Vince Grippi: Gonzaga and Washington State have arrived on the same path, here’s hoping they’re forever intertwined

Funny, 6,000 folks walked into the McCarthey Athletic Center on Saturday afternoon, ready to watch a women’s college basketball game. They got it. A physical, wood-chipper sort of one, in fact.

But they also saw more.

A fourth quarter in which no one seemed capable of missing. The home Zags winning the rebound battle by 22 and taking 19 more shots. And the visitors from Washington State finding a way to force the contest to overtime.

An overtime that was Gonzaga’s, thanks in large part to experience, an ability to come up with 50/50 balls and, finally, to make enough plays to earn a 73-69 win.

As good as the game became – after a can’t-run-offense first-quarter performance for both teams – what it portends may actually be more important. It would be hard in this post-COVID, post-transfer-portal, post-name, image and likeness world to find another contest that better serves as to define what the game has become.

Not just the women’s game. The Game, capital G. College basketball.

It wasn’t just the crowd. The long overdue first Kennel Club tent city for the women. The raucous nature of the student section. The immense stakes. The physical nature, the intensity, the floor burns. Not just those things.

It was the teams playing, and the members of those teams, that illustrate the revolutionary pivot the game is making.

The obvious one is Gonzaga and Washington State playing a West Coast Conference game. Once unthinkable, right, considering the Bulldogs’ long WCC tenure and the Cougs’ even longer Pac-12?

“None of us asked for this, I don’t think,” WSU coach Kamie Ethridge said before the game, speaking on the Cougars’ need for a home after their century-old one was demolished. “We all hope for a better path.”

That path will, in 2026, include Gonzaga as a member of the reconstituted Pac-12. Not that it’s a bad thing.

“It’s Washington State,” Fortier said when asked about the postseason tenor of the contest. “In the foreseeable future, it will always be a big game for us.”

But even that conference pivot isn’t as drastic as the one the sport has seen in how teams are built. College athletics now includes nearly unlimited free agency – and a pay scale that threatens to decimate rosters of not just the have-nots but the have-less.

Which makes Yvonne Ejim’s presence on the Kennel court for the 64th time all that more impressive and appreciated. Not just by Fortier, but by Ethridge as well.

“Ejim is probably a player who could have gone anywhere she wanted to in the country,” Ethridge said. “For her loyalty to stick with that program says a lot about Lisa and her staff. But that also says a lot about Ejim. She wasn’t out for the highest bidder.”

If she was?

“I’m not sure Gonzaga could have kept her,” Ethridge said.

The Bulldogs did, and she made a difference, as per usual, in this one. Despite near-constant double teams, even before she received the ball. And a 1-for-10 shooting performance in a best-forgotten first half.

As Ejim gathered in her 17th, and last, rebound, she tucked it safely. The clock expired. She didn’t keep it. But she has played such a big part in the 127 wins the program has garnered since she left Calgary, Alberta, for Spokane, she may have been entitled.

Though she was hardly used as a freshman – something that can’t be said about the women who came off the bench for the Cougars and played a big role in limiting Ejim to 16 points.

That would be Dayana Mendes, a freshman from Paris – France, not Texas. In the first meeting between the schools last month in Pullman, the 6-foot-2 Mendes played just 12 minutes before fouling out. It was a learning experience, going up against Ejim. She must have learned well.

“She’s aggressive,” Ejim said of Mendes. “It’s a physicality of someone who has played a lot and has experience. I think she has gained confidence throughout the season. It was fun playing against her today.”

Mendes set a career high with 31 minutes, matching up Ejim for most of them. She threw her body around on both ends, scored 11 points, grabbed six rebounds and helped set the physical tone Ethridge was looking for – and got for 45 minutes.

She also supplied a key fourth-quarter defensive play and an ensuing 3-pointer that gave the Cougars their first lead. From there until that last Ejim rebound, the fifth-year grad student from a Canadian high school and the freshman from France’s club system were locked in a battle.

Will we see such things again? It won’t be easy.

Gonzaga and WSU pride themselves on finding players with, what Ethridge affectionately terms “holes in their game,” and developing them into what Ejim has become and what Mendes might – players with the ability to carry the program to the game’s rarefield heights.

As Ethridge said this week, “People are going to get messages to your kids,” when they reach those levels. The message? There is money available if you transfer.

“We really do think we can develop teams and players.” Ethridge said, including Gonzaga in the “we” part, mentioning Ejim by name. “You get the right kid in these programs and they flourish.”

It’s a path that seems to be disappearing.

And, as Saturday’s game showed, it’s a path that has to stay in the game, with a capital G.