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Don't look now, but Arizona's peering up at Gonzaga

thread

On the eve of an NCAA round-of-32 matchup in San Diego in 2014, Gonzaga coach Mark Few took the liberty of calling his program and Arizona “kind of the two marquee teams out West, yo-yoing back and forth the last 10 years.”

If anything, on that afternoon, his words seemed to take some chutzpah. The Zags, after all, were in a semi-rut -- as their ruts go -- not having cracked the Sweet 16 in five years. Meanwhile, Arizona, in its fifth season under Sean Miller, had already crashed the Elite Eight and Sweet 16.

Programs like San Diego State and even Washington might have disputed Few’s calculus, which seemed even more questionable when Arizona, top-seeded, throttled the Zags 84-61, in a game that didn’t even feel that close.

Designations such as best in the West, though, tend to have a short shelf-life. Today, with the prospect that the Zags and Arizona could meet in the Maui Invitational in November, there’s little doubt that Gonzaga has surpassed the Wildcats, at least until Arizona sheds the turmoil lately surrounding the program.

There’s no question Arizona has more cachet over the broad sweep of history. It has a national title in 1997, and in the past 30 years, three other Final Fours. Gonzaga broke through to its first Final Four in 2017.

What’s happened to Arizona since that 2014 night against the Zags is almost description-defying. In 2014 and 2015, the Wildcats lost in skin-crawling fashion to very good Wisconsin teams led by Frank Kaminski, each game denying Arizona the Final Four.

In ’17, Arizona was on the precipice of another meeting with Gonzaga to earn the school’s first Final Four under Miller (and its first since 2001). But it coughed up an eight-point lead in the last three minutes and lost to Xavier -- of all programs, the one where Miller earned his coaching chops.

Then came 2017-18, and if you can recall a more bizarre, star-crossed, confounding season in college basketball than Arizona’s, raise your hand. It began with three losses in the Battle 4 Atlantis, with swingman Rawle Alkins on the bench with a broken foot.

Before then, thunder struck with Arizona’s implication in an FBI investigation. Late in a season in which the Wildcats rebounded to blow through the Pac-12, an ESPN report alleged that Miller had been recorded on an FBI wiretap having discussed paying primo prospect DeAndre Ayton $100,000 to come to Arizona.

Ex-Washington coach Lorenzo Romar stepped in for Miller at Oregon, and the world assumed that Miller had coached his last game at Arizona. Well, surprise. He cast a defiant demeanor at a press conference and returned to the bench, while a couple of touted, committed recruits said thanks, but no thanks.

All that doesn’t even address a long-running, on-off story of guard Allonzo Trier’s suspension for PED use.

Ayton stayed on the floor. Miller, after his brief interregnum, returned. And when the Wildcats roared through the Pac-12 tournament field, there was more than a little belief that they were ready for a deep run in the NCAA.

Right up until they got blistered by 13th-seeded Buffalo, 89-68. I said then that of all the upsets by low seeds in the history of the tournament, it was the most resounding and decisive. (That held up at least one night, until Maryland-Baltimore County upended No. 1 seed Virginia.)

Meanwhile, the engine purrs smoothly at Gonzaga, which has been to four straight Sweet 16s, and where controversy is a player deciding whether to turn pro or stay.

“The mix just wasn’t right,” said longtime Arizona Daily Star columnist Greg Hansen of the Wildcats. “They had all these talented bodies. The responsibilities overlapped. They weren’t hard workers, they weren’t tough. When Buffalo just crushed ‘em, it was embarrassing. Ayton would disappear at times. It just looked like he (Miller) should have got so much more out of them.”

I sought out Hansen, who knows as much about Arizona hoops -- and the lay of the land in the Pac-12 -- as anybody, both to take the temperature of the Wildcats and to get a read on personnel in advance of what could be a Maui matchup with Gonzaga. The Zags open with Illinois, and Arizona meets Iowa State in openers.

The Wildcats will be virtually starting anew, with their top five scorers having departed. The turnover is massive, but it could be that success will depend on the arc of heretofore bit players like Brandon Randolph (6-6) and Emmanuel Akot (6-7). They combined to average 5.5 points in 2017-18.

“Randolph was really highly rated, but he played like he was scared last year,” said Hansen. “The same with Akot. He looked great in person but played like a deer stuck in traffic. They’ve got to have him and Randolph (develop) or they’re not going to be any good.”

Chances are, if you’ve heard of any of the Wildcats, it’s because one of them is Brandon Williams, the guard Gonzaga tried desperately to land in the spring before he re-upped on a commitment to Arizona.

Hansen figures a reasonable guess at a starting lineup would be Williams; grad transfer guard Justin Coleman, who averaged 13.5 points at Samford after spending two years at Alabama; 6-9, 225-pound Pitt transfer Ryan Luther, who averaged 12.7 and 10.1 in a season truncated by a foot injury; Chase Jeter, the 6-10 transfer from Duke -- another player the Zags recruited on the bounce -- and probably Akot.

Either of necessity or design, there’s talk of Miller implementing a system of slashing wings and guard-heavy basketball, as opposed to the recent reliance on big men. If that takes place, it would contrast with Gonzaga’s expected strength up front.

The great unknown, at Arizona and elsewhere, is the status of the much-discussed investigation of college hoops by the FBI. Has there been a pullback of the probe, after widespread criticism that there was overreach, or is the FBI working methodically and quietly, with more revelations to come?

Yahoo Sports.com, which has been out front with the FBI-probe story, suggested strongly Monday that it’s more the latter than the former, writing, “Many coaches and administrators have equated the lack of headline news with a potential lack of action. That notion has been greeted with a chuckle for those experienced with federal cases.”

Arizona athletic director Dave Heeke, a former lieutenant to ex-Oregon and Washington State AD Bill Moos, “talked about it last week for the first time,” Hansen says. “He didn’t brush it off, but he sounded like, ‘No big deal.’ If he’s worried, he gave a different impression.”

Who knows? Maybe that’s the residue of Arizona’s strangest season, where you’re best to take it one day at a time.
#pac12hoops #theslipperstillfits #unitedwezag #wcchoops #zagsmbb #zagup

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Don't look now, but Arizona's peering up at Gonzaga

thread

On the eve of an NCAA round-of-32 matchup in San Diego in 2014, Gonzaga coach Mark Few took the liberty of calling his program and Arizona “kind of the two marquee teams out West, yo-yoing back and forth the last 10 years.”

If anything, on that afternoon, his words seemed to take some chutzpah. The Zags, after all, were in a semi-rut -- as their ruts go -- not having cracked the Sweet 16 in five years. Meanwhile, Arizona, in its fifth season under Sean Miller, had already crashed the Elite Eight and Sweet 16.

Programs like San Diego State and even Washington might have disputed Few’s calculus, which seemed even more questionable when Arizona, top-seeded, throttled the Zags 84-61, in a game that didn’t even feel that close.

Designations such as best in the West, though, tend to have a short shelf-life. Today, with the prospect that the Zags and Arizona could meet in the Maui Invitational in November, there’s little doubt that Gonzaga has surpassed the Wildcats, at least until Arizona sheds the turmoil lately surrounding the program.

There’s no question Arizona has more cachet over the broad sweep of history. It has a national title in 1997, and in the past 30 years, three other Final Fours. Gonzaga broke through to its first Final Four in 2017.

What’s happened to Arizona since that 2014 night against the Zags is almost description-defying. In 2014 and 2015, the Wildcats lost in skin-crawling fashion to very good Wisconsin teams led by Frank Kaminski, each game denying Arizona the Final Four.

In ’17, Arizona was on the precipice of another meeting with Gonzaga to earn the school’s first Final Four under Miller (and its first since 2001). But it coughed up an eight-point lead in the last three minutes and lost to Xavier -- of all programs, the one where Miller earned his coaching chops.

Then came 2017-18, and if you can recall a more bizarre, star-crossed, confounding season in college basketball than Arizona’s, raise your hand. It began with three losses in the Battle 4 Atlantis, with swingman Rawle Alkins on the bench with a broken foot.

Before then, thunder struck with Arizona’s implication in an FBI investigation. Late in a season in which the Wildcats rebounded to blow through the Pac-12, an ESPN report alleged that Miller had been recorded on an FBI wiretap having discussed paying primo prospect DeAndre Ayton $100,000 to come to Arizona.

Ex-Washington coach Lorenzo Romar stepped in for Miller at Oregon, and the world assumed that Miller had coached his last game at Arizona. Well, surprise. He cast a defiant demeanor at a press conference and returned to the bench, while a couple of touted, committed recruits said thanks, but no thanks.

All that doesn’t even address a long-running, on-off story of guard Allonzo Trier’s suspension for PED use.

Ayton stayed on the floor. Miller, after his brief interregnum, returned. And when the Wildcats roared through the Pac-12 tournament field, there was more than a little belief that they were ready for a deep run in the NCAA.

Right up until they got blistered by 13th-seeded Buffalo, 89-68. I said then that of all the upsets by low seeds in the history of the tournament, it was the most resounding and decisive. (That held up at least one night, until Maryland-Baltimore County upended No. 1 seed Virginia.)

Meanwhile, the engine purrs smoothly at Gonzaga, which has been to four straight Sweet 16s, and where controversy is a player deciding whether to turn pro or stay.

“The mix just wasn’t right,” said longtime Arizona Daily Star columnist Greg Hansen of the Wildcats. “They had all these talented bodies. The responsibilities overlapped. They weren’t hard workers, they weren’t tough. When Buffalo just crushed ‘em, it was embarrassing. Ayton would disappear at times. It just looked like he (Miller) should have got so much more out of them.”

I sought out Hansen, who knows as much about Arizona hoops -- and the lay of the land in the Pac-12 -- as anybody, both to take the temperature of the Wildcats and to get a read on personnel in advance of what could be a Maui matchup with Gonzaga. The Zags open with Illinois, and Arizona meets Iowa State in openers.

The Wildcats will be virtually starting anew, with their top five scorers having departed. The turnover is massive, but it could be that success will depend on the arc of heretofore bit players like Brandon Randolph (6-6) and Emmanuel Akot (6-7). They combined to average 5.5 points in 2017-18.

“Randolph was really highly rated, but he played like he was scared last year,” said Hansen. “The same with Akot. He looked great in person but played like a deer stuck in traffic. They’ve got to have him and Randolph (develop) or they’re not going to be any good.”

Chances are, if you’ve heard of any of the Wildcats, it’s because one of them is Brandon Williams, the guard Gonzaga tried desperately to land in the spring before he re-upped on a commitment to Arizona.

Hansen figures a reasonable guess at a starting lineup would be Williams; grad transfer guard Justin Coleman, who averaged 13.5 points at Samford after spending two years at Alabama; 6-9, 225-pound Pitt transfer Ryan Luther, who averaged 12.7 and 10.1 in a season truncated by a foot injury; Chase Jeter, the 6-10 transfer from Duke -- another player the Zags recruited on the bounce -- and probably Akot.

Either of necessity or design, there’s talk of Miller implementing a system of slashing wings and guard-heavy basketball, as opposed to the recent reliance on big men. If that takes place, it would contrast with Gonzaga’s expected strength up front.

The great unknown, at Arizona and elsewhere, is the status of the much-discussed investigation of college hoops by the FBI. Has there been a pullback of the probe, after widespread criticism that there was overreach, or is the FBI working methodically and quietly, with more revelations to come?

Yahoo Sports.com, which has been out front with the FBI-probe story, suggested strongly Monday that it’s more the latter than the former, writing, “Many coaches and administrators have equated the lack of headline news with a potential lack of action. That notion has been greeted with a chuckle for those experienced with federal cases.”

Arizona athletic director Dave Heeke, a former lieutenant to ex-Oregon and Washington State AD Bill Moos, “talked about it last week for the first time,” Hansen says. “He didn’t brush it off, but he sounded like, ‘No big deal.’ If he’s worried, he gave a different impression.”

Who knows? Maybe that’s the residue of Arizona’s strangest season, where you’re best to take it one day at a time.
#pac12hoops #theslipperstillfits #unitedwezag #wcchoops #zagsmbb #zagup

People Who Wowed This Post

Don't look now, but Arizona's peering up at Gonzaga

thread

On the eve of an NCAA round-of-32 matchup in San Diego in 2014, Gonzaga coach Mark Few took the liberty of calling his program and Arizona “kind of the two marquee teams out West, yo-yoing back and forth the last 10 years.”

If anything, on that afternoon, his words seemed to take some chutzpah. The Zags, after all, were in a semi-rut -- as their ruts go -- not having cracked the Sweet 16 in five years. Meanwhile, Arizona, in its fifth season under Sean Miller, had already crashed the Elite Eight and Sweet 16.

Programs like San Diego State and even Washington might have disputed Few’s calculus, which seemed even more questionable when Arizona, top-seeded, throttled the Zags 84-61, in a game that didn’t even feel that close.

Designations such as best in the West, though, tend to have a short shelf-life. Today, with the prospect that the Zags and Arizona could meet in the Maui Invitational in November, there’s little doubt that Gonzaga has surpassed the Wildcats, at least until Arizona sheds the turmoil lately surrounding the program.

There’s no question Arizona has more cachet over the broad sweep of history. It has a national title in 1997, and in the past 30 years, three other Final Fours. Gonzaga broke through to its first Final Four in 2017.

What’s happened to Arizona since that 2014 night against the Zags is almost description-defying. In 2014 and 2015, the Wildcats lost in skin-crawling fashion to very good Wisconsin teams led by Frank Kaminski, each game denying Arizona the Final Four.

In ’17, Arizona was on the precipice of another meeting with Gonzaga to earn the school’s first Final Four under Miller (and its first since 2001). But it coughed up an eight-point lead in the last three minutes and lost to Xavier -- of all programs, the one where Miller earned his coaching chops.

Then came 2017-18, and if you can recall a more bizarre, star-crossed, confounding season in college basketball than Arizona’s, raise your hand. It began with three losses in the Battle 4 Atlantis, with swingman Rawle Alkins on the bench with a broken foot.

Before then, thunder struck with Arizona’s implication in an FBI investigation. Late in a season in which the Wildcats rebounded to blow through the Pac-12, an ESPN report alleged that Miller had been recorded on an FBI wiretap having discussed paying primo prospect DeAndre Ayton $100,000 to come to Arizona.

Ex-Washington coach Lorenzo Romar stepped in for Miller at Oregon, and the world assumed that Miller had coached his last game at Arizona. Well, surprise. He cast a defiant demeanor at a press conference and returned to the bench, while a couple of touted, committed recruits said thanks, but no thanks.

All that doesn’t even address a long-running, on-off story of guard Allonzo Trier’s suspension for PED use.

Ayton stayed on the floor. Miller, after his brief interregnum, returned. And when the Wildcats roared through the Pac-12 tournament field, there was more than a little belief that they were ready for a deep run in the NCAA.

Right up until they got blistered by 13th-seeded Buffalo, 89-68. I said then that of all the upsets by low seeds in the history of the tournament, it was the most resounding and decisive. (That held up at least one night, until Maryland-Baltimore County upended No. 1 seed Virginia.)

Meanwhile, the engine purrs smoothly at Gonzaga, which has been to four straight Sweet 16s, and where controversy is a player deciding whether to turn pro or stay.

“The mix just wasn’t right,” said longtime Arizona Daily Star columnist Greg Hansen of the Wildcats. “They had all these talented bodies. The responsibilities overlapped. They weren’t hard workers, they weren’t tough. When Buffalo just crushed ‘em, it was embarrassing. Ayton would disappear at times. It just looked like he (Miller) should have got so much more out of them.”

I sought out Hansen, who knows as much about Arizona hoops -- and the lay of the land in the Pac-12 -- as anybody, both to take the temperature of the Wildcats and to get a read on personnel in advance of what could be a Maui matchup with Gonzaga. The Zags open with Illinois, and Arizona meets Iowa State in openers.

The Wildcats will be virtually starting anew, with their top five scorers having departed. The turnover is massive, but it could be that success will depend on the arc of heretofore bit players like Brandon Randolph (6-6) and Emmanuel Akot (6-7). They combined to average 5.5 points in 2017-18.

“Randolph was really highly rated, but he played like he was scared last year,” said Hansen. “The same with Akot. He looked great in person but played like a deer stuck in traffic. They’ve got to have him and Randolph (develop) or they’re not going to be any good.”

Chances are, if you’ve heard of any of the Wildcats, it’s because one of them is Brandon Williams, the guard Gonzaga tried desperately to land in the spring before he re-upped on a commitment to Arizona.

Hansen figures a reasonable guess at a starting lineup would be Williams; grad transfer guard Justin Coleman, who averaged 13.5 points at Samford after spending two years at Alabama; 6-9, 225-pound Pitt transfer Ryan Luther, who averaged 12.7 and 10.1 in a season truncated by a foot injury; Chase Jeter, the 6-10 transfer from Duke -- another player the Zags recruited on the bounce -- and probably Akot.

Either of necessity or design, there’s talk of Miller implementing a system of slashing wings and guard-heavy basketball, as opposed to the recent reliance on big men. If that takes place, it would contrast with Gonzaga’s expected strength up front.

The great unknown, at Arizona and elsewhere, is the status of the much-discussed investigation of college hoops by the FBI. Has there been a pullback of the probe, after widespread criticism that there was overreach, or is the FBI working methodically and quietly, with more revelations to come?

Yahoo Sports.com, which has been out front with the FBI-probe story, suggested strongly Monday that it’s more the latter than the former, writing, “Many coaches and administrators have equated the lack of headline news with a potential lack of action. That notion has been greeted with a chuckle for those experienced with federal cases.”

Arizona athletic director Dave Heeke, a former lieutenant to ex-Oregon and Washington State AD Bill Moos, “talked about it last week for the first time,” Hansen says. “He didn’t brush it off, but he sounded like, ‘No big deal.’ If he’s worried, he gave a different impression.”

Who knows? Maybe that’s the residue of Arizona’s strangest season, where you’re best to take it one day at a time.
#pac12hoops #theslipperstillfits #unitedwezag #wcchoops #zagsmbb #zagup

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Most improbable: Zags, Beavers, Ducks?

thread

Oregon State’s inspiring -- no, after a foul pop that couldn’t find a glove, make it mind-frying -- march to a national baseball championship got me to thinking: Of the athletic programs I was around in 45 years of sweating deadlines and jousting with editors at three Northwest newspapers, which are the most unlikely, improbable, you-gotta-be-kidding accomplishments by those teams?

It’s said that nothing about sports resonates quite like a season, or a succession of them, that comes out of the blue, and I’d buy that. If the ’95 Mariners, for instance, had surged to the AL West lead in April and held it most of the season . . . sure, their fans would have been appreciative, but it wouldn’t have attained nearly the cachet as it unspooled, with Ken Griffey Jr. sitting out a long stretch with a broken hand, eventually the rundown of the Angels with a whole cast of varying leading lights, and essentially the salvage of baseball in Seattle.

I came up with three sagas that deserve scrutiny. (Maybe there are more, but they’re obfuscated by too many IPAs in dimly lit dives.) My candidates are: Oregon State baseball, Gonzaga basketball and Oregon football.

If you want to take issue with my conclusions, feel free. This is a highly subjective exercise, and indeed, one that’s impossible to quantify, a side-by-side of apples and oranges. (But hey, that’s what we do.) Keep in mind, this isn’t a measurement of which program, which entity, has the greatest name recognition nationally, even internationally -- I’m pretty sure that’s Gonzaga -- but whose story is flat-out the most unbelievable.

1. Oregon State baseball. Here’s some backing for my argument, a 2005 piece I did while at the Seattle Times putting into perspective an achievement by OSU.

https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/osu-squad-ends-world-series-drought/

And that was when the Beavers were about to make their first trip to the College World Series since 1952. The story details how the program was very nearly axed in the 1970s, accounts I remember writing.

Starting with that ’05 appearance, OSU has been to the CWS six times, winning three. Even that, as a stand-alone percentage, is impressive.

LSU, amazingly, won six of these things from 1991 to 2009, but today, you’re safe in saying there’s no more dominant baseball program in the country than Oregon State. To me, given the historical perspective, that’s beyond comprehension.

Little-known fact, unless you’re a Beaver baseball savant: This didn’t come easily for Pat Casey, the University of Portland grad who has engineered the rise of the program. The first 10 years he was at OSU (1995-04), the Beavers were 16 games under .500 in conference play.

2. Gonzaga basketball.

So let the debate begin. The Zags have been to 20 straight NCAA tournaments after having spent much of the ‘80s and ‘90s as a mid-level WCC program. Since 1999, they’ve been to an NCAA championship game, two Elite Eights and seven Sweet 16s. In other words, in half those tournament appearances, they’ve made it to the Sweet 16 or better. That’s breathtaking.

If you don’t think trying to compare Beaver baseball to Zag basketball is like attempting to throw a four-seamer coated with Pennzoil, think about this: You’d figure the Zags’ staccato consistency ever since that 1999 Elite Eight run is a plus for this discussion, right? Well, you could also argue that OSU’s decade-long travails in Casey’s early years there only serve to accentuate how unlikely that ascent has been.

How much does weather play a part? Never mind that basketball is played indoors; a kid choosing between Gonzaga and Arizona might like the idea of wearing cargo shorts around campus in January in Tucson. But weather has a much more pronounced impact on baseball, and one of Casey’s crowning accomplishments is in proving (again and again) that you can win in a drippy, cool climate.

What about proximity to recruits? The Zags seem more disadvantaged here, as the nearest significant talent pool is 300 miles away in the Seattle area (and, as I’ve documented before, even that has been a tough nut to crack for Gonzaga). Casey has flourished with a lot of Northwest kids, and some major pieces from California, whereas Gonzaga has had to go international to remain a major force.

How about roster instability, per the rules of each sport? Gonzaga has to withstand NBA early entries, while OSU benefits from a certain three years in baseball if an athlete enrolls. But baseball coaches also have the challenge of high school signees blowing up as seniors and opting for pro baseball. As well -- and this is purely my guess -- the college athlete who’s a moderately successful junior and is drafted by baseball is probably more likely to sign a pro contract than the basketball player of the same ability level.

Another imponderable: How competitive is the landscape around each sport? College basketball has more contenders for national recognition; witness Loyola of Chicago and countless others in recent years. So Gonzaga has to weather a serious storm in the 2018 NCAA tournament against UNC-Greensboro, whereas the Beavers have a relatively comfortable time with home games through the super regional.

And what about that playoff format? Baseball allows for some breathing room. Super regionals are best two of three, as are the College World Series finals, climaxing a double-elimination event. You hit a rough patch in an NCAA-tournament first-round game in March and you’re liable to be gonzo.

My bottom line: OSU baseball by a nose.

3. Oregon football.

You might raise eyebrows at this, but not if you were around in the 1970s, when Autzen Stadium was a dreary mausoleum sometimes inhabited by 15,000 people with nothing better to do. The Ducks were awful, and the facilities, other than the stadium itself, were sub-par. Coaches would stage position meetings in the runways and draw Xs and Os not on a whiteboard, but on the concrete walls of the tunnel -- latter-day cavemen.

So desperate was the overall picture that there was more than scattered opinion on the West Coast that Oregon, Oregon State and Washington State ought to be jettisoned from the Pac-8 Conference.

There was always extensive, chicken-and-egg debate over how much the wet weather impacted ticket sales at Oregon, and thus revenue, and thus resources. So much that there was an idea advanced that local lumber barons might finance a dome on Autzen Stadium. I’m not making this up.

Well, they never domed Autzen. But Oregon did have a succession of good football coaches, from Rich Brooks to Mike Bellotti to Chip Kelly. It had continuity on its staff, and it capitalized on two New Year’s Day bowl appearances in the mid-‘90s.

And that was before Phil Knight got involved. There’s no minimizing Knight’s impact, but it came after things had gotten rolling, and he took it to a new level. But he didn’t ignite it.

Over time, a lot of time, Oregon got good. And we haven’t seen the likes of that 0-0 tie in 1983 with Oregon State since (when it was raining hard, with no dome over Autzen).

In all three instances, the bad old days are over. Or at least, distant memories.
#BeaverNation #OregonState #theslipperstillfits #unitedwezag #wcchoops #zagsmbb #zagup

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Zags look loaded, as is the non-league schedule

thread
With news of Gonzaga’s 2018-19 basketball schedule dribbling in, I got to wondering how it might stack up against some of the Zags’ previous schedules.

As you might guess, it’s a highly subjective exercise in which it’s difficult to produce a wrong answer.

To date, we know Gonzaga is due to host Texas A&M and Washington, go on the road to Creighton and North Carolina and meet Tennessee in Phoenix at the Jerry Colangelo Classic. (That’s such a hot ticket, Bryan Colangelo, Jerry’s son, is already tweeting about it.) And the Zags go to the Maui Invitational, which is stacked with likely preseason top-10 squads Auburn and Duke.

Scheduling is tricky business, and so is judging a strength of schedule in the preseason. Scheduling intent doesn’t always match up with scheduling reality. The top-25 team you thought you were getting can morph into a top-five outfit before it’s over, or it can flop and serve to sabotage your metrics.

(Veteran Zag followers might remember 2001-02, which I think of as the Season of Lost Innocence. Fresno State and St. Joseph’s were supposed to be of Final Four ilk, but they turned out to be disappointments, which led to Gonzaga drawing a No. 6 seed in the NCAA tournament; which led to playing Wyoming at altitude in Albuquerque; which led to one of only three first-round losses in the 20-year streak of NCAA appearances.)

I decided to look at a simple -- and admittedly suspect -- metric: How many times the Zags have played Power Five conference teams over the last decade. That’s fraught with a lot of disclaimers; not all Power Five teams are created equal, for one. Second, unlike football, even a reference to “Power Five” is dubious, since surely the Big East can lay claim to being part of a Power Six, with Villanova, Xavier, Creighton, et. al. Nobody would suggest a visit to Creighton isn't a stern test.

And finally, we don’t know for sure that Gonzaga is done scheduling such teams for 2018-19 (although my guess is that it is).

Enough preamble. Right now, Gonzaga has four opponents from Power Five leagues, with the possibility that could rise to six or seven with yet-undetermined Maui opponents.

I was a little surprised to discover that twice in the last decade, Gonzaga has faced eight Power Five opponents in the regular season -- and in 2008, actually did that, plus Connecticut, Utah (which was still in the Mountain West) and Memphis. It also faced eight Power Fives in the regular season in 2012-13, when it made its first foray to a No. 1 ranking.

What does appear to be possible about the 2018-19 schedule is that it could be unprecedented at GU for high-end opponents. Tennessee and North Carolina are top-shelf, and the prospect is also there for one or two more likely top-10 opponents in Maui in Auburn and Duke. Combine all that with Washington -- being mentioned by some as a contender to win the Pac-12 -- and there’s a lot of heavy lifting.

All this discussion is an excuse to take a closer look at what awaits the Zags with their known opponents to date. Since not all dates are firmed up, we’ll do it alphabetically:

Creighton -- Blue Jays went to the round of 32 in March, but might be due for a step back after losing 2,000-point collegiate scorer Marcus Foster, plus Khyri Thomas, a 15.1-ppg scorer and Big East defender of the year who is a popular pick to be a first-round NBA draftee. I could see this being a crusade game for Creighton, which regularly puts 17,000 into the CenturyLink Center in Omaha and was No. 5 nationally in attendance. In fact, this from Tom Shatel, columnist for the Omaha World-Herald: “The Gonzaga game will be probably the second-biggest non-con home game besides Kentucky in the 2009 NIT” since Creighton moved into the arena in 2003.

North Carolina (Dec. 15) -- Tar Heels, blasted out of the NCAA tournament in the second round, 86-65, by Texas A&M, got a big boost when Luke Maye decided to pull back from an NBA dalliance, returning his 16.9 points and 10.1 rebounds. Guards Kenny Williams and Cameron Johnson are also back. Leading scorer Joel Berry II and top assist-maker Theo Pinson are gone, but two mega-recruits are incoming: 6-3 guard Coby White and 6-7 forward Nassir Little, who was MVP of the McDonald’s All-American game. Not only will White and Little have had a month to acclimate to college hoops, the timing will be challenging for GU, which will play Tennessee six days earlier, go through finals week and face a cross-country flight.

Tennessee (Dec. 9) -- Mark Few and Vols coach Rick Barnes have had a long friendship, a good thing for Gonzaga, which has won most of their meetings -- including the annual, closed preseason scrimmages they staged when Barnes was at Texas. When forward Admiral Schofield (13.9 ppg, 6.4 rpg) decided to pass on the NBA, it meant the Vols will return their top six scorers from a team that went 26-9 and finished No. 6 in adjusted defense in KenPom rankings. Grant Williams (15.2 ppg) was SEC player of the year, and the Vols were unlucky not to survive Loyola of Chicago in the NCAA round of 32, as Clayton Custer hit a late, unlikely rim-clanger that fell for the Ramblers.

Texas A&M (Nov. 15) -- If form holds, this would be Gonzaga’s only test of significance before Maui, and the Aggies’ roster should be thinned by the departure of its vaunted front line of Robert Williams, Tyler Davis and D.J Hogg. Return of guard Admon Gilder (12.3 ppg) means the backcourt is intact, with point guard T.J. Starks. Aggies recruited a couple of JC guards, and they get eligible 6-9, 240-pound transfer Josh Nebo, who spent two years at St. Francis of Pennsylvania. You should also know that, according to the A&M website, Nebo’s father is named Shady.

Washington -- Huskies are a bit of an anomaly. Their matchup zone defense in the first year of the Mike Hopkins regime got a lot of acclaim, yet they allowed 44.7 percent shooting. And the offense was a mere 140th by KenPom. They had a decidedly negative assist-turnover ratio, which could augur time for incoming freshman point guard Elijah Hardy. Washington has its top seven scorers back, including Jaylen Nowell (16 ppg) and big man Noah Dickerson, who turned back from a look at the NBA after a terrific season. Hopkins deserved major credit for his debut 21-13 season, but it’s also true that it looked a lot better against Lorenzo Romar’s 9-22 outfit that thoroughly underachieved the year before. Huskies have gotten rocked 11 of the past 12 by the Zags, and they might look first to their defense; Gonzaga has shot 50 percent or better in the last eight meetings.

Maui Invitational (Nov. 19-21) -- Also features Arizona, Auburn, Duke, Illinois, Iowa State, San Diego State and Xavier . . . Arizona’s bizarre season ended with Sean Miller still in place after the program was implicated in the FBI investigation, the year capped by a first-round, blowout loss to 13th-seeded Buffalo in the NCAAs . . . UA’s top five scorers are gone, and the nucleus probably will be Duke transfer Chase Jeter, point guard Brandon Williams and fellow freshmen Devonaire Doutrive (6-5) and 6-7 Belgian Omar Thielemans . . . Duke likewise loses its nucleus but nabbed the top-three-rated recruits nationally -- 6-6 Zion Williamson, 6-7 R.J. Barrett and 6-7 Cameron Reddish . . . Auburn just shrugged at the FBI probe and extended Bruce Pearl’s contract, and competitively, the Tigers got a boost with the return of Bryce Brown, Jared Harper and 6-11 Austin Wiley, all of whom had sniffed around at the draft, leading an Al.com columnist to write, “Be afraid, SEC. Be very afraid.” . . . San Diego State, upset winner over GU last December, has its 2-3-4 scorers back, topped by USF transfer guard Devon Watson. It also gets back, after a pro dalliance, 6-10 Jalen McDaniels of Federal Way . . . Brad Underwood will be in his second year at Illinois, where he had a 14-18 opener . . . Travis Steele takes over for Chris Mack as Xavier coach and has a team ranked No. 22 by Sporting News . . . Guard Lindell Wigginton (16.7 ppg) turned his back on the NBA to return to Iowa State, which went winless on the road in going 13-18 . . . with Auburn, Duke and Gonzaga prospectively the top three in Maui, the intrigue will be which club gets the side of the bracket without the other two -- and that’s probably Duke . . . Maui, a mere 10 days into the season, could be a better time to face a young Blue Devils team than later.
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Zags' neighbor to the south needs a soul-search

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I don’t get it. But there’s a lot I don’t get about Washington State basketball.

I don’t get why WSU finds itself owing Ernie Kent a ton of money. I don’t get what he’s done to earn it. I don’t get the utter lack of a road map at my alma mater to be competitive in basketball.

First, an explanation: This is predominantly a blog about Gonzaga basketball, but on occasion, we veer into matters of interest related to the Zags, especially their opponents or in-state neighbors.

Some of the Gonzaga faithful would prefer their team play WSU annually, hell or high water, deferring to a tradition that began more than a century ago. I’m not in that camp, but virtually everybody would at least relish a day when the Cougars are salty enough to revive the series.

Until then, forget it. All you need to know is this: Since the Cougars last won a game in their conference tournament (2009), Gonzaga has won 19 games in the NCAA tournament.

So I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, and what ought to happen.

In a year or two, WSU’s new athletic director, Patrick Chun, will stand in front of a news conference and extol the “vision” of his new coach for Cougar basketball. Lather, rinse, repeat.

What ought to take place at WSU is a complete examination of all things basketball, an unvarnished hard look at whether the Cougars can attain some level of consistent competitiveness, or whether they’re forever destined to be a laugh track in the Pac-12. Over the past 22 seasons, going back to 1996-97 under Kevin Eastman, WSU is 160 games under .500 in conference play.

WSU hoops reminds me of the business concept “loss leader” (now there’s a haunting appellation). You take a hit on some commodity, but it aids in the overall development of the enterprise. Where’s that salvation with WSU basketball, which never played in front of a home crowd of 5,000 last season? To be brutally honest about it, what’s the point, other than 11 other schools in the Pac-12 also have a program?

So put together a committee, or an advisory team, and pick some brains. Go talk to people like Tony Bennett and Kelvin Sampson, and some of those who played there. Brian Quinnett lives nearby. See what Klay Thompson thinks. Surely some of the wise heads of the Bennett regime, people like Robbie Cowgill or Derrick Low or Kyle Weaver, have ideas.

The point is, the Cougars have to do something different, whether that’s hiring an alum who bleeds crimson or somebody willing to die before allowing an uncontested layup. And no, firing up random threes and playing zero defense doesn’t count.

In some measure, it could be a facilities issue. Many schools now have a building dedicated to basketball, with a practice facility and auxiliary functions. Meanwhile, when Ken Bone exited the program after 2015, he lamented the decaying state of Beasley Coliseum (a place that’s too big, but that’s another story).

Of course, at the time Bone was cashiered by Bill Moos, the WSU athletic director had poured resources into football, not unjustifiably. He brought on Kent, and then Moos did what Moos does, which was (a) spend money and (b) tell the world that WSU isn’t going to take a back seat to anybody. He settled on paying Kent $1.4 million a year, when $1 or $1.1 million or would have done nicely. Kent was out of coaching, longing to get back into it, and besides, Bone was making $850,000.

Kent’s first two coaching hires were Greg Graham, a solid Xs-and-Os guy with whom he played at Oregon in the 1970s, and veteran Silvey Dominguez. I didn’t get that, either. At probably the toughest place to win among the power conferences, three 60-ish guys were going to go into living rooms and preach WSU's gospel to recruits?

WSU had the predictable growing pains, and for reasons known only to Moos, he kept rolling Kent’s contract over, never letting it dip even to three years. You suppose rival coaches would have been sitting in recruits’ homes, saying, “Yeah, you really want to go to a school where the coach only has three years left on his contract?”

(Meanwhile, Moos was fond of telling alums they needed to “have skin in the game.” Would some fiscal responsibility in the game have been too much to ask?)

So now the Cougars are apparently without both 1-2 scorers Robert Franks (pro-bound) and Malachi Flynn (transferring) for next year, hardly a good look. That’s a combined 33 points, 10 rebounds and Flynn’s 2-1 assist-turnover ratio walking out a door which has been swinging open regularly during the Kent regime. Guard Milan Acquaah just joined the serpentine.

In a wider picture, college basketball’s trend toward greater player mobility hurts schools like WSU more than it helps.

The money owed Kent dwarfs anything WSU has ever paid a coach to go away, in any sport. Bone collected $1.7 million on the two unserved years of his contract. When Moos canned football coach Paul Wulff after the 2011 season, he owed him only about $600,000.

“It takes time,” Kent told me a few weeks ago.

Right. It also takes a plan. I don’t think Washington State has one.



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Zags' neighbor to the south needs a soul-search

thread
I don’t get it. But there’s a lot I don’t get about Washington State basketball.

I don’t get why WSU finds itself owing Ernie Kent a ton of money. I don’t get what he’s done to earn it. I don’t get the utter lack of a road map at my alma mater to be competitive in basketball.

First, an explanation: This is predominantly a blog about Gonzaga basketball, but on occasion, we veer into matters of interest related to the Zags, especially their opponents or in-state neighbors.

Some of the Gonzaga faithful would prefer their team play WSU annually, hell or high water, deferring to a tradition that began more than a century ago. I’m not in that camp, but virtually everybody would at least relish a day when the Cougars are salty enough to revive the series.

Until then, forget it. All you need to know is this: Since the Cougars last won a game in their conference tournament (2009), Gonzaga has won 19 games in the NCAA tournament.

So I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, and what ought to happen.

In a year or two, WSU’s new athletic director, Patrick Chun, will stand in front of a news conference and extol the “vision” of his new coach for Cougar basketball. Lather, rinse, repeat.

What ought to take place at WSU is a complete examination of all things basketball, an unvarnished hard look at whether the Cougars can attain some level of consistent competitiveness, or whether they’re forever destined to be a laugh track in the Pac-12. Over the past 22 seasons, going back to 1996-97 under Kevin Eastman, WSU is 160 games under .500 in conference play.

WSU hoops reminds me of the business concept “loss leader” (now there’s a haunting appellation). You take a hit on some commodity, but it aids in the overall development of the enterprise. Where’s that salvation with WSU basketball, which never played in front of a home crowd of 5,000 last season? To be brutally honest about it, what’s the point, other than 11 other schools in the Pac-12 also have a program?

So put together a committee, or an advisory team, and pick some brains. Go talk to people like Tony Bennett and Kelvin Sampson, and some of those who played there. Brian Quinnett lives nearby. See what Klay Thompson thinks. Surely some of the wise heads of the Bennett regime, people like Robbie Cowgill or Derrick Low or Kyle Weaver, have ideas.

The point is, the Cougars have to do something different, whether that’s hiring an alum who bleeds crimson or somebody willing to die before allowing an uncontested layup. And no, firing up random threes and playing zero defense doesn’t count.

In some measure, it could be a facilities issue. Many schools now have a building dedicated to basketball, with a practice facility and auxiliary functions. Meanwhile, when Ken Bone exited the program after 2015, he lamented the decaying state of Beasley Coliseum (a place that’s too big, but that’s another story).

Of course, at the time Bone was cashiered by Bill Moos, the WSU athletic director had poured resources into football, not unjustifiably. He brought on Kent, and then Moos did what Moos does, which was (a) spend money and (b) tell the world that WSU isn’t going to take a back seat to anybody. He settled on paying Kent $1.4 million a year, when $1 or $1.1 million or would have done nicely. Kent was out of coaching, longing to get back into it, and besides, Bone was making $850,000.

Kent’s first two coaching hires were Greg Graham, a solid Xs-and-Os guy with whom he played at Oregon in the 1970s, and veteran Silvey Dominguez. I didn’t get that, either. At probably the toughest place to win among the power conferences, three 60-ish guys were going to go into living rooms and preach WSU's gospel to recruits?

WSU had the predictable growing pains, and for reasons known only to Moos, he kept rolling Kent’s contract over, never letting it dip even to three years. You suppose rival coaches would have been sitting in recruits’ homes, saying, “Yeah, you really want to go to a school where the coach only has three years left on his contract?”

(Meanwhile, Moos was fond of telling alums they needed to “have skin in the game.” Would some fiscal responsibility in the game have been too much to ask?)

So now the Cougars are apparently without both 1-2 scorers Robert Franks (pro-bound) and Malachi Flynn (transferring) for next year, hardly a good look. That’s a combined 33 points, 10 rebounds and Flynn’s 2-1 assist-turnover ratio walking out a door which has been swinging open regularly during the Kent regime. Guard Milan Acquaah just joined the serpentine.

In a wider picture, college basketball’s trend toward greater player mobility hurts schools like WSU more than it helps.

The money owed Kent dwarfs anything WSU has ever paid a coach to go away, in any sport. Bone collected $1.7 million on the two unserved years of his contract. When Moos canned football coach Paul Wulff after the 2011 season, he owed him only about $600,000.

“It takes time,” Kent told me a few weeks ago.

Right. It also takes a plan. I don’t think Washington State has one.



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Zags, '18-19: Cue the hoopla

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So, yeah, cue the trumpets. Fire up the fanfare. The hyperbole around the next edition of the Gonzaga men’s basketball team is going to be substantial. And if you’re a Zags basketball fan, exhilarating.

Maybe only Shohei Ohtani has had a better week than the Zags. First, they got a thumbs-up from Rui Hachimura on a return for his junior season. That one, in my mind, satisfied the biggest questionmark of the off-season.

On the heels of that announcement came word that Killian Tillie, a classmate of Hachimura, is also on board for 2018-19. Tillie’s 2018 NCAA tournament was a downer, after a dazzling MVP tour in the WCC tournament. In the big show, he went 3 for 12 for nine points, didn’t hit a three over two games, and his hip injury just prior to Florida State was a precursor to GU’s lousy night and an exit from the Sweet 16.

Gonzaga’s front line could be ridiculously flush, with Hachimura, Tillie, all-Mountain West expat Brandon Clarke, great Dane Jacob Larsen and newcomer Filip Petrusev.

All that remains is assurance that point guard Josh Perkins is back for a fifth year -- and there’s no real reason to guess otherwise -- and the buzz around the Zags will be immense.

And unprecedented. By my reckoning, Gonzaga has been ranked in the AP preseason top 10 four times -- 10th in 2003-04 (Stepp, Turiaf, Violette, Morrison); 8th in 2005-06 (Morrison, Batista, Raivio); 10th in 2008-09 (Heytvelt, Downs, Bouldin) and 9th in 2015-16 (Wiltjer, Sabonis).

Assuming all the pieces stay in place from April to November, this will be the highest-ranked GU team in history entering a season, likely top five. If a national championship is ever going to happen, this might be the year.

The promise guarantees nothing, of course, and who better to remind the faithful than Mark Few, a guy who could pooh-pooh Secretariat on the final turn at Belmont?

Injuries can happen, complacency can happen, chemistry can go awry, leadership can dry up. For one, it’s not unreasonable to ask: Are there enough balls to go around on a team that figures to retain eight of its top 10 scorers?

Blessedly for Zag fans, there’s little history of GU being outflanked by expectation over a full season. You could cite 2015-16, the year Gonzaga had to win the WCC to get to the NCAA tournament, but a lot of that had to do with Przemek Karnowski’s December back injury that scuttled his season. (An aside: If it’s true that Tillie’s hip injury would have rendered him less than full speed for pre-NBA workouts, and he might otherwise have jumped, there’s the possibility of the same silver lining GU experienced with Karnowski’s return in ’16-17.)

Meanwhile, the Zags continue to recruit, plumbing the grad-transfer market as well as the living room of one Brandon Williams, the point guard from Encino, Calif. who pulled out of a commitment to Arizona and is considering GU, Arizona State and Oregon, among others.

In a piece in 247Sports.com on the visit by GU coaches, Williams’ father, Chris Wright, said of Few, “He said the one thing they’re missing is a dynamic guy that can get into the paint and make plays.”

Think of it. A guard who can penetrate and create. When has Gonzaga had one of those?

Stories on recruiting sites tend to explode with puffery, but it was evident from Wright’s comments that Gonzaga had surprised him and his son. Wright was quoted, “When I got back from walking them out of the house, he looked and me and shook his head and said he was so confused about what to do now.”

That rang a bell. Nigel Williams-Goss told me the same thing about his home visit when he was culling possible destinations after leaving Washington.

Borrowing from “Glory Hounds:” “They completely elevated in my mind,” Williams-Goss said. “Again, it was going back to the preparation, the workouts . . . like the amount of film they watch, just the preparation that goes into being successful.”

In the 247Sports.com story, Wright was also quoted as saying his son likely would be in college only two years, and that a major priority is “him having the ball from day one.”

So this would be the second time (Williams-Goss having been the first) Josh Perkins and a newcomer would have to be persuaded they can flourish together.

If there was any presumptuousness in Wright’s observations, Few probably has come to grips with them. Besides, he needs to get used to it. His own fan base is going to be presuming a lot about the ’18-19 Zags.
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For Gonzaga, it's a pregnant post-postseason

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

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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.
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