Gonzaga women taking advantage of rest period before WCC semifinals

The Gonzaga women are accustomed to this.

The West Coast Conference Tournament tips off Thursday, but the Zags will have to wait until late on Saturday to learn who they will play in Monday’s semifinals.

Thanks to another top-two finish in the regular season, GU gets nine days off – to rest or rust, depending on your point of view – and a chance to work out a few kinks during practice.

The Zags did just that on Wednesday afternoon at the Kennel.

“We’re working on some offensive continuity, some slippage in certain things we run all the time, and some things that need to be cleaned up,” coach Lisa Fortier said.

Naturally, the Zags are focusing on the teams in their half of the bracket, mainly San Francisco and San Diego.

Gonzaga took the first meeting with USF 55-49 in Spokane on Feb. 7. Two weeks later in the Bay Area, the Zags rallied from six points down with less than a minute to play to win 83-82 on a buzzer-beating layup by Melody Kempton.

USF (10-8) is seeded into the Saturday’s quarterfinals, where the Dons could face Pacific, Pepperdine or San Diego.

GU went 6-0 against those teams this year, with all wins coming by double digits.

Fortier and her players also fielded plenty of questions about a potential title game against top-seeded BYU.

But instead of talking about a hypothetical rematch, forward Yvonne Ejim preferred to talk about the Zags’ three-game winning streak and “having a really good flow right now and being more aggressive.”

Fortier allowed that in two losses to BYU, “we could have played a lot better in both games.”

The team will fly to Las Vegas on Saturday – just in time to scout the 3:30 p.m. quarterfinal game that will determine their opponent on Monday.

The stakes are high. Despite a 24-6 overall record, the Zags are considered a bubble team for an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament.

Gonzaga is ranked 28th in the most highly regarded metric, the NCAA’s NET rankings, but its strength of schedule is only 59th.

In Tuesday’s edition of ESPN’s twice-weekly bracket prediction, Charlie Crème has the Zags as a No. 11 seed and playing in a First Four game against Missouri.

That would seem to imply that GU needs another win to secure a spot; Fortier isn’t so sure.

Asked if the Zags had already done enough to make the field, Fortier said, “I think so,” and rattled off the top-tier opponents GU has faced this year: Stanford and BYU (twice each), Washington State and Utah.

“But our goal is to keep winning.” Fortier said.