By Jeff Faraudo
#WCChoops columnist | ARCHIVES
 
The shot took just 6/10ths of a second. The setup was two years in the making.
 
Senior Jill Townsend made a game-winning 16-foot shot as the horn sounded and top-seeded Gonzaga broke BYU’s hearts with a 43-42 victory in the championship game of the University Credit Union West Coast Conference Tournament that had the backstory of a Lifetime Channel movie.
 
“We’ve said all along with the pandemic, what are we going to be up against?” coach Lisa Fortier said. “We didn’t think it would be this food poisoning, GI bug, whatever. We knew at some point something would come up.”
 
Six Gonzaga players — including starters Townsend, LeeAnne Wirth and Cierra Walker —an assistant coach and two team managers became sick Monday night, victims of what was identified as gastroenteritis, unrelated to COVID-19. Townsend labeled it food poisoning. 
 
“Vegas just hasn’t been good to us,” Townsend said.
 
Two years ago at the WCC Tournament, Townsend broke her leg and teammate Laura Stockton tore her ACL in the semifinal game. The next night, Fortier was pulled off the court and informed her brother was ill. He died the next day of complications from muscular dystrophy.
 
"And last night when we all got sick it was like, `This is classic Vegas for the Zags,’ ” Townsend said.
 
With a lineup featuring three new starters, the Zags (23-3) could barely function for a half. They shot 17 percent in the first half and trailed by 13 points barely 30 seconds into the third quarter. But they got stellar contributions from unexpected sources — in particular freshman forward Yvonne Ejim — and were down just 42-41 after Jenn Wirth made two free throws with 40.9 seconds left.
 
BYU’s Paisley Harding missed on a drive into the lane and Wirth rebounded with 8.5 seconds left. Kayleigh Truong missed at the other end for Gonzaga but Ejim grabbed the rebound in traffic and the Zags called timeout with 0.6 seconds showing.
 
Wirth, the reigning WCC Player of the Year, had eight rebounds in the game but shot 1 for 10. So Fortier called the play to go Townsend, the 2019 Player of the Year, who had missed her only five shot attempts in this one.
 
Why Townsend? “Because she’s Jill. She’s that kind of person and she’s that kind of player,” Fortier said. "She’s great in those scenarios.”
 
Of course, this wasn’t business as usual. Townsend played just 18 minutes after getting two bags of IV fluids just before tipoff. She was on and off the court in shorts bursts all afternoon.
 
On the final play, she dashed from the middle of the key to the left wing, took the inbounds bounce pass from Truong, spun and released the shot. She never even saw it go in.
 
“It was like a blink of an eye,” Townsend said. "I had (6-foot-7) Sara Hamson right there in my face so I’m kind of puzzled how I got it around her. I really couldn’t see the hoop.”
 
Video replays showed she clearly got the shot off before the clock hit zero. While the players mobbed Townsend, Fortier squatted on the court and appeared to become emotional.
 
“It’s been a long day, but it’s also been a long season,” she said. “I don’t think there’s a person breathing who doesn’t think this year has been a lot. I think at that moment I was just overwhelmed with happiness for these guys.”
 
A TOUGH FINISH FOR BYU: The Cougars (18-5) entered the game knowing their place on the NCAA Tournament bubble was shaky. Their NET computer rank was No. 51, which was hardly promising. And ESPN’s Charlie Creme said they'd have just a “sliver” of a chance if they lost the automatic bid to Gonzaga. Now they wait until Monday’s selection show. 
 
“Personally I think we should go,” said BYU coach Jeff Judkins whose squad handed the Zags their only regular-season WCC defeat. “I’ve watched other teams I know are going to go and we’re as good as anybody.”
 
Sophomore Shaylee Gonzales, the Cougars’ All-WCC guard, acknowledged frustration at losing in the final moment. 
 
“But as a team we need to realize we need to buckle down and take care of business. That’s what big teams do. We’re going to use this experience to learn, to grow,” she said after scoring 13 points. 
 
She expects BYU to land a spot in either the NCAA or the NIT. "Whatever tournament we go into, we need to take care of business and use this as fire,” she said. “We don’t want to have this feeling again.”
 
ZAGS TO THE RESCUE: Without three regulars available to start — LeeAnne Wirth didn’t play at all — Fortier put Kaylynn Truong, Melody Kempton and Abby O’Connor into the opening lineup.
 
Truong, Kayleigh’s twin sister, contributed eight points, her second-highest total of the season. Seldom-used Eliza Hollingsworth made the most of her 5 minutes on the court, hitting a 3-pointer — just her third of the season — midway through the fourth quarter.
 
Ejim, a 6-1 freshman forward from Calgary, Canada, was a surprise star off the bench. She had season highs of 13 points and nine rebounds. 
 
“I think she’s going to be a great player for us,” Fortier said, “and today she was a great player for us.”
 
Ejim said she became more comfortable as the game progressed, noting, “At the beginning I felt a little slow. Then i got into the groove,” she said. “I knew I had to step up.”
 
Afterward, she got a test message from her mother, Otonye, who had seen a TV report that erroneously said BYU won the game. “That’s OK, you guys will get them next time,” her mother wrote. 
 
Ejim gave her the good news, and her sister told Yvonne, “Oh my gosh, she was excited. She was screaming.”
 
STAT OF THE GAME: Gonzaga got a combined 21 points from freshman Yvonne Ejim (13) and sophomore Kaylynne Truong (8), who averaged 7.4 points before them coming into Tuesday’s game. 
 
QUOTE OF THE GAME: “We just had a lot of confidence that she would be right mentally and that was a shot she could make in her sleep.” — Gonzaga coach Lisa Fortier on Jill Townsend’s game-winning shot