Zags snag No. 3 seed for tournament

The Gonzaga Bulldogs once again gathered at the home of head coach Mark Few and his wife, Marcy, on Sunday to learn the first-round details of their upcoming NCAA Tournament quest.

Predictably, the nationally televised announcement that they had earned a No. 3 seed in the Albuquerque Regional and a first-round matchup against 14th-seeded Winthrop in Tucson, Ariz., on Thursday, was greeted dispassionately.

“There wasn’t much cheering or yelling or high-fiving,” explained sophomore forward Adam Morrison, the leading scorer for the 11th-ranked Zags (25-4), who assured themselves a seventh-consecutive NCAA berth last week by winning the West Coast Conference tournament. “We were happy to be in, obviously, and that sort of stuff. But we still have some business to take care of, so …”

“We knew we were in, so the main thing for us was just to see who we’re playing so we can start getting ready for them,” added sophomore point guard Derek Raivio.

The fact that the Bulldogs drew a relatively cushy seed didn’t elicit much excitement, either.

“We’re not even going to worry about the seeds this year,” Morrison said, thinking back to last year when the Zags went in as No. 2 seed, but lost to 10th-seeded Nevada in the second round. “I think we put too big an emphasis last year on seeding and location and all that, and didn’t come to play. So, we could care less if we’re a No. 1 or a No. 16 in this tournament.”

Few echoed Morrison’s sentiments.

“Unless you’re a No. 1, you’re going to have your hands full,” he said. “And we’re going to have our hands full.”

In Winthrop (27-5) the Bulldogs have drawn a perplexing opponent that comes into the tournament riding an 18-game winning streak, the longest in the nation. The Eagles won both the Big South Conference tournament and regular-season titles and have outscored their last three opponents by an average of 16 points per game.

Coach Gregg Marshall has taken Winthrop to the NCAA Tournament five times in the past seven years and has put together another fundamentally sound team that relies on quickness rather than size. The Eagles play with three guards and have only one starter – 6-foot-10 sophomore center Craig Bradshaw – taller than 6-6.

But the only number that matters to Few is their 27 victories, which are more than enough to keep him and his Bulldogs from looking ahead to a possible second-round showdown against either sixth-seeded Texas Tech or 11th-seeded UCLA.

“You win 27 games in the regular season, you’ve got a squad,” he said. “They’re well coached. I know people have a tremendous amount of respect for (Marshall), especially down in the south. And they’ve been in the tournament before, so this isn’t a new thing for them.

“But, that’s who we’re playing, and we’re going to have to get ready and play very, very well to move on. There’s no sense looking past anything or talking about anything other than Winthrop.”

Few’s Bulldogs boast the nation’s second-longest winning streak of 12 straight and enter the tournament playing some of their best basketball of the season.

“I feel really good about where we are,” Few said. “I feel really good about the way our approach has been, and I think part of that is having younger guys. I don’t want to say they’re easily excited, but they’re kind of footloose, fancy-free and ready to go. And I think they’re really looking forward to this.”

“We’re playing loose right now, playing together and having fun,” added Morrison. “Hopefully, we can keep that going for the next few weeks.”

Few said he will practice with his team this afternoon and plan Tuesday’s practice around the flight to Tucson, a city that proved immensely amiable to the Bulldogs in 2000, when they upset seventh-seeded Louisville and second-seeded St. John’s on their way to the second of their three-consecutive berths in the NCAA’s Sweet 16.

“We still have a couple of good practices where we can still get after it a little bit,” Few added. “We need to. This team has really gotten better in certain facets of the game, lately, so we need to keep working on that.”