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Dateline: 3/8/2009

TRACKING THE ZAGS 4_Women

WCC Basketball Tournament_4_Women_GameDay_Sunday

Women want to pay back fans

 

By Dale Goodwin

LAS VEGAS (Sunday, March 8) -- For the first time in many years the women’s West Coast Conference Basketball Tournament format is just like the men’s where the top two seeds receive byes into the semifinals.

Vivian Friesen loves the new conference tournament format.
Vivian Friesen
"I love the new format," said junior Vivian Friesen, echoing the sentiment of each one of her teammates. "I’ve always wondered why we play so hard to win the league championship then not get a prize for that."

The Gonzaga women enter this year’s tournament today as the top seed, winning the league title with a 12-2 mark. The Zags are 24-6 overall. They will play fourth-seeded Loyola Marymount at noon. While The Orleans Arena here provides a neutral site for the eight teams, senior Jami Schaefer is optimistic that it will feel a little like a home game for her and her teammates.

"Our Spokane fans are the best," said Schaefer.

"Every game is like a home game for us," said Coach Kelly Graves. "GU fans travel well."

For the record, Gonzaga women drew an average of 2,399 fans this year, which was better than all but a couple of the WCC men’s teams. Gonzaga sold 1,814 season tickets.

"Our fans mean the world to us," said junior Heather Bowman. "We know we’ll have good support down here. The fans were so great to stick around after we lost at home to Portland a few weeks back. We want to thank them with a good performance here in the tournament."

Courtney Vandersloot
WCC MVP and sophomore Gonzaga guard Courtney Vandersloot said there are two keys to her team’s success this year: 1) "We have a very veteran group of players, despite our youth (only two seniors). And we have leadership not just from one or two players. Everyone is stepping up. 2) We have great team chemistry."

The winner of this afternoon’s Gonzaga-LMU matchup will play the winner of today’s 2:30 p.m. semifinal between No. 3 Pepperdine and No. 6 San Diego. The title game is at noon Monday on ESPN2.

NOTES . . .

  • Gonzaga beat LMU in both games during the regular season. However, the 81-78 win in Los Angeles on Feb. 19 was a nail-biter and perhaps Gonzaga’s guttiest performance of the year, overcoming a 15-point halftime deficit.
  • Gonzaga captured its fifth-straight WCC regular-season title last week. But the Zags have only won the WCC post-season tournament once in the past four years.
  • Senior Jami Schaefer is among 30 candidates for the 2008-09 Lowe’s Senior CLASS Award, presented annually to an NCAA Division I student-athlete based upon four "C"s – Classroom, Character, Community and Competition.
  • While Vandersloot was the WCC Player of the Year, Heather Bowman (last year’s player of the year and a co-player of the year in Coach Graves’ mind), and Vivian Friesen were named to the All-WCC first team with Vandersloot. Gonzaga’s Kelly Bowen was named to the all-freshman team.
  • It’s another beautiful sunny day in Las Vegas, with a predicted high around 67 today.