It’s been an interesting ride for the Gonzaga Bulldogs, who throttled Pacific 70-53 on Thursday to claim an outright WCC championship. That’s 13 titles in 14 years. That’s 13 titles (11 outright) in Mark Few’s 15 seasons as head coach.

That’s particularly impressive given that this season was, as one GU staffer put it back in October, something of a bridge year, one that fell between last year’s loaded squad, arguably the best in school history, and what figures to be another talented crew next year.

It's about to get more interesting. GU faces a huge game with rival Saint Mary's on Saturday that will factor into their NCAA resume. Here's one national writer on Gonzaga in the NCAA picture.

Here’s my game story, A.P’s recap and an article in the Stockton Record.

More below in my day-after post.

 

--Gonzaga solved several issues that contributed to last week’s 0-2 road trip.

One, the starting guards were aggressive and highly productive. Kevin Pangos looked like the November Kevin Pangos, finishing with 18 points, two 3s, three assists and three rebounds. Gary Bell Jr. had nine points and six rebounds. David Stockton had five assists, four points, four rebounds and three steals.

Gonzaga has been relying on its bigs recently, but Sam Dower Jr. and Przemek Karnowski combined to play just 34 foul-plagued minutes. They were still effective with 15 points and Karnowski grabbed nine boards, but the guards and Drew Barham sparked the offense throughout.

With the starting bigs on the bench, GU went to a smaller lineup and a zone defense and sprinted from a 16-all tie to 29-16. Pangos simply took over.

“It was cool,” Pangos said of the shorter crew. “Obviously we miss having Shem and Sam out there, but it was kind of neat because we were flying around and kind of scrapping. It wasn’t prefect either, we missed a lot of rebounds, but we just worked hard.”

Two, the Bulldogs didn’t settle for those runners/floaters that haunted them in last week’s loss to San Diego. Few said GU was 1 of 14 on floaters in that game.

“That cost us the game,” Few said. “We can point at halftime (slow second-half starts), offense, defense, turnovers. There were 14 runners if you just want to take something out. Just toughen up and finish at the rim and take the foul or get in there and get a two-foot stop and kick it back out.”

Pangos and Bell both shot five free throws, Stockton four.

“He (Pangos) was able to get himself going at the FT line and I think that helped open up some things,” Few said.

Three, Gonzaga had dreadful starts to the second half against BYU and San Diego, falling behind and never being able to completely catch up. Gonzaga led Pacific 40-28 at half and went to work early in the second half with a 13-3 run.

Pangos scored on a reverse layup in the first 12 seconds. Stockton drove hard to the basket and made two free throws. Karnowski made a pair of shots and Bell hit a pull-up 3 in transition. Dower hit a pair of free throws, meaning all five starters scored in the first 4:28.

Gonzaga yielded just 25 second-half points.

“When you’re able to force a team to 30 percent (shooting) in their own gym, that’s a great feat,” Stockton said. “That’s what you try to do every night.”

--Pangos’ turf toe and sprained ankle are feeling better of late.

“It’s feeling good the last couple weeks,” Pangos said. “It’s getting stronger now, which is a good feeling.”

--Karnowski sprained his right ankle after scoring in the lane with roughly 14 minutes left. His ankle was taped, which probably helped limit the severity. He left the game, had his ankle re-taped and returned, though he appeared a bit gimpy at times.

He said he’ll be receiving several forms of treatment in the next day and a half leading up to the Saint Mary’s game.

--There was a great moment in the first half shortly after freshman Luke Meikle entered the game. GU was in a zone defense with Meikle and Barham serving as the bigs, along with Kyle Dranginis stationed near the low block. At one point, Meikle got out of position and Barham literally shoved him back toward the correct spot.

 “Luke came in and really helped us,” Barham said. “Ryan (Edwards) has been improving every day.”

Meikle and Edwards, much like Dranginis, didn’t have much in the way of stats, but still found ways to contribute.

--Gerard Coleman played just nine minutes, but they were full of activity. He had four points on 1-of-4 shooting. He missed his only two free-throw attempts, but he also had four assists, a steal, a block and three boards.

On consecutive plays, Coleman dished to Barham for baskets. The first was a bounce pass that a back-cutting Barham collected and scored on a reverse layup. On the next, Coleman was leading the break and probably could have penetrated into the lane but he opted to drop a pass to the trailing Barham, who drained a 3.

--Pacific’s crowd, including the student section, band, cheerleaders, stands up until the Tigers score their first points. They were still standing through the first media timeout. They finally were able to sit down when Aaron Short hit a 3-pointer with 14:51 left.

STATS OF NOTE

--Kevin Pangos scored 18 points to move back into the top spot on the team’s scoring leaders. He’s at 14.8 for the season. Dower had six points and dropped to 14.6. In conference, Dower leads the way at 15.1 with Pangos at 12.8.

--Gonzaga defeated Pacific 85-67 last year in Spokane. The Zags beat Pacific 86-64 earlier this season in Spokane and 70-53 in the rematch last night.

--Gonzaga picked up six fouls in less than 2 minutes in the first half (two were Karnowski, one on Dower and one on Edwards). Pacific was in the bonus with 12:17 left.

--Meikle made his first appearance since late in the LMU game on Feb. 15.

--Eleven Zags played in the first half. Thirteen played by game’s end. Pacific had 10 players play at least 11 minutes.

--GU was 12 of 15 at the FT line in the first half, 9 of 17 in the second.

--Pacific’s largest crowd this season was 4,058 for BYU.

QUOTEBOOK

Few on responding from last week’s road trip: “These deserve all the credit. They dug in and fought. Pacific is a really physical team. They bring a lot of things at you with all sets and things they run against zone or the man. I thought our guys handled it well. We played small a lot, which made the boards quite a battle, but I thought we had a good pace on offense.”

Stockton on Few’s traditional locker-room celebration following a WCC championship: “There’s a little something, but I don’t know if I’m able to disclose what it is. I can neither confirm nor deny. He does something for sure.”

Few on the smaller lineup in the first half:  “We almost tried to go even smaller. That’s the worst foul trouble we’ve been in.”

Pangos: “I definitely had some pep in my step.”

Few: “That was a brawl out there.”

More Few: “We might not have looked at our best tonight, but they saw our best effort. They saw what our character is all about. We’re tough-minded guys and we have some resiliency to us. That’s what we’re all about. Sometimes people get caught up when our offense is clicking and the numbers with that, but you don’t win championships with that. You win those with toughness and heart.”

 

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