LeeAnne Wirth, Jessie Loera lead No. 17 Gonzaga women past Wyoming 65-54

LARAMIE, Wyo. – LeeAnne Wirth scored 18 points and Jessie Loera added 16 and No. 17 Gonzaga defeated Wyoming 65-54 on Tuesday night.

Katie Campbell hit two 3-pointers and scored Gonzaga’s first eight points of the fourth quarter, and Loera’s layup at the 7:15 mark had the Bulldogs up by 17. The Cowgirls reeled off the next nine points to cut the deficit to 55-47 with 4:12 to go.

Wirth scored Gonzaga’s next four points and in the final minute Loera was 6 for 6 from the foul line. The Bulldogs made all 16 of their free throws, to offset 3-of-10 shooting from the 3-point line.

“This has been a tough trip with things outside of our control,” Gonzaga coach Lisa Fortier said in a team release. “Our team showed some great resilience in our efforts to control what we could control tonight. We played a couple really good quarters today, made our free throws down the stretch and got some big stops. We really relied on each other offensively and had some big time performances.”

Campbell added 10 points for Gonzaga (10-1), which has won eight straight since losing to current No. 1 Stanford in overtime. Wirth had nine rebounds and Loera five assists.

Wyoming (6-5) opened the first quarter with a 5-0 run before two free throws from Wirth put GU on the board. Both squads shot over 50% in the opening quarter.

Gonzaga took its first lead of the game with a jumper from Wirth at the 9:23 mark of the second quarter. The Bulldogs held Wyoming to 23.1% shooting in the second period and outscored the Cowgirls 14-8.

Tereza Vitulova led the Cowgirls, who only shot 33% (17 of 51), with 14 points and six rebounds while Quinn Weidemann chipped in 10 points.