SPOKANE, Wash. — The Gonzaga women will play Little Rock Saturday in Corvallis, Oregon.
The team practiced Friday afternoon ahead of the game.
The mood around the team was pretty chill. It seems like they are handling the emotions of everything that happened in the West Coast Conference tournament.
Coach Lisa Fortier rushed off the court in the fourth quarter in the final game of the tournament. Officials later said Fortier left due to a family emergency.
Before practice they were playing games, they were dancing and singing. It felt like a team that's not feeling the pressure of the biggest game of the season coming up.
In their last game, the second-seeded Cougars (25-6) handed Gonzaga its two WCC losses in two close regular-season meetings and tried turning the third game into a rout with a dominating second quarter.
ESPN mistakenly revealed the 2019 NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championship bracket on Monday afternoon that showed the Gonzaga women as a fifth seed in the tournament.
The bracket was mistakenly put out early on ESPNU several hours before the network had its selection show on Monday night.
Instead, the network’s show “Bracketology” came back to commercial at 3:15 p.m. ET and began showing graphics of this year’s women’s tournament bracket, according to multiple media reports.
NCAA Women’s Basketball tweeted Monday afternoon confirming it was in fact the bracket and apologizing for the error.
An unfortunate technical Error by ESPN revealed the 2019 NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championship bracket earlier today. We regret the network’s mistake and are working with out partners at ESPN to prevent similar errors in future years. We look forward to collaborating with ESPN to bring fans exciting women’s basketball tournament coverage throughout the remainder of the championship.
ESPN also issued an apology saying:
In working with the NCAA to prepare for tonight’s Women’s Selection Special we received the bracket, similar to years past. In the midst of our preparation, the bracket was mistakenly posted on ESPNU. We deeply regret the error and extend our apology to the NCAA and the women’s basketball community. We will conduct a thorough review of our process to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future. We will now broadcast the full bracket at 5 p.m. ET on ESPN2, and the regularly-scheduled show on ESPN at 7 p.m.
ESPN is still planning to broadcast the bracket reveal, but it was been pushed earlier to 5 p.m. ET, due to the mistake. A full selection show will still air on ESPN at 7 p.m. ET.
In 2016, the men's bracket was leaked online during the selection show.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.