The Zags women were simply dominant during the West Coast Conference regular season. Last night, with a 50-point blowout of third-place Portland, Gonzaga wrapped up its first undefeated league season since 2011. It's the program's fourth undefeated season in conference, and only the fifth ever in WCC history (Portland had the lone non-GU one in 1997).
Those other four undefeated WCC seasons comprised just 14 league games. This year’s Zags pulled it off over a 16-game slate.
Thanks to the leap year, we’re still a day away from March, so it’s too early to get hyperbolic about the season as a whole. There’s still over a month left before an NCAA Champion will be crowned, and this team could be playing clear into April if all goes well. But it’s not too soon to look back at what Gonzaga accomplished in the WCC regular season.
We may have just watched the most dominant in-conference team in the history of Gonzaga basketball — women’s or men's.
On the men’s side there have been six undefeated WCC seasons, the most recent coming in 2021 when the men took an unblemished record into the National Championship game. That team went 15-0 during league play, winning by an average margin of 24.1 points per game. It wasn’t even the most dominant men’s team in program history by that measure.
The 2019 men’s team that went 16-0 outscored league opposition by 27 points per game.
Rank all the undefeated conference seasons in Gonzaga history by margin of victory, and that 27 ppg mark comes in not first, not second, not even third. It’s fourth, behind the women’s teams from 2010, 2011... and now 2024.
Coach Lisa Fortier’s group outscored their league foes by a whopping 30.7 points per game this season. Gonzaga averaged 82.9 points and gave up just 52.2 points per game in league play.
I’m willing to wager that’s a WCC record, too, but it’s almost impossible to say considering the incomplete nature of women’s hoops stats from 10-plus years ago (let alone all the way back to the first years of women’s hoops in the WCC back in the mid-1980s).
Speaking of conference records, this team was on pace to break the league regular season scoring record of 1,408, set by the 2014 Pacific Tigers. Back then, the league played 18 games in the regular season. But on a per game basis, this Zags squad reigns supreme. In a 16-game season this year, Gonzaga put up 1,326 points, 4.7 per game more than those Tigers did.
On the other side of the ball, this team was as stifling defensively as it was offensively efficient.
The conference record for scoring defense was set in 1986, the first year of women’s ball in the WCC — it was the WCAC (West Coast Athletic Conference) back then — when San Diego allowed just 723 points. However, they played four fewer league games all those decades ago. Oh, and there was no 3-point line in those days either.
Gonzaga gave up just 112 more points than those Toreros did back in '86, despite playing four more games and defending a 3-point line.
Wins are obviously the most important statistic when it comes to assessing dominance, and that’s all Gonzaga did during league play. Well, that’s not all they did. They didn’t just win, they commanded their way to all those wins.
Their closest WCC game? A nail-biting 13-point win over Pacific, one of just three games decided by fewer than 20 points.
The Zags wrapped up the WCC regular season championship a week-and-a-half ago. They had already won the league, but they just kept winning in their unprecedented fashion.
As the team readies for their trip to Las Vegas for the WCC Tournament, they've already made history. Now it's time to make a little more in March...
NEXT UP
MenGonzaga at San Francisco • Thur, Feb. 29 at 8 pm • ESPN2
Gonzaga at Saint Mary’s • Sat, Mar. 2 at 7 pm • ESPN
Women
WCC Tournament Semifinal • Mon, Mar. 11 at 12 pm • ESPN+
