Sooners knock off Gonzaga in Seattle
Senior guard Peyton Little scored a gamehigh 18 points, and the No. 6-seeded Sooners secured a 75-62 victory over Gonzaga to move on to the second round of the NCAA women’s tournament for the 12th time in the past 13 seasons.
SEATTLE — The way Peyton Little was shooting early on Saturday, one half expected her to maker her halfcourt heave at the end of the first quarter.
She didn’t make it. But she didn’t miss much else in Oklahoma’s 75-62 victory over No. 11 seed Gonzaga in the first round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament at Alaska Airlines Arena.
Little, Oklahoma’s senior guard, scored 12 of her game-high 18 points in the first quarter, and the sixth-seeded Sooners used a torrid start to propel them into the second round for the 12th time in the past 13 seasons.
“We shot it about as well as you could shoot it,” Oklahoma coach Sherri Coale said.
The hot start from the outside softened Gonzaga’s defense inside for Oklahoma’s Vionise Pierre-Louis, who had a terrific game on both ends of the court.
She finished with 17 points, nine rebounds and a career-high nine blocks for the Sooners (23-9), who will play the winner of Saturday’s late game between host Washington (28-5) and Montana State on Monday.
“There was an advantage inside, and Coach let me know before the game that if I take care of my business inside that opens things up for our shooters,” Pierre-Louis said.
The Sooners came into the tournament averaging 6.3 made 3-pointers per game, and were shooting just 33.3 percent on their 3-point attempts.
They connected on six of them in the first quarter alone Saturday, including three from Little. They finished 10-for23 (.435) from 3-point range and 23-for-53 (.434) overall.
Oklahoma scored a season-high 29 first-quarter points and led 29-16 after the first 10 minutes.
Maddie Manning and Derica Wyatt connected on back-to-back 3-pointers late in the second quarter to give the Sooners a 39-26 halftime lead.
Gonzaga (26-7) shot just 34 percent for the game and was 3-for-18 from three-point range.
The Sooners led by as many as 15 points in the third quarter. Gonzaga, the West Coast Conference champion playing just 280 miles from its Spokane home, made a run early in the fourth quarter to get within five on an Elle Tinkle layup with 6:50 remaining in the game. That got the pro-Gonzaga crowd on its feet.
“Gonzaga’s a great team,” Little said. “We knew they weren’t going to lay down.”
After a timeout, Oklahoma went inside to Pierre-Louis, and she had a nifty finish with her left hand inside. Little followed with a driving lefthanded finish and Maddie Manning hit a corner 3 to push the lead back to double digits at 67-57.
“It was a very intentional type of offensive mindset, and I appreciated that from our team,” Coale said. “This is their fourth NCAA tournament and they knew how to handle that moment.”