Northwest Madness Begins: Swish Appeal Live Blogging at Seattle Sub-Regional

A PSU fan just yelled across the court:

“It’s a long way from Texas. What is an Aggie anyway???”

Minutes later the standard fan sportsmanship announcement went out…

PSU:

Guard Claire Faucher is clearly the leader and MVP of this team — leading scorer, leading assister (is that a word?) and second leading rebounder.

Another important player is Erin Yankus who not only led the Big Sky in field goal percentage, but pulled down an impressive 17.28% of available orebs…

TAMU:

Tanisha Smith is an athletic small forward able to get things done on both ends of the court, doing a little bit of everything for the team.

Daniellle Adams leads the team in scoring off the bench, also sporting an impressive 17.46% offensive rebounding percentage.

Immediate impact, grabbing a oreb and then getting to the line… but missed 2 fts…

Thus far, Tanisha Smith has been dominant offensively and defensively, easily the most athletic player on the court…

….has apparently never met a Portland State fan.. they’re out in force and definitely winning the crowd battle…

Claire Faucher during an amazing job running the offense and finding open players for PSU… but you get the feeling we haven’t yet seen the extent of TAMU pressure…

Portland St. not going away easily despite TAMU pressure

A majority of the turnovers happening as a result of TAMU jumping passes that are a bit too long with a bit too little zip on them…

What’s keeping PSU in it?

Aside from the errant passes here and there, they are shooting 50% (4-8) from three point land…

Two consecutive layups by PSU gave them a brief one point lead…

But the tough combination of Smith and Adams got the lead right back…

PSU crowd still impressive — TAMU where you at???

Faucher goes up to contest a fast break layup by Adaora Elonu and fell hard into the stantion… was down a few minutes, but looks fine on the bench from here…

PSU has got to be pleased with their performance thus far — PSU fan walking by media row just said, “Ok — they could advance.”

We shall see… but first it would help if they make tighter and shorter passes…

Faucher back in and looking good at the outset… tipping an inbound attempt by Sydney Colson

TAMU creating some separation by trapping the ball handler at about the three point line in addition to continuing to play the passing lanes.

Whether they deflect a long pass, create a ball handling error, or stop the pass as it comes out of the passers hand, PSU can’t seem to get going in the second half…

PSU making a push with a 3 then fast break layup by Faucher…

TAMU still playing solid defensively, perhaps losing focus on offense

Faucher and Yankus taken out to standing ovation from PSU crowd.

Game pretty much decided, but solid effort from PSU early on…

From victorious TAMU coach Gary Blair (paraphrase): the NCAA should really allow the winner to do pressers first in the first and second rounds so that they can go scout the next game.

Agreed — by the time the presser was over, it was about 13:20 into the Gonzaga-UNC game.

Great crowd present in Seattle for Gonzaga…

Gonzaga definitely taking advantage of this home-away-from-home crowd…

Vandersloot sees angles and passing lanes better than most point guards I’ve seen this year.

But Frieson’s all-around play could be the x-factor for this team…

I normally try to take notes during games… but if you put your head down for 2 secs in this game, you WILL miss something.

Promise.

Most of those things seem to be coming from Cetera DeGraffenreid who I saw getting yelled at in practice just yesterday for jogging through a cut. That has not been a problem this game.

In contrast to Vandersloot who is definitely more of a passer, DeGraffenreid is a slasher/scorer who is also wreaking her share of havoc defensively…

Someone in the media room yesterday joked that they hoped she wouldn’t be that good so they wouldn’t have to keep spelling her name. No such luck.

Someone asked me earlier how the crowd is here in Bank of America arena and I said it was good energy but not quite full.

That was before Tiffanie Shives hit four threes in about a 3 minute span… the Gonzaga fans are making this place into their own quite nicely…

This game has been even better than I might have expected…