls shot 25.9 percent in the opening half in that game to trail by 13, but shot a frigid 22.7 percent and combined with 15 turnovers were down 35-12 Monday.

Things were so bad for UW, Megan McGuffey, who ended a six-minute drought with a 3, was playing despite three fouls. She finished with 17 points, but the next high scorer had six. The Cowboys ended up shooting 26.8 for the game with 24 turnovers.

Kristen Scheffler, who had six 3-pointers and 21 points in the first game, went 0-10, 0-8 from 3-point range and scored just one point. Emma Langford, the leading scorer at 14.4 points a game, had just five on 2-10 shooting.

“Defense was the story,” Graves said. “Ever since the South Dakota State (loss), our emphasis has been rebounding and defense and we’re playing that pretty good. We did a good job taking out their main kids and we’re going to have to keep it up until we find somebody to make a shot.”

The Bulldogs’ cold shooting included an 0-11 effort on 3s.

The second half was a matter of watching point guard Courtney Vandersloot climb up the career assist list. She picked up nine and has 275, eighth on the list in just a season-and-a-half.

The real drama was seeing if the six points scored by Gonzaga’s Kelly Bowen, a freshman from Australia, would be more than the total of Wyoming’s three Australians, who ended up with just five despite two of them being starters. Bowen was outscored 15-1 in the first game.

“It was awesome,” Bowen, a 6-foot forward, said. “You have all your own rivalries from home you get to shake them out here as well. It’s nice, like a little bit of home, especially when you hear their accents. They’re doing well except against us.”

Heather Bowman led the Zags with 19 points and seven rebounds. Janelle Bekkering added 11 points and Vivian Frieson 10 as nine Bulldogs scored.

GU’s lone senior, Jami Schaefer, who had four stitches above her right eye in the last home game, got another eight when she split open the webbing on her right hand in the first half when she slid into a courtside media table chasing a loose ball.

That further depleted GU, which was without two critical reserves, Tiffany Shives (knee, season) and Tatriana Lorenzo (broken finger, day-to-day).