Piper is Big Sky MVP

Eastern Washington junior Julie Piper is the Big Sky Conference Player of the Week, which came out shortly before the league announced the 6-2 junior from Roseburg, Ore., was the league MVP. The Eagles have never had a league MVP before and haven’t had a first-team pick since 2006. Kyla Evans, a junior from Brewster, made the second team and sophomore Brianna Russell is co-Defensive Player of the Year, another Eagle first. (Tonya Schnibbe, a senior at Weber State out of University High School, is honorable mention.)

You can bet you last dollar Eastern’s Wendy Schuller will be named Coach of the Year tomorrow.

The Eagles are host to the Big Sky Tournament beginning Thursday. Ticket information and pairings are here .

Gonzaga easily won the WCC championship and finds out in a week where it will be for the NCAA Tournament.  Courtney Vandersloot repeated as the tournament MVP - and gets some kind words from the Nebraska point guard on The Seattle Times blog - and Heather Bowman becomes the first four-time all-tournament pick, and is joined by Vivian Frieson.

The Zags dropped a spot to 18th in the AP poll , (my vote below) Texas moved past them after a pair of wins. It’s too hard to argue, the Big 12 has seven teams in the Top 25 and behind unbeaten Nebraska they’re beating up each other and two of them have beaten the Zags, Baylor and Texas A&M.

On the broadcast the women’s game it was suggested the Bulldogs could get a four-seed. ESPN has them now at a No. 6 , going to Cincinnati to face NC State with a possible second matchup with Xavier, last year’s first-round victim (but much stronger this year). That’s in the Sacramento Region with Stanford No. 1 (which would draw EWU/Big Sky champion first)  and Charlie Creme says the four one-seeds are set with UConn, Stanford, Nebraska and Tennessee, with all but Tennessee still facing league tournamaments. If the Zags were to get to a four, or even a five, there’s a good chance they would go to Seattle.

Realtime RPI has GU as a six facing Boston College in Berkeley. That’s in the Dayton Regional with Nebraska No. 1. Geogetown would be the likely second-round foe. College RPI has the Zags at 9 facing North Carolina in the KC regional with Nebraska No. 1.