Gonzaga Women Face Pepperdine Waves: Open Thread

the Bulldogs carry a six-game win streak into this home match

After winning their 6th straight game of the season in the last outing against Loyola Marymount, Gonzaga is currently in Malibu preparing for their test against the Pepperdine Waves. Tip-off is set to occur at 1 PM PST and will be streamed on ESPN+, per usual.

Coming into the season, Pepperdine earned the ignominious selection for the last placed team in West Coast Conference Preseason Poll despite featuring a team 64% of their minutes and 57% of their scoring from the ‘23-24 roster in addition to featuring an experienced squad consisting of 9 seniors.

As it currently stands, Pepperdine looks to have struggled mightily on offense this season as compared to their WCC opponents. They have the lowest points per game at 59, allow the third-highest points at 65, complete the lowest percentage of their jumpers with 38.4% and second lowest of their threes at 29.4%. Despite those poor shooting numbers, the Waves jack up 20.8 three-pointers per game, which represents 38% of their shot distribution, a number that ranks in the top three within the WCC.

Unlike the Bulldogs that haven’t played since last Saturday’s game against LMU, the Waves hosted Pacific on Thursday in a match that ended 43-58 and puts Pepperdine’s season record at 7-10 (2-6).

Gonzaga hosted Pepperdine at the end of December in a contest that ended with a decisive Zags victory 75-54 and actually marks the beginning of Gonzaga’s current siz-game win streak. In that match, Yvonne Ejim lead all scorers with 23 points while Ines Bettencourt came in second for the Zags with 14 points including 2 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 steals, and, most importantly, 0 turnovers.

That last statistic is the most important to me with regards to the Portuguese junior. Getting tagged as a “true point guard” by the legend Geno Auriemma comes with a lot of expectation. I think Nesi’s talent potential is obvious. She has a vision, flair, and athletic acumen that stands out and draws the viewers eye that few players possess. When she hits her flow, it’s a beautiful thing to watch. However, there’s something about her freedom of play that makes me think she understands her greatness and wants to act on it as much as possible, to which I, a fan, would say: go for it.

But it’s not clicking on a consistent enough basis for her to get regular minutes. It strikes me as coach Fortier rightfully setting the precedence that you need to earn your minutes in multiple ways with one being the on-floor production. Everything that I can see suggests that Nesi fulfills every category for deserves minutes with the big exception being on-floor production.

In this game, I’m not really looking for the point guard to lead the team in scoring or assists, instead I’m looking for the Portuguese to stay within herself, flex her skills when appropriate, and enjoy another road win to extend the Zags to seven in a row.

Something else that I’m hoping for this match is the return of senior forward Maud Huijbens. The Dutchwoman has missed the last two games due to a concussion and while the Zags have kept the ship afloat without her presence on the floor, the frontcourt is certainly thin without her. Unfortunately, if the photo posted by the ZagWBB twitter is any indication, I doubt that today represents her return as it does not look like she travelled with the team.

Hit the comments below to share your thoughts on the game below!