TV take: Gonzaga women come up on wrong side of instant classic WCC title game
There are games when watching at home is just fine. Others in which being at the event means so much. Sometimes it just matters from what vantage point you are viewing the contest – and I don’t mean how good the seat is.
Take Tuesday’s West Coast Conference Tournament title game, for instance.
The Gonzaga women’s basketball faithful who filled the Orleans Arena seats probably wished they had stayed home and caught the ESPNU broadcast. The University of Portland’s fans? That group, for the second consecutive year, was able to experience the euphoria of an NCAA-berth-clinching upset, this one a 67-66 battle that featured more lead changes in one game than the 14th-ranked Zags may have experienced the past three months.
If you were at home, however, you followed the action through the words of Portland Thorns FC broadcaster Ann Schatz, accompanied by Jennifer Mountain, an analyst with deep Spokane and GU roots.
The game itself? It was worth the price of admission. No matter what your cable bill is.
What they saw …
• As the third quarter wound down, Schatz succinctly described what was happening on the court. She mentioned that Portland, with a 20-12 record and ranked 108th in the NCAA’s NET rankings, had picked the perfect time to play its best game of the year. And, if the numbers are to be believed, the Zags were playing their worst.
The Zags’ two losses coming in were on the road to Washington State, still ranked 29th in the NET, and Louisville, 23rd, at a neutral site.
“Who would have thought this, outside of the Portland locker room?” asked Schatz, who used a variation of that phrase often as the game wound down. She also mentioned the Zags’ 90-40 win over the Pilots two weeks ago at almost the same clip. None of that mattered in this one, as Portland played as if it had nothing to lose – it didn’t – while the Bulldogs, 30-3 after their 24-game winning streak ended, acted as if the weight of the world was on their shoulders. It was.
And never left.
• There are few folks seated in the Orleans who had the opportunity to hear University of Portland coach Michael Meek tell his team not to worry about Esther Little’s 3-pointer in the first half, because she would, according to his count, make about one of every 30 attempts. But those of us who carved out the midday two hours did.
And ESPNU also allowed us to listen in when Lisa Fortier tried to relax her team, which looked tight – Fortier’s description – before halftime. That tightness showed mainly on the offensive end, with the Zags hitting just 2 of 11 3-point shots in the first half. One was from Little, her second of the season in seven attempts. The other came from Kayleigh Truong, who hit hers with 35 seconds left in the second quarter – and gave the Zags a 29-28 lead. It was Kayleigh’s first bucket in Vegas this week.
So how did the second half start? With GU’s Brynna Maxwell hitting a 3-pointer 10 seconds in. It was not a harbinger of what was to come. The Zags, who shoot 40% from beyond the arc as a team, made 5 of 20. They hit only 37% of their shots overall and saw Portland, led by Kennedy Dickie’s 16 points and former Liberty High standout Maisie Burnham’s 15, make 54% of its attempts.
What we saw …
• Quite a bit of the first quarter was given up to ESPN’s bracket expert Charlie Crème, who joined his men’s counterpart, Joe Lunardi, in Las Vegas this week.
Schatz opened the questions with one that is on most Gonzaga followers’ mind, whether they were in Las Vegas or at home. Will they be able to watch the NCAA first couple of rounds in the McCarthey Athletic Center. Or will they have to put together a road trip, something Schatz said was always impressive.
“They do travel really well,” Crème said of the Gonzaga fans, “but I don’t think they’re going to have to. At least in the first two rounds. … I really think this team has earned a top-16 spot, a top-four seed and the right to host first- and second-round games.”
He called their season “remarkable” and noted their nonconference wins over Stanford and Alabama. Then he addressed the elephant in the room. What if they couldn’t put Portland away? Again. You know, exactly what happened.
“Even a scenario where they, maybe, lost today,” Crème said, “I still see them being in the top 16.”
But that’s not the only Inland Northwest team with NCAA dreams. WSU, which won its way in last season, has to wait for Sunday’s at-large selections. Crème doesn’t believe they will hear what they want.
“Washington State did beat (sixth-ranked) UCLA, so you could say they’re there,” Creme said of the Cougars, who he has in the last four out. “But Washington State’s finish, and without their best player, Charlisse Leger-Walker, and how they played for the majority of the time without her, is pretty indicative of what they are now and to me that’s not a tournament team.”
He said their win at Colorado put them into the conversation, but he still doesn’t expect them to make the field.