Gonzaga putting ‘faith in defense,’ vowing to improve ‘nastiness’ during WCC play

By normal college basketball standards, there’s been nothing visibly wrong with Gonzaga’s offense this season.

Most would take what the Bulldogs have and not think twice about it.

Gonzaga ranks 20th nationally in Ken Pomeroy’s adjusted offense metric, sits at ninth in the country averaging 85.6 points per game and has hit triple digits on four occasions. Five games into West Coast Conference play, the conference’s leader in field-goal percentage (conference games only) is a forward from San Francisco – Jonathan Mogbo – but the four players below him are all from Gonzaga.

What the Zags have done is nothing to scoff at, but unlike last year when they could lean on the NCAA’s top-rated adjusted offense, and rely on consistent 25- to 30-point outings from one of the most accomplished scorers in college basketball, the 2023-24 squad doesn’t carry quite enough firepower on one end of the floor to overcome untimely letdowns on the other.

Realizing their offensive ceiling may not be what it has in the past, the Zags have worked to balance the scales, adopting a mindset largely rooted in defense.

“Obviously, we don’t have Drew (Timme) dropping 35 points a game, but our defense is really good this year,” GU fifth-year senior Anton Watson said. “That’s what we have to put our faith in. That’s where it starts, is we’ve got to be the most aggressive, nasty team. Win all the 50/50 balls and that’s just how it’s going to be the rest of the year.”

While Gonzaga has dropped 19 spots in adjusted offense this season, the Zags have made up significant ground in KenPom’s adjusted defense metric. The Bulldogs finished the 2022-23 season ranked No. 73 – the first time since 2000-10 they finished outside the top 50 – but have climbed 40 spots to No. 33 this year.

Gonzaga is coming off a two-game road swing in which the Bulldogs held both opponents – Pepperdine and San Diego – under 65 points while limiting the two teams to a combined 46-of-126 shooting (36%) from the field. Gonzaga had six days without a game after a 77-76 defeat at Santa Clara and spent a large portion of the layoff addressing defensive miscues from its fifth loss, which culminated with guard Adama Bal driving the length of the floor, maneuvering past junior guard Nolan Hickman and rising up for an uncontested jumper.

“Honestly man, it’s taken a big jump I would say the last two weeks,” Hickman said of the defense. “Just our nastiness, I would say, after the loss against Santa Clara. We just started to really buckle down on the mishaps we’ve had on the defensive end. Like the small things.”

Small things, such as?

“We shouldn’t just be giving up easy buckets,” Hickman said. “There’s little mishaps where we give up easy ones where there’s no contest at all. So I feel like when we buckle down on those mishaps and start being more nasty on the defensive end, I think that’s where we start looking real good like a ball club, for sure.”

Gonzaga’s defense has predictably neutralized many of the inferior opponents on the Bulldogs’ schedule, including the past two teams they faced, but it’s also been effective against top-tier foes such as Purdue and UConn.

The second-ranked Purdue Boilermakers average 85.1 points this season, but were held below that mark in a 73-63 win over Gonzaga at the Maui Invitational. Top-ranked UConn, a team that’s averaged 81.1 ppg, scored 76 while beating the Zags at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. Gonzaga also put the clamps on Syracuse, a team averaging 76 ppg, in a 76-57 win over the Orange in Honolulu.

In 15 of 18 games, Gonzaga has held its opponent under its season scoring average.

“We noticed how good we were on defense and we could stop some players and some teams,” Watson said. “But our offense wasn’t too hot to start the season, but our defense I felt like was solid and we could rely on that at times.”

Watson continues to be Gonzaga leader on defense, averaging 1.6 steals per game while often being assigned to the opponent’s best offensive player – be it a guard, forward or center.

Hickman, perhaps the team’s most reliable perimeter defender, has come up with nine steals in Gonzaga’s past four games and recently posted two steals and two blocks in the win at San Diego.

“It’s not that I want to do it, I feel like it’s because the team needs it,” Hickman said. “We all have our tendencies of sitting down on defense, but I feel like what I bring for the team and my intensity that I bring on defense, I feel like it’s much-needed and it goes a long way for the squad.

“Just to see that I’m sitting down, now a vet, which is weird to say. But when they see a vet, the younger guys – Dusty (Stromer) and them – it just gives them a spark just to go hard on defense. That’s what I try to bring.”