Gonzaga women’s basketball has plenty to evaluate during offseason with only one returning starter

Editors note: We begin a series of weekly summer stories taking a look at the Gonzaga women’s basketball team and what’s ahead in 2025-26. The Zags began workouts Monday. NCAA rules allow four hours of practice a week spread over six weeks.

Gonzaga is two years removed from the best season in school history.

The key piece to that season, Yvonne Ejim, returned last year, and she shattered multiple records while leading the Zags the deepest they’ve played in March.

Ejim has moved on to the professional ranks. The Zags, in fact, have seen the departure of 10 players and two transfers the past two years.

Players move on, but that doesn’t mean a program like Gonzaga is in a rebuilding mode. Not in a tear-it-down-to-the-foundation sense. Coach Lisa Fortier and her staff don’t have to raze the structure.

Yes, Gonzaga is starting over in many ways. But Fortier takes comfort in having the program’s newest cornerstone, point guard Allie Turner, back to engineer a new-look team that should continue the program’s traditional winning ways.

With one starter back, opportunity is aplenty.

Who will challenge for starting jobs and key rotational positions?

Fortier’s initial response, while understandably vague, was truthful.

“I have no idea. We started our first (summer) workouts (Monday),” Fortier said. “I haven’t even seen some of these guys play live. Transfers just got here this weekend.”

There are plenty of candidates. It should be a healthy competition for starting jobs through July, and it will carry over to when the players begin preseason workouts in the fall.

“We’ll do a lot of individual work, we’ll do some team work, but the team work won’t be until later in July,” Fortier said of the summer workouts.

“Sometimes coaches say, ‘I don’t want to talk about starters.’ I literally don’t know,” Fortier said. “I only know our returning players. They may have a small advantage because they’re familiar with how things go.”

Next season may be more of a work in progress than Fortier has had. That doesn’t mean the end result will be any different.

Consider that in the past 11 seasons, all under Fortier, Gonzaga has won 20 or more games 10 times. One more win in 2015-16 and the Zags would have had 20.

So even in years when the Zags must retool, they are steady winners.

Gonzaga returns five players, not counting redshirt 6-foot-3 freshman forward Lauren Whittaker, who missed last season after deciding midseason to have knee surgery. Senior-to-be guard Ines Bettencourt, junior forward McKynnlie Dalan, sophomore guard Christabel Osarobo and senior guard Vera Gunaydin don’t bring back many minutes, but they got valuable experience throughout the season in practice.

The 5-9 Bettencourt leads the list. She shared point guard duties, starting alongside Turner in 16 games. She averaged 6.1 points, 2.6 assists and 2.1 rebounds in 22.3 minutes per game.

A transfer a year ago from UConn, Bettencourt had maybe her best game in Gonzaga’s season ender at Minnesota, scoring 13 points with six assists in 21 minutes. She appears to have the best shot at earning a starting position.

Dalan, a small forward at 6-foot who transferred from Minnesota, Osarobo and Gunaydin will challenge for minutes off the bench.

Whittaker arrived from New Zealand as an early enrollee in January 2024 and had to use her redshirt for the second half of the season. She’s getting a medical redshirt for last year. She’s a three-level scorer. Her size and athleticism can create matchup problems inside, and Fortier said she could challenge Turner as the team’s best 3-point shooter.

When asked about Whittaker’s potential, Ejim frequently raved about her.

Whittaker is probably all but a lock for a starting job if she stays healthy.

“She doesn’t have any tools that she’s lacking entirely,” Fortier said. “There’s not a lot that she can’t do. If we can just keep her healthy, she will easily be a crowd favorite who really helps our team success.”

The balance of the starting jobs could come from a talented crop of four transfers and three incoming freshmen.

While they’re new to Gonzaga, three of the four transfers are veterans, having started multiple games and having measurable impacts at their previous schools.

They are: Zeryhia Aukoso, a 5-10 junior guard from Saint Mary’s; Teryn Gardner, a 5-9 sophomore guard transfer from Boise State by way of Mead High; Sierra Lichte, a 6-0 graduate forward from Cal Poly who has two years of eligibility; and 6-2 junior forward Taylor Smith from Weber State.

The strengths of each transfer will be discussed in an upcoming story, but suffice to say all four will challenge for starting jobs and key minutes off the bench.

The freshmen are: Jaiden Haile, a 6-2 forward from Fargo, North Dakota; Julia Wilson, a 5-10 guard from Temecula, California; and Paige Lofing, a 5-9 guard from Billings. A future story will detail what they bring to Gonzaga.

Gonzaga carried 11 scholarship players last year and will have 13 this season. Fortier and staff will have some difficult decisions come November on who starts, who comes off the bench and who might be candidates for redshirts.

“July is an important month, evaluating who steps up and earns playing time,” Fortier said. “There starts to be separation, people start to prove that they’re going to make baskets, that they’re going to guard, that they’re going to rebound.”