On the occasion of Selection Sunday in 2016, Gonzaga coach Mark Few threw down a gauntlet for the bulk of West Coast Conference basketball programs, saying, “It’s time for some of these other institutions to start picking it up. They’re really dragging the top three down.”
The context was Saint Mary's omission from the tournament bracket. His point was his conviction that the money the league earned (much of by Gonzaga) in the NCAA tournament was being used to subsidize other sports, rather than to try to better some pedestrian basketball programs.
Twenty-one months later, as the WCC begins league play Thursday night, there’s scant evidence that much has changed in the conference. Gonzaga still rules, Saint Mary’s menaces with a perennial contender, and BYU, while formidable, seems forever consigned to battling for third place. (You could argue correctly that Saint Mary’s being picked to win the league is unusual, but the coaches likely would waffle toward Gonzaga with the benefit of the pre-conference results.)
Think about this: There have been six full seasons played since BYU entered the league in 2011-12. Gonzaga has finished first (or tied for it) five times, Saint Mary’s has finished in the two five times, and BYU has finished third four times. Sad to say, on Christmas Eve I’ve got better things to do than compare this league to 30-some Division 1 others, but can there be any conference as predictable? (You could argue Kansas, the perennial Big 12 winner, but at least the other powers there -- Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Iowa State, West Virginia, etc. -- rotate.)
The strength of a league, of course, has a lot to do with its depth, and the 2017-18 WCC has the look of a lot of other WCCs, with the possible exception of San Diego (8-3), which has wins at New Mexico State and Colorado and looks salty. Saturday night, San Francisco hit a late three to beat a good Nevada team. The rest of it . . . well, you can take the rest of it.
Five programs -- Pacific, Pepperdine, Santa Clara, Portland and Loyola Marymount -- are all carrying 200-or-poorer ratings in KenPom.com. So those games become everything-to-lose-nothing-to-gain for the contenders, and the league credibility is inevitably weakened.
That said, here’s the setup -- with a forecast -- as league play begins. (I’ve opted to rely on Ken Pomeroy’s rankings rather than the RPI, believing it to be a better measure.)
1. Gonzaga (10-3). Zags had been having a relatively promising pre-conference run until a disquieting loss at San Diego State, and even at that, they’re a robust No. 13 in KenPom. Problem areas: Too many turnovers (a modest 224-183 assist-turnover ratio) and some leaky three-point defense (.374). But an 8.8 rebound margin is excellent, Zach Norvell has been a revelation, and the return to health of Corey Kispert (ankle sprain) will help. The hunch is, the Zags will go as far as PG Josh Perkins can take them.
2. Saint Mary’s (11-2). SMC (30 in KenPom) lost a good deal of luster with two losses to Washington State and Georgia in the Wooden Legacy. The Gaels have an early league test at BYU Dec. 30. They shoot a brisk .510 but defense has been an issue (.466 allowed). They’re hard to guard, as Calvin Hermanson, Evan Fitzner and guard Jordan Ford -- now starting after playing little a year ago -- all shoot better than 40 percent from three. Jock Landale is a proven force inside, and SMC has a terrific 2.02 assist-turnover ratio.
3. BYU (11-2). Cougars (60 KenPom) have ridden 6-8 forward Yoeli Childs (16.6 ppg) and 6-5 guard Elijah Bryant (16.4), who is shooting .444 from three after hitting just .278 a year ago. Best win is over Utah (59). Defense is a familiar issue; Cougars allow .448 shooting. To contend, they have to keep from kicking games against lesser opponents, something that’s dogged them almost annually.
4. San Diego (9-3). If there’s a surprise in the WCC, the Toreros are it, with quality wins at New Mexico State (80) and Colorado (116). Isaiah Piniero, 6-7 transfer from Portland State, leads in scoring and rebounding (15.2, 6.3), and another transfer, 6-2 Isaiah Wright (Utah) is the second-leading scorer. Three-point defense (.233) has been phenomenal. Side note: Last win came over Life Pacific (maybe a bunch of guys from the local insurance agency?).
5. San Francisco (8-5). Win over Nevada (36) was one of the league’s best so far. Offense has been a significant problem -- the Dons shoot only .400 and .321 from three. Frosh guard Souley Boum, a slender 6-3 and 145 pounds, leads in scoring (14.0) while mostly coming off the bench. Ten players get 12 or more minutes. Dons have double-digit road losses to Arizona State and Stanford.
6. Loyola Marymount (5-6). Lions, who lost a three-point game at Washington, may be the best of what looms as a sketchy second division. They’re getting 19.2 points a game and .532 shooting from 6-1 guard James Batemon, a transfer from North Dakota State College of the Sciences. Best win is against Cal-Riverside (255). As it is for several WCC teams, defense (.446) is a questionmark. LMU opens league play at Saint Mary’s.
7. Pacific (5-8). Tigers completed pre-conference play by getting drubbed by 39 at unbeaten Arizona State. They could be toughened by a decent schedule, albeit with losses against Stanford, Nevada, UNLV and the Sun Devils. JC transfer Roberto Gallinat leads in scoring at 13.7. Defense, at .451, has been faulty.
8. Pepperdine (3-9). Can anybody here play defense? Waves allow .487 overall and .395 three-point percentages, which have a lot to do with six of their defeats having come by 10 points or fewer. Best wins are over Oral Roberts (218) and Cal-Riverside (255). Young team that starts two freshmen, two sophomores and a junior.
9. Santa Clara (3-9). Only keeping the Broncos out of the cellar because veteran coach Herb Sendek probably will steal a game or two. Otherwise, it’s been an abysmal beginning for SCU, with only two Division 1 wins, against Northern Arizona (328) and Arkansas-Pine Bluff (348). Junior guard K.J. Feagin leads with 19 points a game.
10. Portland (6-7). Pilots balanced three losses in the PK80 Invitational with some lamentable opponents, so there are wins against Walla Walla, Oregon Tech and Multnomah. The other three wins are over foes at 295 or worse in KenPom. At least the Pilots have shot the ball well, hitting .413 on threes.
In some other universe . . . in some other existence . . . in some other lifetime . . . maybe we’ll see the day Washington is competitive against Gonzaga in a college-basketball game. Or maybe that’ll be left to our grandkids.
The Zags, you know by now, tattooed the Huskies, 97-70, Sunday night at Hec Edmundson Pavilion, which -- although the game flowed differently -- is a lot like last year’s score (98-71) in Spokane. Which isn’t all that different from the series-resuming game two years ago in the Bahamas (80-64), which wasn’t a whole lot unchanged from the one in 2006 (97-77) that preceded a near-decade-long interruption of the rivalry.
A sub-headline in my old paper, the Seattle Times, said it was Gonzaga's 10th win in 11 tries against Washington. Actually, it's 11 in 12. But it's easy to lose track.
Thank you sir, and may I have another?
(Could we have an audio accompaniment here of “I Got You, Babe,” the Sonny and Cher song Bill Murray kept waking up to in “Groundhog Day”?)
If we didn’t already know this is a bad matchup for Washington, there was this added layer: Washington plays zone, since its new head coach, Mike Hopkins, earned his spurs at Syracuse. Gonzaga is a deft shooting and passing team; more than athleticism, it recruits skill. So the UW zone -- which last night, morphed into sort of an “umbrella” configuration with four defenders at about the three-point line -- was essentially made to order for GU.
So it scored 97 points, and going backwards to a memorable 2004 game in what was then the new Kennel, GU has put up 97, 98, 80, 97, 95 and 99 points.
But here’s the number that can only be termed staggering:
This was the eighth straight game in the series, dating back to 2002-03, in which Gonzaga shot 50 percent or better. I don’t know how you can put a finer point of perspective on that trend other than to say that last week when Gonzaga lost to Villanova, it broke a 64-game streak of GU not allowing an opponent to shoot 50 percent. That’s about two years’ worth.
Shooting 50 percent means, in effect, you can’t have a key player go, say, 2 of 12.
Here’s the breakdown: (Cue Cher: “I got flowers in the spring . . . I got you, to wear my ring . . . “)
2017: 50.8 percent (Gonzaga wins, 97-70)
2016: 53.8 percent (Gonzaga, 98-71).
2015: 50 percent (Gonzaga, 80-64).
2006: 50.7 percent (Gonzaga, 97-77).
2005: 52.1 percent (Washington, 99-95).
2004: 58.9 percent (Gonzaga, 99-87).
2003: 61.1 percent (Gonzaga, 86-62).
2002: 55.6 percent (Gonzaga in OT, 95-89).
(“So put yo’ little hand in mine, there ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climb . . . “)
I digress.
Meanwhile, I wonder what this does to the Washington-Gonzaga series. The Zags’ coach, Mark Few, made it plain to me in “Glory Hounds” that just as Gonzaga offed Washington State from its schedule, he prefers to do the same thing to Washington, saying, “It’s all about top-25 and top-50 wins.”
I expressed reservations, believing then that Washington could usually be counted on for an RPI computer ranking of 50-100, which isn’t damaging to GU’s profile. But since then, the UW went 2-16 in the Pac-12, and the current team is surely no more than a work in progress, the Kansas win notwithstanding.
So Few has gone out and proved his point.
You can argue that rivalries are rivalries and in good times and bad, they ought to be played, and that’s worth a fair hearing. The reality is that when the schools signed a four-year deal to resume the series starting last season (that excludes the Bahamas game), it included the stipulation for an opt-out if there was a change in head coaches. As much as it seems there’s warmth between Few and Hopkins, keep an eye on that.
Other notions a day after a visit to Hec Ed:
-- The 27-point margin of defeat, unless I’m whiffing on another game, is the largest in UW history to a non-league opponent at home. Next in line was an 87-61 loss to No. 1-ranked Duke on Jan. 3, 1989, during the Andy Russo era.
-- This was a reunion of the Zags and official Verne Harris, who did the 2017 NCAA title game against Carolina. Harris is a highly respected ref who had a terrible night on the championship stage.
-- Washington’s last lead in the series came on Dejounte Murray’s opening bucket in the Bahamas in 2015, giving the Huskies a 2-0 lead with 19:17 left in the first half. That was 119 minutes ago.
-- I thought the fortunes of GU’s Johnathan Williams III and Washington’s Noah Dickerson would be pivotal in the game -- if they matched up or not -- but I didn’t expect Williams to have such a decisive edge, especially after his poor outing against Villanova. Dickerson has improved his game significantly, but Williams’ 23-point, 12-rebound game was huge, especially as Dickerson had an uncharacteristically low four rebounds and Gonzaga dominated the boards, 40-27.
Had a chance to scratch an old itch and see a game at Madison Square Garden, a venue I’d never visited, Tuesday night when Gonzaga played Villanova as part of the Jimmy V Classic doubleheader.
First, a little setup: On game day, there was nary a word of advance in either the New York Daily News or the Post on the game pitting the Nos. 4- and 12th-ranked teams. Maybe it had something to do with the firing Monday of New York Giants coach Ben McAdoo and the melodrama surrounding his quarterback, Eli Manning.
We sat, corner behind the basket, set back and up a way, in seats at $180 a crack. Of course, it was a doubleheader, also featuring Connecticut and Syracuse, two teams you could live without (and we did, leaving after the opener). But, it’s a benefit event.
Nowhere was there clothing or memorabilia commemorating the occasion. Why not sell a T-shirt and mark it up in the name of the cause?
Food and drink choices were good. I latched onto a bulging pastrami sandwich for $15.50 (angioplasty not included).
Photographs and newspaper pages recalling the Garden’s seminal events adorn the walls of the concourses, and inside, naturally, there are retired numbers of the Knicks and Rangers. I guess I’d have to conclude that I wasn’t overwhelmed by the place, but in fairness, how many arenas overwhelm you? It’s often the atmosphere therein that does it, and you don’t get atmosphere when you put college teams in a professional arena. (Don’t tell anybody, but Gonzaga is 0-2 in games I’ve seen live this year in that setting.)
My wife’s big moment was getting on the massive scoreboard during the DanceCam -- not because she was busting moves but because she was sitting next to Zach Norvell’s mom, who was.
So, to the Zags:
-- First off, it’s difficult to identify Gonzaga’s weaknesses against the excellence of the team it was playing. I’d been forewarned. “Villanova is really good,” Stu Jackson told me Monday in an aside during an unrelated interview, and the Big East exec and former NBA coach and league operative was spot-on. The Wildcats attack the basket, shoot and defend ardently in man-to-man, and -- even allowing for the vagaries of March Madness -- I’d be surprised if they’re not part of the Final Four. Gonzaga was described awhile back by a TV analyst as “connected,” but if that’s the case, Villanova is connected in the extreme.
-- ‘Nova benefitted by attacking the basket, in the tradition of Eastern teams. Or was it also a nod to the fact that Gonzaga isn’t overly deep, and there was opposing foul trouble to be gained? In the two GU defeats this season, Florida and Villanova have combined to shoot 62 free throws.
-- Johnathan Williams III and Killian Tillie combined for a mere 11 points, partly because of that foul trouble. In the two games I’ve seen up close, Williams has scored 39 points and five. Somewhere in there is a sweet spot the Zags can count on.
-- Well into the second half, the Zags’ two real ball-handlers, Josh Perkins and Silas Melson, were getting scant rest, and 'Nova was intermittently pressing. They ended up playing 38 and 36 minutes, respectively. Against lesser competition, maybe that can fly. But you wonder if it might affect things like Perkins’ shooting (1 of 7 from three).
-- Gonzaga’s turnovers are problematic, but seemingly fixable. Many of them are the kind you can see coming; now the players have to see them, too.
-- Corey Kispert’s absence (ankle) obviously hurt the Zags, but for the second straight game, GU got instant offense from Norvell (22 points). It will be worth watching to see how those two are juggled upon Kispert’s return so the development of two first-year players is maximized.
-- Villanova represents the peak of Gonzaga’s non-league schedule. The rest is negotiable, although Washington surely will be primed to right two decades worth of perceived wrongs Sunday in Seattle, and San Diego State looms Dec. 21. But if the Zags meet anybody as formidable as Villanova this season, that’ll be good news.
Gonzaga makes its debut in the Jimmy V Classic in New York Tuesday night against Villanova, another sort of scheduling milestone for the Zags. Amid the welter of November/December pre-conference showcases, the Jimmy V annually brings together some of the choicest brands in college hoops.
It also brings to light the kaleidoscope of scheduling possibilities out there for Gonzaga, especially now that it has joined the gentrified class of those who have reached a Final Four. Some of those discussions ultimately result in nothing tangible -- scheduling being a moving target of date, opportunity, prestige and who-knows-what-else -- while others remain live possibilities.
Here’s one of the former: For a good long while, it appeared Gonzaga and Villanova were going to play a game in Dublin, Ireland, next season (2018-19).
“For a while there, it looked like it was going to work,” says GU athletic director Mike Roth. “I wouldn’t say it was the 11th hour (that it broke off), but we thought it was pretty darned close.”
It seems that Fox, a Big East TV partner, discussed with Villanova, the 2016 national champion, a game in Dublin with Notre Dame, figuring it might appeal because of the heavy Catholic population in Ireland. Before that, there had been murmurs of trying to bring Villanova west for a Battle in Seattle appearance, which obviously didn't pan out.
The Dublin idea stalled on Notre Dame’s end, and that’s when Gonzaga entered the picture. Villanova and Fox each projected Gonzaga, and its Jesuit underpinning, as a good fit alongside 'Nova's Catholic roots But it proved to be too much of a logistical challenge.
“It really wasn’t one thing,” Villanova associate athletic director Josh Heird told me. “It was, ‘Where do we even start?’ “
Everything from the proper arena to sponsorship to promotion was a questionmark, and, says Heird, who coordinates Villanova basketball scheduling, “This thing, we would have been doing it on our own. I don’t want to speak for Gonzaga, but there’s not a lot of manpower in this athletic department. We’re not a Power 5 (school). We don’t have a bunch of resources we can throw at things.
“We just thought, ‘We’re biting off more than we could chew right now.' ”
But he adds: “I think there might be something we could do two or three years down the road.”
Says Roth: “I’m sure sometime in the future we’ll have them on the schedule; you never can tell.” He mentions “getting creative with games out of the normal markets.”
OK, so here’s some creative license: Don’t be surprised if Gonzaga gets involved in an event with similarities to the Champions Classic that annually involves Kentucky, Kansas, Duke and Michigan State. The four teams play an annual doubleheader at rotating sites (a game apiece), with the opponents switched each year in a three-year cycle. In this model, Gonzaga’s “host” games likely would be in Seattle (KeyArena’s long-debated renovation should get off the ground soon) or in Portland.
Meanwhile, the alliances with Villanova and Creighton -- Friday night’s opponent in Spokane -- can’t hurt. In the past, the Big East and the Zags have mulled whether Gonzaga could ever be an expansion fit, and -- however incongruous the geography -- it could someday be an option if realignment pushes that league to try to forge a nationwide profile.
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