March 16, 2005

Box Score

SPOKANE, Wash. - Gonzaga University shook off any bitter feelings towards being left out of the NCAA Tournament as the Bulldogs (28-3) opened the 2005 Sportsview.TV Women's National Invitational Tournament with a 71-57 win over Brigham Young University (19-11) on Wednesday night at the McCarthey Athletic Center.

A healthy Shannon Mathews showed why she was named the West Coast Conference Player of the Year as she sparked the Bulldogs to a 33-26 halftime lead, scoring 12 of her 24 points in the first half. Mathews was injured in the WCC Tournament semifinal against Pepperdine University and was able to play only a handful of minutes in the WCC Tournament championship game loss to Santa Clara University.

"It felt really good to play again and to play at full strength," Mathews stated following the Bulldogs second post-season win as a Division I program. "BYU is a quality team and it felt good for us to get another quality win."

Mathews was a major factor in the quality of play the Bulldogs displayed all night. She connected on 9-of-12 from the floor and 4-of-6 from 3-point range. She also passed out six assists to move into fourth place on the WCC career assists list.

Gonzaga shook off the rust of not playing for 10-days as they scored only 10 points during the first 8 minutes of the game. Delphine Lecoultre then lit a fire under the Bulldogs offense as she hit a pair of jumpers and assisted on an Ashley Burke lay-up to spark GU to a 27-18 lead with 4:28 remaining. BYU would cut the halftime lead to 33-26 as Mallary Gillespie drained a 3-pointer as time expired.

In the second half Gonzaga pounded the ball into the paint as Burke, Anne Bailey and Stephanie Hawk climbed into double-figures. Burke finished with 15, Bailey and Hawk with 10 each. The Bulldogs scored 26 points in the paint.

"Their post players just took our post players out of the game," BYU head coach Jeff Judkins mentioned after the defeat. "I thought Kelly (Graves) did a good job of substituting players in and out of the game."

Gonzaga allowed only two Cougar players to reach double-figures with guards Julie Sullivan and Gillespie finishing with 14 and 10 respectively. BYU shot 42 percent for the game but fired up 18 3-pointers, connecting on only 4 for 22 percent. Gonzaga was effective from all parts of the floor shooting 49 percent from the field and 54 percent from long range (6-for-11).

The 3,603 fans that packed into the McCarthey Athletic Center will have to wait until late Thursday night to find out the Bulldogs plans for the WNIT second round. Gonzaga will play the winner of the Southern Methodist / Southwest Missouri State game which takes place in Springfield, Missouri, tomorrow night.

"I loved the crowd tonight," GU head coach Kelly Graves concluded. "I think the McCarthey Athletic Center is becoming a very tough place to play and tonight we really appreciated the turnout. We had 3,500 plus and got all this over a couple of days. I hope we get to play another home game in this tournament."

The Bulldogs do indeed play well at home running their home record to 14 straight games.