Dons’ run ends in loss to top-seeded Zags
LAS VEGAS — USF lost its West Coast Conference tournament semifinal game Monday afternoon to Gonzaga, but it might have been a different outcome in a cross-country meet.
The Dons, who had five players log at least 37 minutes, were still darting around in bursts of full-court pressure and diving on the floor for loose balls late in their 65-53 loss to the Bulldogs at the Orleans Arena.
“I’m really proud of the effort throughout the year and especially in this last game,” USF head coach Molly Goodenbour said. “… We came in really believing that we could win this game, and we put up a good fight.”
Top-seeded Gonzaga (26-5) advances to Tuesday’s championship game against sixthseeded San Diego (17-14). USF (16-15) heads home for some much-needed rest.
The Dons had eight active players after two players left before the season started and two others endured seasonending injuries. They spent much of the season at practices in which men from the scrimmage team outnumbered the women on the team.
Still, here they were in the semifinals, going blow for blow with Gonzaga, which won the regular season’s two meetings by an average of 25.5 points. Monday’s game included nine lead changes and six ties, and the Bulldogs didn’t open a double-digit lead until the fourth quarter.
“San Francisco plays so hard and is so talented,” Gonzaga head coach Lisa Fortier said. “They have players who are not one-dimensional. They can shoot, they can drive and they rebound the ball well. The pace with which they run their offense is one of the best I’ve seen in my coaching career.”
USF, which might not have subbed at all in the first half if not for Anna Seilund being forced from the game for two minutes because of a bloody mouth, got a team-high 14 points from Kalyn Simon.
Michaela Rakova had 11 points and nine rebounds. Fittingly for the Dons, 5-foot-6 Shannon Powell, the shortest player on the floor, had eight rebounds to go with her 12 points and four assists.
“Shannon is a hustler,” Goodenbour said. “You look at her body type and size, and she’s the last player you’d pick. But she’s a scrapper, and she’s tough. … Shannon kind of typifies the toughness that we ask of our team every day.”
Toughness alone doesn’t win. Gonzaga outscored USF 25-12 in points off turnovers, 20-8 in second-chance points and 14-1 in bench points, and the Dons couldn’t rekindle the shooting that resulted in 14 three-pointers during their quarterfinal win over Loyola Marymount.
Seilund couldn’t match her 28-point quarterfinal game, either, against consistent pressure from Gonzaga’s Emma Stach.
“She’s a really tough player to guard,” said Stach, who scored 14 points in support of WCC Player of the Year Jill Barta, who had 19 points and 10 rebounds for Gonzaga. “She can hit a three, she has really deep range, and she can go to either side and hit a pull-up jumper. That’s a challenge that I love — to go against the best player — and it was great that I could limit her.”
The teams struggled in the first quarter, combining to shoot 23.3 percent from the floor with 11 turnovers, but it started to look more like a tournament semifinal game in the second.
That’s when there were two ties and eight lead changes, including Jenn Wirth’s putback to give Gonzaga a 28-26 lead going into the break. The back and forth ended midway through the fourth quarter, when Gonzaga made three three-pointers during a 12-2 run to take a 60-43 lead. San Diego 66, Pacific 56: In the WCC’s first-ever semifinal meeting between the sixth and seventh seeds, the Toreros used a 9-1 third-quarter run to pull away from the Tigers. Sydney Williams scored a game-high 20 points and Aubrey Ward-El added 16 for San Diego. Desire Finnie (22 points) paced Pacific, which was beaten 50-28 on the glass.