Associated Press
Who has the better guards?: Texas A&M head coach Gary Blair says games are won and lost with point guards, and Monday night's matchup will be a dandy.
Gonzaga junior Courtney Vandersloot is the two-time West Coast Conference Player of the Year. She leads the nation in assists at 9.3 per game. She had a bad game, however, in her team's 80-76 loss to A&M in Las Vegas on Dec. 20. She had a season-high nine turnovers.
"I was awful during that game," Vandersloot said. "We didn't play our best basketball in Vegas. We've been reminded of that several times."
She was 5 of 8 on field goals, including 2 of 3 on 3-pointers, which came on the heels of eight turnovers in a 70-49 loss to Baylor the night before the A&M game.
Blair thinks A&M will see Vandersloot at her best.
"She doesn't like to give up the ball until she has someone ready to shoot," Blair said.
A&M sophomore Sydney Carter will guard Vandersloot first. Backup Sydney Colson and senior wing Tanisha Smith also might have to cover Vandersloot at times.
"Carter's going to have her hands full trying to guard her," Blair said.
Yet, Blair is predicting a high-scoring game, because he doesn't think either team can stop the other.
Gonzaga head coach Kelly Graves said the first half against A&M was his team's worst of the season.
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Zag fans will be there: Gonzaga, which is about 300 miles from Seattle, will have plenty of fans for Monday's game.
"I thought last night was a great atmosphere," Graves said. "The Zag fans came out in mass. Hopefully, they'll be here tomorrow."
Blair said that's the way is should be. He's hopeful that some A&M fans who watched the men in Spokane on Sunday will attend. He also appealed to fans of the WNBA's Seattle Storm to come out and see the Aggies.
The players aren't as worried about the crowd.
"I expect it to be more like a road game," A&M senior center Damitria Buchanan said. "We are a tough team and I think that it doesn't matter who is in the stands, we play for each other. They can have a million fans and we're still going to out there and execute a game plan and play as hard as we can to get the win."
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Make her run: Gonzaga's inside players believe running the floor might make it harder for A&M's Danielle Adams to dominate play inside. The 6-foot-1 Adams, who leads the team in scoring at 16.3 points per game, had only 11 points in the first meeting. Adams was 5 of 15 shooting and had four turnovers.
Gonzaga senior forward Vivian Frieson said if Adams has to run the floor and defend in transition, she might be a little tired to score. The 6-0 Frieson averages 12.3 points and 7.4 rebounds per game, while 6-2 Heather Bowman averages 15.5 points and 5.6 rebounds.
"I know they are a good team in transition and we've kind of had problems with that and we just have to adjust to it," said Adams, who was hampered early in the season by a hamstring injury.
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About Gonzaga: Gonzaga's 82-76 victory over North Carolina on Saturday night was the Zags' closest game since that 80-76 loss to A&M. ... A&M is 11-5 against ranked teams this season. Gonzaga is 0-3 with its other losses to Baylor (70-49) and Stanford (105-74). Gonzaga's other loss this season was against South Dakota State (75-71 in overtime). ... Gonzaga, which was seeded 12th last year, beat Xavier before losing to Pitt. ... Gonzaga is seeded a school-best seventh this year. ... Gonzaga averages 81 points per game, has a winning margin of 22.8 points and shoots 47.8 percent from the field -- all Top 5 rankings in the nation.
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Let's get this over: Texas A&M's Gary Blair is maybe the most accommodating women's coach when it comes to the media, but he wanted to get done with Saturday night's press conference as quick as possible.
The reason? He wanted to be scouting the Gonzaga-North Carolina game.
Blair, though, offered the NCAA a suggestion: let the winning team go first; the losing team has nothing but time.
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Hold that call: Members of the media had to turn their cell phones off for postgame press conferences, but Gary Blair didn't. So when his wife called after Saturday night's game, Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild blared out of Blair's phone, much to the delight of the media.
"You gotta have a little Steppenwolf every now and then," Blair said as he answered.
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West Virginia also upset about sites: A&M isn't the only highly seeded team playing in a tough environment.
No. 3 seed West Virginia, which was ranked No. 10th in the final AP poll just one spot back of the Aggies, was shipped to Austin.
The Mountaineers played Lamar in first-round action Sunday night and faced the possibility of playing sixth-seed Texas on Tuesday.
West Virginia coach Mike Carey thought his Mountaineers deserved a No. 2 seed since they finished second to Connecticut in the Big East regular season and in the league's tournament. He also thought WVU deserved to be sent just up Interstate 79 to Pittsburgh.
"I mean, the No. 2 team from the best conference -- or any top conference -- should not have to play a lower-seeded team on its home floor in the second round," Carey told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "We should get to play reasonably close to home so our fans can get there to support us -- especially since we have such a great fan base."
West Virginia is the only team in the field that would have to play a second-round game at a lower-seeded team. Gonzaga is in Spokane, which is about 300 miles from Seattle, and expects to have a couple thousand fans at its game while A&M should have 400.
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He remembers it well: Graves first saw Blair in action on the sidelines in 1993 during a tournament in Hawaii. Blair was head coach at Stephen F. Austin and Graves was an assistant at Portland.
"He had a really good team," Graves said. "I was impressed with how hard they played. I became a big fan."
Graves got to talk to Blair for the first time at length during the Vegas tournament in December and was even more impressed. Graves has a reputation for being a funny coach and great with the media, but he doesn't think he's in Blair's league.
"He's the master of hyperbole," Graves said.
-- ROBERT CESSNA
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