Karr named WCC women’s player of the year
The Gonzaga women’s basketball team received a trio of individual honors after claiming its ninth-straight West Coast Conference women’s basketball regular season title and the top seed in the WCC Tournament as senior guard Taelor Karr was named the Player of the Year, junior guard Jazmine Redmon was tabbed Defensive Player of the Year and head coach Kelly Graves took home the Coach of the Year honor for seventh time in his career.
Along with Karr, junior guard Haiden Palmer was also named to All-Conference for the first time in her career. Rounding out the honors for the Bulldogs was sophomore forward Sunny Greinacher who garnered WCC honorable mention accolades and redshirt freshman center Shelby Cheslek who earned a spot on the All-Freshman squad.
Karr led the WCC and ranked in the NCAA’s Top 10 with a .447 3-point field goal percentage (30-of-63) during WCC play. She averaged 14.1 points per contest in 16 league games, good for fourth in the WCC. She also registered two games with six or more made 3-pointers, including a league-high eight 3-pointers in the Zags win over the University of San Diego, Jan. 3 – missing only one.
Karr becomes the fifth player in Gonzaga’s history - and first since Courtney Vandersloot in 2010-11 - to be named WCC Player of the Year.
Redmon, who was assigned the task of defending the Bulldogs opponent’s top player, ranked fourth in the West Coast Conference with 2.1 steals per contest during league action. She also grabbed 3.4 rebounds per game and blocked four shots. As a team, the Bulldogs led the conference in scoring defense (53.9 ppg) and steals (12.3 spg) during league.
Redmon is only the second Zag to garner Defensive Player of the Year honors, joining Jami Schaefer, who claimed the award during the 2007-08 campaign.
Graves, who is the WCC Coach of the Year for the third time in the last four seasons, led the Bulldogs to a 15-1 conference mark as the Zags wrapped up their ninth consecutive regular season title. GU closed out the regular season with a 25-5 record.