Gonzaga Regarded as Team to Beat

The Gonzaga men figure to roll through the West Coast tournament the same way they rolled through the conference season.

The Gonzaga women are not the same sure thing, but they are on a roll. The Bulldogs finished the regular season with a flurry, winning their last six games and tying Santa Clara for the conference championship.

Today Gonzaga finds itself as the second-seeded team -- a tiebreaker gave Santa Clara first -- and host team of the WCC women’s tournament, which begins at noon at McCarthey Center in Spokane, Wash.

“It’s at their home place,” said St. Mary’s Coach Michelle Jacoby, whose team faces Pepperdine. “And they have an experienced team coming in. I definitely think they are the favorite.”

Gonzaga finished with an 11-3 conference record and is 10-1 overall at home. The Bulldogs also are coming off an almost perfect February in which they lost only once -- at Santa Clara.

Gonzaga Coach Kelly Graves knows momentum is fleeting.

“I think it’s a wide-open tournament; there are three to five teams that can win it. I look at us as one of those teams, but our margin for error is not very great.”

The Bulldogs are in tonight’s last game, taking on San Francisco.

Third-seeded Loyola Marymount opens against No. 6 San Diego.

The Lions cannot mope over Saturday’s season-ending 66-58 loss to St. Mary’s that cost them a share of the regular-season conference championship.

“If you had called me [after the St. Mary’s game] you would have had to check my pulse,” joked Coach Julie Wilhoit. “But our kids are experienced. They know how to bounce back.”

Pepperdine, the youngest team in the conference with only one senior, may have overachieved by finishing fourth.

“We’ve been trying to impress on them that this is a different level of play,” Coach Julie Rousseau said. “This will be a huge challenge. We want them to have fun, but this is a different atmosphere.”