Allie Turner Nails Nine Threes, Wills Gonzaga WBB to Win Over Saint Mary's
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="858"]
Gonzaga Bulldogs guard Allie Turner (11) dribbles against Saint Mary’s at the McCarthey Athletic Center. Credit: Gonzaga Athletics [/caption]
SPOKANE, Wash. – For most of this season for Gonzaga women’s basketball (22-8, 14-3), redshirt freshman Lauren Whittaker has stolen the show. Averaging 19 points and 10.2 rebounds on 55.6% shooting, she has tied the WCC record with 12 Freshman of the Week awards and has a chance to break the record next week. But in the majority of the Bulldogs’ last home game against Saint Mary’s (15-15, 6-11) Thursday night, the Gaels did about as good a job as any team has at limiting the first-year forward offensively.
So who better to step up in Whittaker’s place than sophomore Allie Turner, who connected on nine three-pointers to tie Michelle Elliot for the most made by a Bulldog in a game. After a stellar freshman season of her own, Turner has taken more of a secondary role this year in deference to Whittaker. But she delivered a career-high 29 points to power her squad to a 75-67 win over Saint Mary’s on Senior Night, as the Zags keep pace at the top of the conference standings.
Despite her night to remember, Turner wasn’t exactly consistent throughout the contest. She was scoreless in the first, before rattling off four threes on six attempts. Then, after knocking down just one three in the third quarter, Turner was 4-for-4 from deep in the fourth, putting up 14 points in the final period. Only two of her 16 field goal attempts were taken from inside the arc, as the 46% three-point shooter made it no secret where she would be attacking the opposition from. Even with a hot hand, she had a solid amount of open looks due to Saint Mary’s zoning up defensively, which left gaps on the perimeter that Turner capitalized on.
“They lost her quite a few times, it seemed like,” Gonzaga head coach Lisa Fortier said. “They weren’t even necessarily what I would call hard shots for her. They were pretty open. So when you spend as much time working on it as she does, we were pretty confident that they were gonna go in.”
“It was a game they played zone, which historically means you’re going to shoot a little more threes as a team, so it was just working for me, and my teammates were finding me the ball,” Turner said in a sideline postgame interview. “Everything was just—it seemed like it was working today, which was great.”
Turner’s big game meant more to her as she did it when her fellow guard in the backcourt, Inés Bettencourt, was honored as one of the team’s two seniors pregame. Bettencourt had a modest six points, four assists, and three rebounds in the victory, but she means more to Turner and her teammates than anything she could do on the court.
“We did come in together, and she’s grown so much, last year to this year, you would never recognize who she is right now as a leader, as a person, as a player, and I just want to highlight her today,” Turner continued. “She may not have had the most points, rebounds, whatever, but she’s what makes our team our team.”
GU’s total offensive numbers actually didn’t look too alarming by the end of the contest. It shot 47% from the field and 48% on three-point attempts. Take Whittaker for example, who still finished with 18 points and 12 rebounds, which fall in squarely with her season averages. But it was mostly a struggle for Gonzaga in the half-court, as Saint Mary’s took away Whittaker in the post and denied entry passes and many of the shots the Bulldogs looked to generate offensively.
Turner routinely bailed out the Bulldogs when she sniped from distance, which were answers to Saint Mary’s buckets on several occasions. Through three quarters, Whittaker had seven points on just five shot attempts. It didn’t help that Jaiden Haile was 0-for-7 from the floor herself, and although Taylor Smith didn’t miss a shot in an eight-point showing, she took only three field goals.
The ineffectiveness of much of the Zags’ rotation kept the Gaels in the game even when they weren’t playing particularly well offensively either. In fact, SMC had a stretch where it didn’t score from the 5:39 mark in the opening period until the game clock struck 6:55 in the second quarter, when Abigail Shoff hit a three to snap a 20-0 Zags run. But competing on the glass and executing defensively eventually led to Saint Mary’s taking a lead near the end of the third quarter.
The fourth is where the Zags broke away, as the tandem of Turner and Whittaker combined for 25 of the team’s 29 points to ice the victory. The 5-8 St. Louis native continued to punish the Gaels from three-point range while Whittaker was quicker to go up with shots after receiving the ball, and before help defenders could get to her. Their performance in the game’s final period likely embodied what Gonzaga envisioned its offense would be for much of the year, but it’s never too late for the two to dominate in this fashion.
Over time, GU has improved into a more complete team. It is an admirable defensive unit, and it pairs that with elite shooting from beyond the arc. Waning in recent weeks has been their alarming turnover problem, while also mitigating their ball security issues by having one of the best rebounding margins in the country. The Bulldogs will need some help around the WCC to clinch the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament, but heading into their last game of the regular season Saturday at Portland, confidence is at a season high.
“I think we’re playing our best basketball, which is what we want to be doing,” Fortier shared. “It takes a long time to get the hang of a new team, and young players to get experience and understand each other, and work together.”
