Gonzaga Women Down the Portland Pilots

woo! big win on the road for the Zags

Well, we need to address the elephant in the room: I can’t predict a game and I need to stop. While I didn’t publish my thoughts about the outcome prior to the match, but inside I did not have much hope for a victory on the road against a strong Portland team.

Instead, what we watched last night was a fairly consistent performance from our Zags on both ends of the floor and a storming second quarter that set the tone for a high quality victory that shot them up 14 points in the NET so they’re no in the top 150.

On the offensive end, the Bulldogs had four players score 10 or more points, a season high, that would have been five if Bree Salenbien wasn’t on a minute restriction as she featured in her second game of the season after an incredibly fast recovery from her third right knee ACL tear. In her 11 minutes on the floor, Bree went absolutely off as she scored 8 points going 2-3 from deep while also grabbing 3 rebounds. Also, Esther’s kick out to Bree for one of her three points, chef’s kiss*; check it below:

Maud Huijbens secured a career high in points, 19, and rebounds, 12, which earned her the second double-double of her career. Maud was also one of 5 players that were credited with a block this match and she also snagged a steal. Barring the 5 turnovers, this has to be a career game for the Dutch forward, particularly on the shooting front as she went 9-12 from the floor. Really awesome to see and proud to see her resilience after a season with some inconsistent shooting performances.

While Ines Bettencourt drew the start, she was quickly relegated to the pine as Tayla Dalton stepped up for 26 minutes during which time she dropped this stat line: 14 points, 5-8 overall shooting, 2-5 from deep, 2 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 turnover. She’s got kind of a funky and slow shot to my untrained eye and it seemed to allow the Pilot defenders more time to close her out on those kick-out threes.

Yvonne Ejim had a rough shooting game as she shot for just 4-15, but was able to creep into the double-digit scoring mark as she knocked down all of her 5 free throws. As in typical Yvonne fashion, just because she had a rough night offensively, there was not an associated drop in her other efforts as she 8 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 block, and 1 steal.

After a strong outing for Ines and Claire O’Connor in the last match, the backcourt duo struggled to some degree this game. Bettencourt drew the start, but she finished with just 14 minutes while only posting 2 points, 0 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 block, 3 turnovers, and 3 fouls. Claire also drew the start and while she faired better, it wasn’t quite her best performance as she scored 7 points on 2-7 shooting, both threes, and gave the team 4 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 steal, 2 blocks, and 0 turnovers.

Allie Turner had a solid game despite some less than efficient shooting, 3-8 overall and 2-6 from deep, as she dished out 6 assists to just 2 turnovers while also grabbing 3 rebounds and 3 steals. She had an impressive play near the end of the third quarter as she picked the ball up on the strong side wing with the shot clock winding down. The inside didn’t open up for a pass, but as she wrapped around the elbow towards the center, the Portland defense didn’t shift, which left the weak side open that Allie exploited into a shot clock buzzer beating layup. Maybe I’m giving too much credit, but she was looking like a real veteran with that composure and understanding of the situation. She’s something special.

Esther Little was relegated to the bench in this matchup, which seemed a bit strange given Portland’s reputation for physical play and their overall size, but she finished with 21 minutes, 2 points, 1 rebound, 4 assists, 1 block, 1 steal, and 3 turnovers. She’s still a liability when coach posts her on the wing since she can’t shoot and has rarely drove the ball this season, but tonight was a quality outing for the Brit tonight and I hope she continues to show us the wrinkles of her game.

Something I’m noticing in the past 6-7 games is that the Zags have been creating more steals compared to earlier in the season and the numbers back it up: since the Eastern Washington game, the Bulldogs are averaging 8.3 steals per game compared to before that match when they were averaging 5.2 steals per game. Now defensive numbers don’t always translate to quality team defense, but in this case it does. Using this same, arbitrary, delineation of time, the Zags have lowered the opponents’ points per game from 73.3 to 63.0. Some of that could, and likely does, relate to a higher quality of opponents prior to this mark, but it still bodes well to see this improvement.

Unfortunately, this defensive aggression has not helped the offense figure out how to stop turning the ball over as the team coughed up 23 turnovers this match. The only saving grace here comes in a few forms. First, the referees seemed primed to call traveling calls this match. Thankfully this extended to both teams, but it was still weird seeing this many traveling violations called. Second, it seemed like a decent number of these mistakes were dead ball turnovers compared to previous matches, which limited Portland’s second chance points to 28. Third, the Pilots were also quite mistake-prone as they gave up the ball 20 times which translated into 26 points for the Zags.

The Bulldogs will be taking on Santa Clara at home tomorrow at 2 PM PST. Tune in here tomorrow for your game preview and associated game thread.