Minnesota rallies for 82-77 OT win over Gonzaga women in WBIT quarterfinals
A season marked by many early season challenges concluded with the Gonzaga women’s basketball team going down fighting.
The Zags finished the 2024-25 season on a good note – a season-ending loss notwithstanding.
Minnesota rallied to force overtime, and the Gophers found enough offense to finish off the Bulldogs 82-77 in a Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament quarterfinal at Williams Arena in Minneapolis.
Ines Bettencourt’s two free throws gave Gonzaga a 67-61 lead with 3:37 remaining in regulation.
The Gophers’s three consecutive 3-pointers gave them a 70-67 lead with 1:10 to go.
Gonzaga fought back, getting a tying 3-pointer from freshman sensation Allie Turner with 40.5 seconds left.
The Zags had a final possession, but they couldn’t muster a good shot in the final offensive set as the clock expired.
A Gophers free throw put them ahead for good at 73-72 with 3:02 to go in overtime. Minnesota extended its lead to 80-75 before time ran out on the Zags.
“We took a couple of average shots and we were one and done on those shots and they went down and made baskets,” Gonzaga coach Lisa Fortier said.
“It was an empty for us and a made basket for them. One of two of them were shot-clock violations. That was a time our offense affected our defense. If you have an empty, you’ve got to go get a stop.”
The final loss is much easier to swallow than Gonzaga’s semifinal heartbreaker in the West Coast Conference Tournament.
The Zags finish the season 24-11. Gonzaga was 56-15 the past two years.
“Just a really good basketball game to be a part of,” Fortier said. “Our team battled. We got everything that we would have expected our team to do.”
It wouldn’t have been another game without another record broken by graduate forward Yvonne Ejim.
She scored a team-high 27 points, finishing with 726 points for the season and eclipsing a record (712) set by Courtney Vandersloot.
Ejim had a 40th career double-double with 15 rebounds. It was her 15th double-double of the season.
“(Ejim) has broken every record and given of herself all the way everything that she has,” Fortier said. “Sad to see it end. We’ve had a really fun last couple of weeks when we went from not being in the NCAA Tournament, not knowing our fate to spending like this borrowed time with each other.”
Bettencourt gave Gonzaga a big lift off the bench. In 21 minutes, she scored 13 points and added a game-high six assists.
Gonzaga had 20 assists. Tayla Dalton and Bree Salenbien each had five.
Turner added 12 points.
The Zags made 10 of 35 shots from 3-point range.
For a third time in three games in the WBIT, the Zags got off to a slow start. Minnesota equaled its biggest lead in the first quarter when it took a 25-16 advantage.
Like the other WBIT games, Gonzaga got untracked in the second quarter.
Two Ejim baskets and a Salenbien 3-pointer highlighted a 7-0 surge, pulling the Bulldogs within 27-25 with 5:14 to go in the first hlaf.
Turner and Ejim’s back-to-back 3-pointers pushed Gonzaga ahead for the first time at 35-33 with 1:32 to go before halftime.
Minnesota made just 1 of 4 foul shots in the final 1:08, and the Zags took a 35-34 lead into halftime.
An Ejim jumper as time expired in the third quarter gave the Zags a 56-50 lead.
Amaya Battle had a huge game for the Gophers with a different combination for a double–double. She scored a game-high 35 points and had 10 assists to go with five rebounds. Grace Grocholski added 20 points, six rebounds and four assists, and Tori McKinney had 19 points.
“We didn’t make quite enough adjustments on our end,” Fortier said. “There were just a couple too many easy possessions that we left out there on the defensive side specifically.”
Minnesota (23-11) moves on to the Final Four and will meet Florida (19-17), a 67-63 winner over Texas Tech, on Monday.