Search Bloguru posts

Bud Withers' Blog

https://en.bloguru.com/GloryHounds

For Gonzaga, it's a pregnant post-postseason

thread
So Gonzaga’s “season after” its big breakthrough of 2017 is done, as are the seasons of 346 other college basketball teams (I don’t count anybody still playing in the NIT, CBI or CollegeInsider.com events. There’s only one tournament.)

Safe to say that GU’s off-season is fraught with more possibility than it used to be around Gonzaga, even 8-10 years ago. But the price of running with the thoroughbreds is the uncertainty that accompanies their high achievement.

If Rui Hachimura, Killian Tillie and every other eligible player on the Gonzaga roster returns next season, you’ve got a national-championship contender. But what if Hachimura and Tillie depart after sophomore seasons? And what if Josh Perkins, who will have been a GU student for four years, somehow concludes he’s had enough? At that end of the continuum you might have a team struggling to sustain the 20-year streak of NCAA tournaments.

Meanwhile, other things to chew on:

-- Here’s the damage in that 20-year run: One Final Four, two Elite Eights and six Sweet 16s. If you can find underachievement in that, you’re delusional.

-- You may have read in this space recently that Gonzaga’s average seed in those 20 tournaments was 6.4, yet it went 17-3 in first-round games. For comparative purposes, how have No. 6 seeds fared against 11s in the last five NCAA tournaments? They’re 10-10.

-- I’m puzzled at what happened to redshirt freshman Jacob Larsen, whom I saw score 10 points with five rebounds against Villanova Dec. 5. When I talked to Zag assistant Tommy Lloyd in mid-February, he cited Larsen’s hitting a freshman wall, the fact he was largely idle for two straight seasons, and the rigors of coming off a knee injury. The hope was, they could work him back into the rotation down the stretch. But after the first game of the calendar year, Larsen was in long enough to score exactly 11 points the rest of the way.

-- How to assess the Zags’ NCAA performance? The Greensboro game had upset written all over it until Perkins and Zach Norvell rescued it in the last minute. Ohio State was, by and large, a boffo performance. Nothing seemed right against Florida State, starting with Tillie’s absence.

-- I don’t have any knowledge of Tillie’s disposition about turning pro, but nothing he did in the tournament will help that status. He shot 3 for 12, missed all four threes (after an other-worldly WCC-tournament performance), had eight rebounds, four steals, four turnovers and nine points, before missing the Florida State game.

-- Gonzaga had three 80-percent-plus free throw shooters entering the tournament. Combined, they missed 19 free throws in the three games.

-- The idea of a “bracket opening up” -- upsets taking hold in a particular region -- is something of a myth. A bracket opens up because some team, perhaps underseeded, is now playing really well. Ask Kansas State about its bracket opening up.

-- Remember how, when George Mason made its run to the Final Four in 2006, it was thought to be the most incredible, unrepeatable, indescribable feat?

-- I never really thought this Gonzaga team was capable of going all the way. Going further, certainly, but not all the way.

-- At the 2014 sub-regional in San Diego, before a second-round game against Arizona (blowout win for the Wildcats), Zags coach Mark Few caught some grief for saying it was a matchup of the two top programs in the West that had been recently alternating that title. It’s a highly fluid distinction, but right now, Gonzaga is the top program in the West.

-- Revenue, mostly TV revenue, will drive Gonzaga’s decision regarding whether to remain in the WCC or bolt to the Mountain West. (Personally, I think the Big East would be fabulous, creating a national conference of like-minded schools. But there’s that geography.) And here’s a stray thought: If you go to the Mountain West, you throw in with a collection of schools that will forever be second banana to the Pac-12. If you stay in the WCC, yes, it’s a league inferior to the Pac-12, but you’re still sort of a distinct free agent in a league of convenience because of the religious affiliations. In other words, you gain money going to the Mountain West, but do you sacrifice your brand? Just sayin’.
#theslipperstillfits #unitedwezag #wcchoops #zagsmbb #zagup

People Who Wowed This Post

An old Zag mega-scorer riffs on ... the next one?

thread
This might come as a surprise to followers of Gonzaga basketball who twisted and squirmed through last weekend’s Boise sub-regional, but Zach Norvell Jr. went a long time this season without leading the Zags in scoring in a game.

In fact, as mid-March approached, he hadn’t led his team since before Christmas -- when he scored 22 in a Gonzaga loss at San Diego State Dec. 21.

That didn’t affect him materially in his first college games in the NCAA tournament, where he rescued the Zags with a clutch three-pointer to beat North Carolina-Greensboro, and then seemed to make every big shot with a career-high, 28-point game in a nervy Gonzaga win over Ohio State.

Call it recency bias, then, because it seems like Norvell has been gunning in baskets by the bushel all season, kind of like a certain prolific scorer at GU a little more than a decade ago.

“I’m just impressed with his overall mentality,” said Adam Morrison.

I caught up Tuesday with Morrison, now doing radio analysis for Gonzaga, to pick his brain on Norvell. If Gonzaga’s last great scorer wasn’t Kyle Wiltjer (2015-16), certainly it was Morrison, who averaged 28.1 points a game with his for-the-ages season in 2005-06, one that won him a couple of player-of-the-year awards.

Of course, it’s far too early to put Norvell in that category, but there are encouraging signs, starting with an apparently implacable mindset.

When the season began, most of us expected that the newbie wing to make a major splash would be Corey Kispert. He started at the outset, but an ankle sprain late in November thrust Norvell into the starting lineup.

Immediately, he responded. He rattled off 21 points against Creighton, 22 in New York against Villanova, 21 against Washington.

None of that happened without Norvell managing his mindframe through the early games, Morrison says, noting that the reserve role -- yet one carrying expectations of point production -- can be difficult for a young player.

“He was kind of thinking, his-shot-first,” Morrison says. “Now it’s more of a flow. He’s starting to understand when’s a good shot and when’s not. You could tell, from my perspective as a former player, when it’s, ‘I’m gonna shoot it (pre-determining, in other words), instead of trusting that it’s gonna come back.

“I think he kind of pressed a little bit early. That’s a tough role to come into. He wasn’t taking horrible shots, but some of them, that’s got to be a ball-swing and trust it’s going to come back to you.

“You’ve got to give him credit for being ready for the opportunity. A lot of kids will get frustrated.”

So there Norvell was last week in Boise, struggling to score against UNCG. But he nailed the killer three-pointer that separated Gonzaga from the No. 13 seed.

And against Ohio State, it seemed like every big basket was Norvell’s. After the Buckeyes had scrambled back to take their biggest lead at 67-62, Norvell quickly bombed a three that again turned it into a coin-flip game. And after GU nosed ahead, but tenuously, 73-69, Norvell rained in another trey with 2:21 left from that familiar right wing that allowed the Zags breathing room to the finish.

The question, then: Does Morrison see some of himself in Norvell?

“Yeah, some of the stuff, I really do, the unconscious stuff,” Morrison said. “If you want to score in bunches, you’ve got to forget the last shot. It’s so cliché, but it’s hard for guys to do it.”

Norvell, who redshirted last year after a preseason knee injury, averages 12.7 points a game, third among five scorers in double figures, shooting .466 overall, .368 from the three-point arc and .821 on free throws. As a freshman in 2003-04, Morrison was GU’s fourth-leading scorer at 11.4 -- behind Ronny Turiaf, Blake Stepp and Cory Violette -- shooting .531, .304 and .726 in those metrics.

My memory isn’t failsafe, but I don’t recall Morrison immediately announcing himself as a college scoring phenom in the making (though he had certainly been prolific at Mead High). It was in his sophomore year that he averaged 19 a game before exploding his junior year, which included bursts of 43 points against Michigan State and Washington.

Through many of the succeeding years, when Gonzaga burnished its national profile, it didn’t necessarily have a go-to scorer, rather relying on offensive balance. In fact, since Morrison left, five times GU’s scoring leader averaged less than 15 points.

Very soon, that may change. Morrison hopes to sit down with Norvell after the season and brainstorm ways the Chicago product can elevate his game.

“The next step is, he’s got to get a little more ‘shake’ to his game,” Morrison said. “He’ll be more of a focal point next year. He’s got to get to the line, he’s got to cut better. Every once in a while, you’ve got to back-cut a guy, cut with your hands and show the ref you’re getting fouled, and guys will back off you.”

Norvell jab-stepped a UNCG defender to launch his decisive shot last week, and that’s the foundation of another building block, Morrison says.

“Being a lefthander is such an advantage, because you’re not used to guarding it,” Morrison says. “But I’d like to see him become a better jab-stepper. One of his next steps is being able to jab with both legs. The toughest guys I’ve ever been around offensively were really good jab-steppers with both legs.”

Morrison has no qualms that Norvell would take the pointers and run with them.

“I’ve been so impressed with his development throughout the whole season,” Morrison says. “It’s fun to see a kid go from being a little down on himself, or just not in the role he wanted to be, and when he gets the opportunity, make the most of it.

“He’s a good kid, fun to be around.”

In Boise, the kid’s teammates no doubt agreed.
#theslipperstillfits #unitedwezag #wcchoops #zagsmbb #zagup

People Who Wowed This Post

The show-stoppingest of all Zag stats

thread
If you knew only some of the story of the Gonzaga-North Carolina Greensboro game Thursday, you’d be absolutely convinced the Zags would right about now be boarding a charter flight from Boise to Spokane and pondering a first-round exit from the NCAA tournament.

Against UNC-C, the Zags:

-- Made five threes on 23 attempts.

-- Shot 42.4 percent overall.

-- Made 13 of 25 free throws.

-- Were outrebounded, 44-39.

Here’s how long it’s been since any of those things happened: Not since the opener of the WCC tournament against Loyola Marymount has GU shot more poorly from the foul line. Not since Feb. 8 against Pacific have the Zags shot more poorly from the field. Not since the first Saint Mary’s game Jan. 18 has Gonzaga been outrebounded.

And I don’t know how long it’s been since GU was as abysmal from three-point range. I went back through every game this season, and concluded it goes back more than a year.

But guess what? Ultimately, none of that mattered, because Gonzaga survived, 68-64, and therein lies a continuing story.

In Gonzaga’s golden 20-year run of consecutive NCAA-tournament appearances, the Zags are now 17-3 in first-round games, which in itself is a stunning percentage (85 percent). But what really drives the point home is GU’s average seed in those 20 tournaments:

Amazingly, it’s 6.45, an emphatic counterpart to an old narrative of Gonzaga as tournament underachiever.

You just don’t go 17-3 for 20 years as a six seed, actually a little poorer, in this tournament. If you’re Duke or North Carolina or Kansas and you’re getting a one, two or three seed every year, it’s manageable, but not as a six.

In the 20 years, Gonzaga has been a one or two seed a total of four times. But it’s been a double-digit seed six times.

And -- plug for research in “Glory Hounds” here -- a 10th straight victory in the opening round of the tournament pushes Gonzaga to a tie for No. 7 all-time in that metric, with Duke (which has done it twice) and Stanford.

The 10 straight is the second-longest ongoing streak to that of 12 by Kansas, which bumped its string with a first-round win over Penn.
#theslipperstillfits #unitedwezag #wcchoops #zagsmbb #zagup

People Who Wowed This Post

Lotta teams have a bone to pick in the Zag regional

thread
Call it the Retribution Regional. At least, that’s the potential for -- and to -- Gonzaga, as it begins its stab at March Madness, 2018.

The Zags drew a No. 4 seed and face 13th-seeded North Carolina-Greensboro in the West Region first round Thursday. If they advance, and fifth-seeded Ohio State does as well against South Dakota State, Gonzaga and the Buckeyes would meet in a second-game Saturday, and that would be a rematch of their first-round PK80 tournament game Thanksgiving night, won by GU, 86-59. ESPN analyst Dan Dakich: “If Gonzaga beats Ohio State, I think Gonzaga goes to the Final Four.”

If I were the Zags, I’d pretty much hate a game with the Ohio State under those circumstances, but the selection rules don’t protect against second-round rematches. Seems to me the psychological edge would be with the Buckeyes, although (a) the game would be in Boise, vastly favorable to Gonzaga, and (b) it’s not like Ohio State would be especially appealing to the non-Zags in attendance. Ohio State, enrollment 66,000, football colossus, would be a difficult embrace as cuddly underdog.

Of course, there’s also the potential for Gonzaga to meet No. 2 seed North Carolina -- which denied the Zags a national title last April -- and the Zags could eventually face, for the right to go to the Final Four, Xavier, precisely the two who met for the same Holy Grail last March when GU advanced convincingly.

More random thoughts on the bracket and the Zags:

-- Let me be the 73rd millionth person to say I hated TBS’ revised Selection Sunday format. Consider: We went from an elongated format in which CBS revealed a quarter of the bracket, then kept everybody on edge while it had to discuss that quartile. What it was doing was withholding the news. So now we’re shuffling out the participant field -- in a very anticlimactic, yawning fashion. What would be wrong with striking a balance -- reveal each quartile briskly (get the news out of the way) and then go back and analyze it in depth?

-- Oklahoma’s inclusion drew the heaviest derision, based on its sagging finish. Which surely dulls the shine on the Sooners, but the selection rules explicitly say the finish means nothing (the last 10 used to be a factor). For what it’s worth, Oklahoma went 6-9 against other teams in the field and jilted Oklahoma State went a comparable 8-11.

-- Stop with the conspiracy theories, that the system is rigged, yadda, yadda, yadda. There’s too much money at stake and too much integrity on the committee -- not always perspicacity, but integrity -- to put that enterprise at risk.

-- Zags coach Mark Few just extended his NCAA record to 19 consecutive appearances in the tournament to start a head-coaching career.

-- The night of Feb. 10 in Moraga, Calif., Gonzaga stole something from Saint Mary’s, and the Gaels never got it back.

-- You’d think that repeated brushes with the bubble would drive the point home to SMC coach Randy Bennett, but it doesn’t. It has to upgrade the schedule, even if it means going on the road with no return game.

-- Texas Southern started 0-13 and didn’t win a game until New Year’s Day. And it’s in the NCAA tournament. What a country.

-- TSU’s win in the Southwestern Conference tournament means Gonzaga beat four teams in its non-league schedule -- TSU, Ohio State, Texas and Creighton -- that made the NCAAs. As noted previously in this space, the average for GU in its 20-year golden run is 2.47 such wins.

-- Over and over, we hear pleas for more reliance on the eyeball test as an undervalued tool for the committee, but I’ve never bought in. For one, anybody knowledgeable will tell you matchups are critical, and you might be seeing a team against an opponent that’s a bad matchup. Or you might be catching a team on a night when it simply mails it in. Seems to me, it’s dangerous to have a subjective element that can’t be backed with facts.

-- On that mail-it-in subject: I saw Washington beat Kansas early in December, and haven’t been able to shake the recollection that the Jayhawks looked like the most disinterested outfit imaginable. I know they’re a No. 1 seed that’s had a very nice season: Go ahead and pick them.

-- One coach who has something to prove: Purdue’s Matt Painter. Three years ago, the Boilermakers lost a seven-point lead and dropped their NCAA opener to Cincinnati. Two years ago, they led Arkansas-Little Rock by 14 with 4:06 left and lost in double overtime. Last year, they made the Sweet 16 and then got smoked by 32 by Kansas.

-- It turned out that those RPI-awful matchups with Howard (No. 339) and Incarnate Word (347) didn’t cost Gonzaga. But the Zags need to take more pains in scheduling those guarantee games, so they’re lining up more 200-range opponents rather than the game’s derelicts.

-- The West Coast Conference brass has to be sporting long faces these days. Not only does the exclusion of Saint Mary’s cost the WCC more than $1.5 million over six years (plus that amount each time the Gaels might have won a game), one of the league’s up-and-coming programs, San Diego, just offed its promising coach, Lamont Smith, after an alleged domestic-violence incident.

-- Last time Gonzaga was a No. 4 seed? It was 2009, when the Zags beat Akron and Western Kentucky to reach the Sweet 16. And in 20 years of basketball prominence, Gonzaga still has never been a 5 seed.
#theslipperstillfits #unitedwezag #wcchoops #zagsmbb #zagup

People Who Wowed This Post

Which Zag streak does it for you?

thread

So the train rolls on. Gonzaga blisters Brigham Young, after walloping San Francisco, after muddling past Loyola Marymount, and the Zags await Selection Sunday with the luxury of being able to exhale for a few days. (Come to think of it, when was the last time Gonzaga had to sweat that day, other than the particulars of where and whom?)

We come at you then, with a question: Which streak is most impressive by Gonzaga?

-- No. 1: the run of 20 NCAA-tournament appearances in a row.

-- No. 2: the streak of nine consecutive victories in opening-round games.

-- No. 3: the darkhorse, the Zags’ string of 21 straight appearances in the West Coast Conference tournament final.

Some background on each before I muddy the debate with my choice:

With that 20th straight appearance in the NCAA tournament, the Zags will rise Sunday to undisputed sixth on the all-time list of such streaks. Inclusive of Sunday, it will look like this: Kansas 29, North Carolina 27, Arizona 25, Duke 23, Michigan State 21 and Gonzaga 20. The streaks by North Carolina (1975-2001) and Arizona (1985-2009) are not ongoing, so GU is No. 4 on the current list, and its co-holder for lo these many years, Wisconsin, will see its streak end.

When I researched “Glory Hounds” a couple of years ago, I computed that GU had forged a tie for No. 10 on the all-time list of consecutive years having won at least a game in the tournament. And when the Zags dispatched South Dakota State last year in the first round on the way to the Final Four, their streak of nine straight years of NCAA wins gave them sole possession of No. 10 on the list. (North Carolina, with 18 from 1981-98, is the king.)

But, of such ongoing streaks, only Kansas, at 11, has a better one than Gonzaga’s nine. A victory this year in the tournament would move GU to a tie for No. 7 all-time with Duke (which has done 10 twice) and Stanford (of all teams, from 1995-2004).

Then there’s the streak of appearances in the WCC final, which has reached 21. A couple of notes on that: The last time the Zags didn’t play in the conference final was 1997, when Saint Mary’s beat USF for the title. The tournament MVP? Seven-foot-three behemoth Brad Millard of Seattle. Coach of that Gaels team? Why, Ernie Kent. (For the record, the Zags, fifth-seeded, bowed to San Diego in the first round.)

Which is most impressive? I’d give a slight lean to the second one -- consecutive years winning games in the Big Dance.

First, let me be clear: Getting to the tournament 20 straight years is a sensational number. If you had proposed to a buddy back in 1999 or 2000 that this would be possible, he would have had you committed.

And it’s obvious that without the sustenance of streak No. 1, there is no streak No. 2. But, to defend my choice against No. 1, it’s true that in a handful of cases, the Zags wouldn’t have made the NCAA tournament without a conference-tournament championship, and that wouldn’t be possible if the league weren’t forgiving.

To my contention: In the recent past, the Zags’ national profile has blossomed, and it’s been getting high seeds -- No. 1 in 2013, No. 2 in 2015, No. 1 again in 2017 and probably a 4 seed this year. So it’s easy to forget that among these nine straight opening conquests in the tournament were some coin-flip type games -- and especially against teams with a daunting portfolio.

-- In 2010, Gonzaga faced Florida State, which had the nation’s No. 1 field-goal percentage defense.

-- In 2011, the Zags drew St. John’s, 21-11 and 12-6 in the Big East (albeit without injured swingman D.J. Kennedy).

-- In 2012, GU got paired with West Virginia, whose forward, Kevin Jones, was averaging a double-double, and the game was 75 miles from the WVU campus in Pittsburgh.

-- In 2014, Oklahoma State was the Zag challenge, a Marcus Smart-led team that had beaten Kansas and taken the Jayhawks to overtime in a Big 12 that was the rage of the nation.

-- In 2016, Gonzaga faced Seton Hall, which was 25-8, 12-6 in the Big East and had just won the Big East tournament.

The FSU and Oklahoma State games paired 8-9 seeds. The Zags were an 11 seed against St. John’s and Seton Hall. They were a 7 against West Virginia’s 10.

The point is, those were tossup games -- at best -- for Gonzaga, and it won each one. NCAA-tournament victories are like gold, and nobody knows it like Zag fans, who have in the past absorbed all sorts of shrapnel from the program’s naysayers.

Indeed, the WCC-finals streak is mind-bending, even as, from 2003-2013, the league afforded double byes, which pushed the top two teams into the semifinals. So about half the time in those 21 tournaments, it’s been necessary to win two games to get to the final, never having an off-night, never suffering the killer upset.

You could argue that the streak of NCAA-tournament appearances is about body of work, rather than single games. Fair point. At the same time, the win-or-else nature of the NCAA victories tilts me to that streak.

You?
#theslipperstillfits #unitedwezag #wcchoops #zagsmbb #zagup

People Who Wowed This Post

  • If you are a bloguru member, please login.
    Login
  • If you are not a bloguru member, you may request a free account here:
    Request Account
Happy
Sad
Surprise