‘Courtney will forever be linked with Gonzaga’: Former coach, teammates reflect on Vandersloot’s impact ahead of jersey ceremony

Some of Courtney Vandersloot’s best assists will never make the record books.

When Haiden Palmer arrived at Gonzaga during fall 2010, she’d already played a year at Oregon State.

Ineligible to play that season because of transfer rules, she came to Spokane with her father’s advice stirring in her head.

“Find the best player on the team and do what she does,” he told her.

That player was Vandersloot. By then a senior, she was preparing for what would become the best season in program history.

Surely there would be little time to spare for a newcomer with whom she would never share the court, but Vandersloot invited the newcomer to join her for workouts.

“I showed up the next morning and ran the hardest I’ve ever run,” recalled Palmer, who was told by Vandersloot to return at noon.

The hour was filled with shooting drills that were fast-paced enough to convince Palmer that her day was finished.

“I thought for sure we were done,” Palmer said.

Not a chance. That night they returned to the gym for hours of 2-on-2, another reinforcement of the work ethic Vandersloot has passed to others.

“She singlehandedly changed my basketball career,” said Palmer, who went on to be a West Coast Conference all-star and played professionally for almost a decade.

Now she’s back at Gonzaga as its video coordinator. And for a few days so is Vandersloot, who on Saturday will become the first female player to have her jersey retired in the rafters of the McCarthey Athletic Center.

In a sold-out ceremony, her No. 21 will adorn the Kennel alongside those of men’s greats Frank Burgess, John Stockton, Adam Morrison, Kelly Olynyk and Dan Dickau.

Vandersloot belongs in that company.

She’s the only female in West Coast Conference history to win player of the year three times and the only one to earn a trio of MVP awards at the WCC Tournament.

Vandersloot led the nation in assists per game in 2009-10 and 2010-11 and broke the NCAA single-season assist record with 367 in her senior season. She is also the first NCAA Division I player, male or female, with totals of at least 2,000 points and 1,000 assists.

Vandersloot also made second-team All-American, partly because she made everyone else better.

“It’s so cool and I’m so proud of her,” said Heather Bowman, the leading scorer in GU history and a teammate of Vandersloot’s for three seasons.

“It’s going to be so emotional,” Bowman said.

This moment would have come years ago had it not been for Vandersloot’s busy winter schedule, which until this year meant playing in Europe. Only a year ago, she was competing in Russia.

Then again, the timing couldn’t be better.

Twelve years after her graduation, Vandersloot’s reputation has never shined brighter.

Only 18 months removed from winning a WNBA title in Chicago, she just signed a free-agent contract with the New York Liberty.

The Liberty are expected to be a super team, partly because Vandersloot will be on the roster, lifting everyone’s game.

‘Nobody wanted to disappoint Courtney’

The road to Saturday’s ceremony began almost two decades ago, as former GU coach Kelly Graves was putting together the pieces for a series of deep runs in the NCAA Tournament.

Recruiting was left mostly to his assistants, and Graves was a late comer to the Vandersloot fan club. His first impression: “I thought she could really score, but she had to work on her passing.”

Graves chuckled at the thought.

“I don’t think anybody saw this coming,” said Graves, who left for Oregon in 2014. “I think everybody thought we were getting a special player, and I don’t think anybody would have said that she’s going to be perhaps the best point guard in the world.”

The Zags didn’t know it, but they already had the inside track on signing Vandersloot.

During the summer before her sophomore year at Kentwood (Washington) High School, she journeyed with a friend from Seattle to a GU girls basketball camp.

“I just fell in love with this place,” she told The Spokesman-Review in 2011. “I felt so comfortable here.”

As a junior, Vandersloot led Kentwood to its first state tournament appearance. That fall in 2006, as her senior season began, she signed with GU.

A first-team all-state selection and tournament MVP as a senior, Vandersloot carried that momentum into her freshman year at GU. It was a career jump-started by a telephone call to John Stockton that she almost didn’t make.

Graves suggested that Vandersloot call up the greatest point guard in school history and ask him for help.

“It took me a couple of weeks to build up,” Vandersloot told The Spokesman-Review. “I’m shy.”

But the call was made, then another. Years later, Vandersloot said that getting tips from Stockton was “just an opportunity of a lifetime.”

One-handed passes, floaters in the lane, footwork – “things that no one would ever think of, but he has that knowledge he can share,” Vandersloot said in 2011. “The things he does are all based on confidence.”

Her position coach was current GU head coach Lisa Fortier, then in her first year as a full-time assistant.

“I was the guards coach,” Fortier said. “I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I knew that she was special.”

Making everyone else better, that’s the expectation for a point guard, but Vandersloot went far beyond the job description.

“She’s incredibly selfless,” said Bowman, who was a year ahead of Vandersloot. “But as a freshman, she would get to these situations where it was a tough decision to pass or make the shot.

“It was exciting to see her finding that balance and making that right decision, it was awesome to see. And she would see the cut before you did.”

Players and coaches recalled Vandersloot’s good humor in the locker room and her serious demeanor once they stepped on the court.

In that sense, Fortier likened Vandersloot to Stockton. “They are direct and they are fast-paced and they will tell you what they want. There’s something special about players who bring out the best in people.”

Vandersloot meant even more than that, Graves believes.

“There was a reverence around her,” he said. “Nobody wanted to disappoint Courtney, and when your best player is your most committed player, that’s special.”

By the 2009-10 season, all the pieces were in place for a special run. Besides Vandersloot, the Zags had Bowman, Vivian Frieson, Katelan Redmon, Tiffanie Shives, Janelle Bekkering and others. That season, Vandersloot averaged 14.1 points, 9.4 assists and nearly four rebounds per game.

The Zags won an unprecedented sixth straight WCC regular-season title and reached the program’s first Sweet 16.

The next year was even better as Vandersloot averaged nearly 20 points and 10.2 assists as she capped her GU career in 2011 by leading the Zags to the NCAA Tournament Elite Eight, the WCC Tournament and regular-season titles and a 31-5 record.

Even better, more people joined the fun.

Before Vandersloot arrived in Spokane, the Zags averaged fewer than 1,500 fans per game. By her junior year, attendance had risen to 2,935, and rose again to 3,824 in her senior season.

In that sense, Vandersloot – who went on to become the third overall pick in the 2011 WNBA draft – also made the program better; Gonzaga remains one of the best-attended programs in the nation.

“Courtney will forever be linked with Gonzaga, just like John Stockton, as the greatest to ever play in that program,” Graves said. “She helped build what has been an everlasting great program.”