Gonzaga says goodbye to their defensive stalwart
Hailing from Ipswich, England, a town likely in quite a bit of a depressed state as their football club look ready for relegation back into the Championship, Esther Little entered this season with her best shot at regular playing time.
In her first three years as a Bulldog, the senior featured in 82 games, 5 of which she started, playing 1100 minutes during which time she was employed primarily as a defensive specialist that saw her post a total of 58 shots, 46 assists, 172 rebounds, 24 steals, 27 blocks, 94 turnovers, and 90 fouls. Not particularly impressive boxscore numbers, but basketball is more than just numbers and Esther had her chance to prove it this season.
Things looked optimistic as Esther started the year in the starting lineup, but after an injury 6 minutes into the team’s second game against Stanford, Little was forced to miss the next four games. While she was able to quickly regain her starting lineup, this unfortunately coincided with the Bulldogs’ wretched trip to the Virgin Islands for the Paradise Jam so things weren’t looking too good.
However, Esther’s performance started to change after the return home as she grabbed 11 rebounds in the overtime loss to Colorado State, 9 rebounds against Eastern Washington, and she was starting to distribute the ball well as she had a seven game stretch of averaging just about 3 assists per game.
Now, the scoring hadn’t really jumped up much at this stage in the season, but something was coming into picture: Esther needs to be on the floor and in the paint cleaning up rebounds. From the start of 2025 onward in the regular season, Little averaged 6.7 rebounds per game, tied for second with Maud Huijbens’ season-average, including 5 games with double-digit rebounding numbers.
The Brit’s best game of the season has to be her performance against St. Mary’s on the road in early February. In this eventual eleven-point victory, Little posted a boxscore of 8 points, 12 rebounds, which was a career-high and included 10 offensive boards, 1 assist, and 2 steals.
All in all, Esther finished her season with just under 26 minutes per game, 2.2 points, 5.4 rebounds, 1.7 assists, 0.7 steals, and 0.2 blocks. A classic defensive specialist, Esther helped give this team a solid player alongside Yvonne Ejim or Maud Huijbens when positioned down low and could feature with those two to create a fairly stout defensive lineup. When on the floor, she earned the second-highest defensive boxscore plus/minus on the team of 0.8 behind Ejim’s 1.8 and was tied-third for the highest defensive win shares at 0.6.
Always cool on the floor, Esther brought a certain consistency and composure to this year’s squad. She always seemed supportive of her teammates and fought hard to contribute at a high level, which was rewarded with a WCC All-Academic Honors selection at the completion of the season.
At the time, when players like the Truong sisters, Brynna Maxwell, Eliza Hollingsworth, and Destiny Burton were departing, we were gonna be faced with some kind of totally new-look Gonzaga squad. I’m not sure why I felt so over the top about this, but I’m feeling it again with players like Little, Huijbens, Ejim, Dalton, Salenbien, and now Claire O’Connor departing. I will miss Esther and hope to see her make great moves at her next stops in this journey of life.