Women’s notebook: Time to burst the bubble
It’s the time of year when teams hoping to avoid having the word bubble associated with its name try to burst it by winning its league tournament.
As the West Coast Conference champion and favorite to win the WCC tournament, bubble isn’t linked to the Gonzaga women’s basketball team.
But the Zags are acquainted with the term. After rolling to a 27-3 record four seasons ago only to stumble in the league tourney championship game, they were left out of the NCAA tournament.
Since then they’ve beefed up their schedule, which explains their better RPI (ratings power index) despite a 22-7 record heading into their tournament opener against Pepperdine on Thursday.
“We’re the best team,” said GU coach Kelly Graves. “If we play well, we’re going to win. If we don’t play well we can lose any game. That’s the way it is.”
When the Bulldogs closed out their home season with a pair of wins a couple of weeks ago, they moved up from 47 to 45 in the NCAA’s RPI. In the last two weeks, the Zags have climbed into the 30s in the only RPI the Selection Committee uses.
Winning doesn’t automatically move a team up. Montana beat Sacramento State and Northern Arizona recently and fell four spots to 94.
Gonzaga’s strength of schedule is in the top 100 and three losses came with league MVP Heather Bowman injured.
All of that plays into NCAA at-large selections, but there is only one way to take the guesswork out and that’s to be cutting nets down Sunday afternoon.
Pac-10 second season
The Pac-10 tourney opens Friday in San Jose, Calif. Washington State plays Oregon in the first game at 6 p.m.
The Ducks won both meetings this season.
“That’s a team that knows its identity,” Cougars coach June Daugherty said. “They play hard on both ends of the floor and offensively they can explode at any time.”
In the last game against Oregon, Katie Appleton, WSU’s leading scorer, was hobbled by a sprained ankle.
“We’re going to have to be firing on all cylinders,” Daugherty said. “We feel we’ve improved tremendously. Our foundation pieces are in place after the first year of our coaching staff.”
Washington takes on third-seeded Arizona State Saturday morning. The Sun Devils swept the regular season.
ASU is led by junior Briann January (Lewis and Clark), who leads the Pac-10 in steals (2.38 per game), is third in assists (4.66) and second in assists/turnover ration (1.71).
“She’s playing fabulous, as usual,” ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne said.
“This has been a season for her of amazing maturation. She picked up where she left off last season. She went into her sophomore year as a (defensive) stopper growing into a scoring role, but end of season was probably our MVP. She’s continued in that role more this season. Bri has had an outstanding season and blossomed into one of the premier guards in the country.”
Tip-ins
In the latest NCAA RPI Washington State is 292 out of 338 teams. Idaho is 317 and Eastern Washington is 328. … Stanford has won eight straight Pac-10 titles and 17 overall. UW is second in total titles with three. … The crowd of 10,525 for the Stanford-Cal game was the largest to watch a league game. … Cougars junior Katie Appleton is second in the Pac-10 in 3-point shooting at .409 percent. … A week after Natalie Doma of Idaho State became the BSC’s all-time leader in rebounds (1,100), field goals (812) and free throws (481), she passed current Montana assistant Shannon Cate Schweyen to become the all-time leading scorer (2,317). … Senior Sara Tuomi suffered a knee injury and her string of starting in every Weber State game of her career ended at 116. … Sophomore Tonya Schnibbe (University High) had a career-high 10 assists to go with 12 points for her first career double-double on Thursday and had 10 more assists Saturday to give her 152 this season, second in Weber State history and 16 shy of the record. … Northern Arizona, Northern Colorado and Weber State are battling for the last two spots in the Big Sky tournament. … Louella Tomlinson of Saint Mary’s needs four blocked shots to break the NCAA record of 152. … Angie Bjorklund (U-Hi) tied Tennessee teammate Candace Parker‘s SEC record when she was named Freshman of the Week for the fifth time.