Consider Zags’ latest soap opera a Daye of Our Lives

You’re all familiar with the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Right. Sounds like the law firm that handled your buddy’s divorce.

Anyway, the Gonzaga basketball community has found a shortcut. They’ve narrowed it down to two stages.

Cataclysm, then Catechism.

Violent upheaval, tragedy, panic, Armageddon – followed by a refresher in any worth there is to be found in faith and prayer.

Which brings us to Austin Daye and his right knee.

The Zags’ budding star forward will go under the knife shortly, providing that in the wake of such news all the operating rooms aren’t already booked with fans checking in for surgery of their own. You know, the basic stuff – gastrointestinal, open heart, frontal lobe.

Mere minutes ago, they had their heroes passing Go and bound for the Final Four – again – by drawing the Best-Team-Ever-On-Paper card off the Community Chest pile. Then comes word that the tumble Daye took back at the Lebron James Skills Academy in Ohio last week was just as ugly as originally feared and not the pulled hamstring close shave that was subsequently diagnosed.

Now the mood is more like something out of “The Day After Tomorrow,” although there is a pocket of fierce resistance that still expects the Zags to run the table – and would even if the starting five had to play in an iron lung.

Then there was coach Mark Few’s philosophical approach.

“Unfortunately,” he was quoted as saying, “injuries are part of the game.”

Well, if they weren’t, the Bulldogs have certainly done their part to ingrain them.

Just an unofficial tally, but the 2009 season will make four out of the last five that the Bulldogs have started without the services of some primary cast member. There is, in fact, a history of significant games lost to injury that stretches back to 2000 – and in its own way makes Gonzaga’s string of West Coast Conference titles and NCAA tournament appearances all the more remarkable.

A year ago, it was two starters – Josh Heytvelt and Steven Gray – missing the first 10 games. In 2006, Erroll Knight was out the first eight games and Heytvelt – after not getting clearance to play until Game 3 – broke his leg two nights later and sat until mid-February. The season before, Knight again missed a stretch to start the season, and Nathan Doudney – after starting the first four – blew a knee in Game 7 and was finished.

What else? The stress fracture that sidelined Ronny Turiaf until he was cleared to play the 2004 opener. The broken hand that cost Tony Skinner five weeks of his senior year. The balky knee that didn’t allow Blake Stepp to practice in 2002. Dan Dickau’s broken finger that would have kept the Zags out of the NCAAs in 2001 had they not won the WCC tournament.

Every team has injuries. Not every team is cursed.

This isn’t a solicitation for pity. What the Zags have done each and every time is pull together, optimize the not inconsiderable talents of the players they still have and maybe even hang fire a bit until they’re whole.

But this one is tricky.

Daye may only have a year of college basketball behind him, but he was surely going to be the focal point of Gonzaga’s attack in 2009 – the return of point guard Jeremy Pargo notwithstanding. That was seen in all the plays the staff was running for Daye in big games late last year, and statistically, too. Extrapolated to 40 minutes per game, no Zag was as productive – 22.7 points, 10.1 rebounds – as the Gumbyish 6-foot-10 forward. He’s also the best shot blocker.

Couple his absence – for a full season or not – with the uncertainty surrounding Heytvelt, who once again had off-season surgery to repair a stress fracture in his right foot and has not made it through a single Gonzaga season without issues. Heytvelt is still in an extended rehabilitation.

And even if he’s hale, the Zags remain thin up front – a big body in sophomore Robert Sacre, little-used spot players Will Foster and Ira Brown, and a slender recruit in freshman Andy Poling. It is likely, of course, that senior Micah Downs will be asked again to play more minutes at the “4” position, as he did in 2007 during Heytvelt’s late-season suspension. The wispy Downs was a bit of a revelation in that role, but in this case he’ll be asked to do it against the murderers’ row schedule of November and December – to say nothing of against a WCC lineup that returns eight of 10 all-conference players and for the first time has not one but two teams capable of taking the Bulldogs down, and hungry enough to do just that.

Even before Daye went down, however, Few had concerns up front.

“There’s a level of toughness that needs to improve in our guys,” he said. “We lost our two toughest guys (David Pendergraft and Abdullahi Kuso), especially in defense and rebounding. Those are the areas where those two thrived and it’s a hard commodity to replace.”

Now there’s another concern. Call it the Daye-aftermath.