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Bud Withers' Blog

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Zags and the art of representin'

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Taking the temperature of Gonzaga’s performance in the PK80 tournament in Portland over the Thanksgiving weekend, you’d have to give the 15th-ranked Zags relatively high marks. Not a boffo, off-the-charts stone-cold “A,” but surely a three-game B or B-plus.

They thrashed what looks to be one of Ohio State’s weaker teams; did everything but beat Florida in a double-overtime classic, losing 111-105, and in a finale of schizo stretches, beat Texas in overtime. (The Florida game, had it gone to a third OT, was, for me, edging up in the category of best games I’ve ever seen in person to the 2005 Maui Invitational screamer between Michigan State and GU, won by the Zags in three overtimes. Memorably, in that one, neither team led by more than three points from the nine-minute mark of the second half to the finish, an astonishing stretch of 24 minutes.)

Gonzaga coach Mark Few came away from Portland expressing some satisfaction in projecting that his team can compete with anybody in the country.

What made the weekend a success, of course, was a game played at 10 a.m. Sunday, when a lot of people were in church or at brunch or trying to figure out why Washington State is suddenly rendered catatonic in the Apple Cup every year against Washington.

Nobody gets ecstatic about a third-place finish over a fifth in the Motion bracket of the PK80, but to Gonzaga, it’s of value. And that bespeaks an admirable quality about the program, the notion that you can almost always count on it to represent, as they say.

Let’s face it: That game stands to mean more to Gonzaga than to Texas. Those consolation games in pre-conference tournaments are gold to Gonzaga’s resume, while for the Longhorns, well, there will be multiple opportunities to atone, against Kansas and TCU and Baylor and Texas Tech. Gonzaga gets only so many chances against the flaccid WCC schedule.

Texas has generally been picked around the middle of the Big 12. Wherever the Longhorns finish, for the Zags, the game might mean a victory over an NCAA-tournament club, or at the low end, one going to a lesser tournament.

Gonzaga started slowly, then put on a blistering 24-0 run to take control. Of course, the Zags surrendered all of a 21-point second-half lead, and they’ve had a penchant for letting those things get away, from UCLA in 2006 to Iowa State last year, to Texas. That’s another story entirely.

Fact is, with precious few exceptions over the years, you can count on Gonzaga to show up, even if the stakes might seem negligible.

Certainly, there have been nights when the sleepy WCC schedule tripped up GU somewhere; that’ll happen.

There have been days and nights when Gonzaga didn’t get the memo. One of those was Duke in New York in 2009, a 76-41 disaster that caused Few and assistant Ray Giacoletti to soul-search as they roamed Gotham streets in a snowstorm (shameless plug: read all about it in “Glory Hounds”). Another was a 108-87 stinker at Virginia in the first few days of 2007.

Two more: Portland State’s ambush at GU in December of 2008, and Washington State’s 81-59 rout in 2010, although in hindsight, getting schooled by Klay Thompson isn’t such a disgrace.

Seems to me, though, that the consolation games of pre-conference tournaments are a worthy barometer of your native inclination to compete -- because I doubt seriously Few stands in a pre-game locker room and says, “Hey guys, this game means more to us than them.”

Texas was but an extension of history.

This isn’t an all-inclusive list, but go back to 2010-11, and a four-team November tournament in Kansas City. Gonzaga got smoked by Kansas State but came back to inch out a three-point win over Marquette, which turned out to be a 22-15, NCAA Sweet 16 team.

In 2013-14, Gonzaga was in danger of a miserable trip to Maui, losing its opener to Dayton and getting stuck in a nothing-to-gain, RPI-bruising consolation game against Chaminade. Next was Arkansas, a team that would go 22-12 in an NIT season, and Kevin Pangos responded with 34 points in a solid Gonzaga win.

In the fretful 2015-16 season, just about the only resume-builder until Gonzaga caught fire near the finish was a 73-70 victory over Connecticut in a consolation game in the Bahamas. That UConn team finished 25-11 and won a game in the NCAA tournament.

Such games can be sleepwalkers in front of skimpy crowds, perfect surroundings not to give a damn. Sunday, it was fair to assume that the emotional hangover was similar for Gonzaga and Texas -- the Zags having near-missed against Florida and the Longhorns having kicked a big second-half lead against Duke to lose.

However it happened, Gonzaga responded better. Modest though the return might seem, it was worth something.
#theslipperstillfits #unitedwezag #wcchoops #zagsmbb #zagup

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The most important Zag, and it may not be close

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Guessing that Gonzaga partisans haven’t found a lot to quibble over in their team’s walkover victories against Texas Southern and Howard. The Zags have defended well, run offense with some fluidity, substituted profitably and shown themselves to be more than a flimsy imitation of their landmark, Final Four club of 2016-17. This wouldn’t be the first team I’ve seen that, in the face of significant attrition, puts together a big season, seemingly in part because that’s the residue of a winning program. There’s an expectation to perform, if not excel.

Let’s not get carried away with wins over Texas Southern and Howard. But I think an initial inclination I had about this team is going to be faulty. I thought there were striking similarities between the current team and the GU outfit of two years ago. Recall, that was the one that was coming off an Elite Eight run in 2015, that had lost the graybeard backcourt of Kevin Pangos and Gary Bell Jr. It had two formidable talents up front -- Kyle Wiltjer and Domas Sabonis -- whom you might judge to be roughly comparable in production to Johnathan Williams III and Killian Tillie.

But while that team struggled to break in new guards in Eric McClellan and Josh Perkins, this one has veterans in Perkins and Silas Melson, and the combined wing help from Corey Kispert and Zach Norvell -- albeit freshmen -- appears likely to trump the steadiness of Kyle Dranginis. It also has a true center in Jacob Larsen, and the outfit two years ago went almost the entire year without Przemek Karnowski.

I’m sticking to one story, however. The player most pivotal to Gonzaga’s future this year will be Perkins, by a bunch. And not only because he’s the only real option at the point-guard position, at least until freshman Jesse Wade is capable of extensive time.

Perkins’ ride at Gonzaga has been eventful, to say the least. His description as a fourth-year junior seems more youthful than his varied experiences.

So much about Perkins has been sharp contrasts. He was going to play as a true freshman, and then he lost that 2014-15 season to a broken jaw suffered in November.

His play in ’15-16 was fretful. Mark Few, the head coach, was deeply worried about guard play early that season, for good reason. Perkins seemed hitched to the no-look pass as much as he was the quiet, routine play that worked. In one miserable stretch against Arizona, Montana and UCLA, he went 1 of 13 on threes with 10 turnovers in the first two. Then it gradually got better, the guards settled down and the Zags went to a surprise Sweet 16, but the final, unkind cut was Perkins’ runner to try to upend Syracuse that was swatted away by Tyler Lydon.

If Perkins was going to blossom, it might have been a year ago, but in October, he was charged with physical control of a vehicle while under the influence. When he got on the floor, here came Nigel Williams-Goss as main man, taking twice as many shots as Perkins, leading Gonzaga to a Final Four. Indeed, where Perkins had taken the third-most shots on the team as a redshirt freshman in ’15-16, he took 61 less in ’16-17. His assist turnover numbers, 119-75 last year, were actually poorer than they were the year before.

You never quite knew what you were going to get from Perkins. In the first two games of the WCC tournament last March, he didn’t make a field goal. In the breakthrough victory over West Virginia, he didn’t attempt one. Yet he had a crucial blocked shot in the final minute that was a desperately needed prelude to Jordan Mathews’ huge trey seconds later.

And then against Xavier, in an uh-oh moment for Gonzaga fans, it was Perkins’ lazy pass that led to a Xavier runout to start the game, something that he didn’t dwell on. He came back with three treys in seven attempts, part of Gonzaga’s deep-range fusillade that won it going away.

So it’s obvious what Gonzaga needs from an old hand wielding the joystick this year: Consistency. Few, who puts a premium on shooting from his point guards, wants Perkins firing with abandon, calling him an “elite” shooter.” Last year, with Williams-Goss unleashing 453 attempts, Perkins took only 6.1 shots a game. You figure Gonzaga coaches are fine with him bumping that number to at least 10.

Nothing that’s happened over two games disputes any of that. Playing with the look of freedom, Perkins has already launched 17 threes, hitting nine. If he can fulfill the upside there, fine-tune his decision-making and contribute leadership, he’ll be approaching the player Few spent so much time personally recruiting a few years ago.
#theslipperstillfits #unitedwezag #wcchoops #zagsmbb #zagup

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Huskies making Gonzaga game a tough ticket

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So I made a call to the University of Washington ticket office awhile back to buy a couple of tickets for the basketball game with Gonzaga Dec. 10, and it turned into more of a production than I would have guessed.

Several weeks ago, I was told single-game tickets wouldn’t be available until mid-October. Calling back then, I was told single-game seats would go on sale Oct. 24.

Except for one game: Gonzaga. That one wouldn’t be available until Nov. 7.

In the meantime, the UW was touting the Husky-Zag game as part of its five- and eight-game partial season packages. Both of those include Gonzaga, so I guess you could say the Huskies are willing to capitalize on Gonzaga’s success.

Anyway, a call to the ticket office Tuesday (Nov. 7) got this response: There still aren’t any such tickets available on a single-game basis, except to UW season-ticket holders. When I asked if there would be at some point, the ticket agent told me, “That’s definitely a possibility.”

I doubt anybody at Washington would concede this, but a side effect of curbing availability of single-game tickets is to limit the number of Gonzaga partisans in the stands. Nothing nefarious about that, but it’s perhaps another indicator of how the programs have diverged sharply in recent years. While the Huskies bottomed out with a 2-16 Pac-12 record and the firing of Lorenzo Romar in 2017, Gonzaga was appearing in its first Final Four.

Mike Roth, the Gonzaga athletic director, is taking a thoroughly benign view of the proceedings.

“There’s no conspiracy theory, at least in my mind,” he said. “This is not an uncommon practice in college athletics. It’s the University of Washington maximizing their schedule for the outcome they want. Nobody can blame them for that.

“If the roles were reversed, I think we would do the same thing.”

I was told tickets would be in the $65-99 range, if and when they’re available. If you take the secondary-market route -- that’s what I did -- be prepared to pay $100 at the low end.

This will be the first Gonzaga-UW game at Hec Ed since 2005, the most sizzling game in the series since the Zags began dominating it in the late 1990s. That was the one in which Adam Morrison rifled in 43 points but missed a late perimeter shot that probably would have won it. Instead, Washington prevailed, 99-95, in a screamer of a game with premier players all over the floor, including Brandon Roy.

That’s the Huskies’ only victory in the last 11 games in the series. Nine of the 10 Gonzaga wins have been by double figures, and a rivalry once marked by prickly words, cold shoulders and eventually, a nine-year hiatus (2006-2015), seems to have given way to a sense of resignation among a lot of UW fans. It will be worth watching to see whether first-year coach Mike Hopkins makes it a priority publicly to narrow that gap.

#theslipperstillfits #unitedwezag #wcchoops #zagsmbb #zagup

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