FanFest: Gonzaga’s Annual Showcase Features a New-Look Squad

After the wild showcase of talent and intensity featured by the Men’s team in their annual Kraziness in the Kennel, the Women will have their turn to light it up on Saturday for Numerica’s FanFest.

Activities will began at 6pm EST on October 12th in the McCarthey Center. Tickets are not required to attend so if you like in the Spokane region and don’t have something important like a mammogram (you know, because it’s breast cancer awareness month), you better be there.

Just as my esteemed colleague, macsmith0620, penned an outstanding article about actions to watch for in the Men’s Kraziness, I will be following suit with regards to the Women.

Outside Shooting

Just as with the Men, the Women will need to establish their perimeter offense to maximize their potential and earn a bid for the NCAA Tournament. As ZagDad84 said in a comment regarding this season’s schedule, it’s possible that this team will need to win the majority of their games and/or conference in order to deserve such a bid. While Yvonne Ejim will be the undoubted leader on this team, she has played pretty exclusively down low so there are questions on the perimeter. Excluding Tayla Dalton, there does not appear to be a clear cut threat from the outside so watching who takes that step will be interesting. While the frontcourt has questions, I will also be interested to see how Maud Huijbens (so sorry for butchering your name last time out) performs on the perimeter as she looks primed to step into Eliza Hollingsworth’s old role that saw her shoot 110 threes last season.

Team Cohesion

I’m not expecting this team to show up and look like the ‘23-24 squad, but this showcase represents an opportunity for internal squad development as the first test in an actual competition together. Admittedly, the stakes are not high, but the team needs to gel quickly as after this event, they have only 1 exhibition before jumping into the regular season opener against Montana followed by an extremely tough away matchup at Stanford. And to make things even trickier, all of this occurs in less than one month.

While one could point to the frontcourt partnership possibilities with Tayla, I’m actually more intrigued to watch Yvonne and Maud play together. Having played together regularly last season, they should already have a high degree of familiarity and I’m expecting them to start strong and form the backbone of this team’s early performances while the frontcourt figures it out on the fly.

Defense

Everyone rightfully focuses on last season’s offense talent: it was ranked 13th in the entire NCAA and currently ranks tied for 2nd in Gonzaga history behind the ‘10-11 squad. However, not many people have discussed the defense from last year. While not terrible, it was more of a bend, but not break defense that ended up ranking outside the top 50 in the nation while also representing the school’s worst performance since the ‘14-15 campaign.

I think it’s reasonable to say that the current Gonzaga squad has quite low odds to match the offense production of last year’s squad so the defense quality will likely need to step-up to help generate wins. I’m expecting them to be fairly solid down low with Maud and Yvonne, the reigning WCC DPOY, returning, but how the perimeter will shape up, that remains to be seen. I hear the comments about Esther likely starting and I can’t disagree. Her defense has always looked stout and I think it’s reasonable that if she brings more on the offensive end, keeps up her intensity on defense, and her competition falters on either point, she could usurp my prediction. However, I believe it will come down more to how this squad can play team defense and integrate Lisa’s scheme into action so the offense may have to lead the way for the early period.

Regardless of how this showcase turns out, it’s exciting that college basketball is back and we get to watch our school suit up and take the floor. The ‘24-25 season will likely be a lot more stressful than last season and the range of possible outcomes seems infinite so while it’s always tempting to watch events like FanFest and generate solid opinions, lets all agree to first and foremost enjoy this spectacle. Catch you all later.