Nothing comes easy

Expectations – great, small or otherwise – hang over every college basketball program.

But for the Gonzaga Bulldogs, who cap the first half of their West Coast Conference schedule on Saturday with an 8 p.m. showdown against Portland in the McCarthey Athletic Center, they have reached almost laughable proportions.

In internet chat rooms, taverns, restaurants, motels and family households, alike, people are asking, “What’s wrong with the Zags?”

And all because the Bulldogs are a mere 14-4 on the season, 4-2 in the WCC and ranked 17th in the latest Associated Press Top 25 Poll.

Such restlessness might be enough to make some coaches cringe. But Mark Few just shakes his head and smiles.

“It’s better than the alternative, which is apathy,” said the Bulldogs’ sixth-year head coach, who arrived on campus as a graduate assistant in the fall of 1990 and still remembers when there were almost as many security personnel attending GU games as there were fans. “We had some apathy in the early stages of the program. People didn’t even know you had a game that night.”

Things have obviously changed. Today, the Zags consistently play in front of sellout crowds in their new 6,000-seat arena and on the road, as well. And every one of their games is being televised this winter on a local basis, at least, with several airing to national audiences.

It’s the kind of exposure most schools only dream of, but it comes with a price tag – that of over-inflated expectations.

Yes, there was a time when the Zags could sneak off to Anchorage or Maui, knock off a couple of big-name opponents and then quietly return to the mainland and lose a game or two – or three, in some years – to lesser known WCC foes. And they could do it in near obscurity.

But under their new television contract, every hurried shot, ill-advised pass and dribble off the foot is magnified by the cameras and replayed seemingly ad infinitum. In short, clinkers are no longer allowed.

Which can make expectations a little demanding for a young team still trying to overcome the loss of five seniors from last year’s 28-3 team that went 14-0 in the WCC.

This is, after all, an inexperienced Bulldogs team that returns only one full-time starter and has only two active players – senior Ronny Turiaf and junior transfer Erroll Knight – who have played more than one full season at the Division-I level. And they are playing in a senior-dominated conference that has the 7th-best RPI in the nation and boasts seven teams with three or more returning starters.

In addition, the Zags have been slowed by nagging ankle and foot injuries to Turiaf and Knight and the absence of first-year junior transfer Nathan Doudney, who suffered a season-ending knee injury in a 99-87 loss to Washington State in early December.

Turiaf, a returning All-WCC selection, sprained his left ankle the same night Doudney went down, and then turned his right ankle three weeks later during a Christmas Day practice.

The 6-foot-10 forward was averaging almost 25 points and 11 rebounds prior to the WSU game. He came back less than two weeks after wrenching his left ankle with a 17-point, 10-rebound double-double in GU’s 85-73 upset of then No. 3-ranked Georgia Tech in the Las Vegas Showdown.

But since spraining his right ankle, he has watched his numbers drop significantly, to 16.1 and 9.0, and has, on several occasion, aggravated the injury during scrambles for loose balls. Still, the Bulldogs arrive at the halfway point of their WCC schedule having probably already punched their ticket to a seventh-consecutive NCAA Tournament on the strength of their early season wins over Georgia Tech and Oklahoma State – both ranked No. 3 in the nation at the time – and Washington, currently ranked No. 10.

And yet, many of the GU faithful continue to bemoan the Zags’ recent road losses to Saint Mary’s and San Francisco and wonder what is going on.

Truth be told, this isn’t the first time the Bulldogs have struggled against WCC teams. And outside of NCAA Tournament play, they haven’t been all that dominant against nationally ranked opponents, either.

The 1999 team that surprised the entire country with its march to the Elite Eight of the NCAAs lost on the road in WCC play to San Diego and Pepperdine. The 2000 team that went 26-9 and advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16, finished 11-3 in the WCC and lost at home to San Diego by 12 points.

In 2001 and 2002, the Zags lost only one WCC game, but in 2003 they loss to Loyola Marymount and Portland, two teams that finished in a three-way tie for last place in the WCC standings.

Only last year’s team, which finished 28-3 and ended the regular season ranked No. 3 in the nation, was able to navigate the WCC-portion of their schedule without a loss. And yet many GU fans are still indignant about the two league defeats the Zags have suffered this season – one of which came to a Saint Mary’s team that made nine of its first 11 shots from 3-point range and finished with a school-record 16 treys.

Critics can say what they want about GU spending too much time in its matchup zone against the Gaels, but most teams can’t even make nine out of 11 free throws.

“In ways, the problem is that this team has shown just how great they can be on any given night,” Few explained. “So, selfishly, you want that every night. But that’s not realistic for anybody. If anything, it shows how special last year’s group was. We kept trying to tell everybody how hard 14-0 is – for anybody in any league. Not just that, but on one hand we want to talk about how this is the best the WCC has ever been, yet on the other we’re asked, ‘What’s wrong? You lost.’ “

Yet, Few and his players seem capable of living with 14-4 and 4-2 at this point in the season.

“You look back a couple of years ago to the team that lost to Loyola and Portland, and I don’t remember anybody crying ‘Wolf,’ ” said sophomore forward and leading scorer Adam Morrison. “People need to be realistic. We’d like to be unbeaten, yeah, but like most teams, we’ve played a couple of bad games.

“We can’t turn back time. We just have to deal with it.”

And like it or not, so do some of the Bulldogs’ most anxious – and impractical – fans.