TV take: Gonzaga finds familiar second-half success over San Francisco in WCC tournament win
A late start due to the game before on ESPN2 running long? Check. The obligatory start on another ESPN channel, this time ESPNU? Check again. Dave Flemming and Sean Farnham waiting in Las Vegas? Trifecta. Yep, it was another West Coast Conference tournament semifinal, complete with the same storyline we’ve all seen for years. And a couple times earlier this season.
In the end Monday night, as Joe Lunardi, ESPN’s resident NCAA bracket expert looked on (for a while), the second-seeded Zags won their 30th consecutive game against the University of San Francisco. And clinched a spot in their 27th conference tournament title game with an 89-77 victory over the Dons.
What they saw …
• Don’t know if you heard, but there was some disagreement this year about the West Coast Conference’s individual awards. A surprise, right? Not really. Most of centered round Graham Ike and Jonathan Mogbo, who matched up in this one. Both were new to the conference, both had outstanding years but it was Mogbo who walked away with the Newcomer of the Year Award.
Zags social media was, not surprisingly, upset.
That, however, was not the award Farnham wanted to quibble about. He chose the Defensive Player of the Year one, won by regular-season champion Saint Mary’s Mitchell Saxen.
Farnham, after praising Saxen’s year, shared his pick, and he was playing in this one.
“Anton Watson,” Farnham pointed out, “has been the best defensive player in this conference the last two years and is going to walk away without ever winning the (defensive player of the year) award. And I just don’t understand it.
“He’s second all-time in steals (for GU), he’s been the heart and soul of their defense with the ability to switch 1 through 4, guard a post or opposing guards.”
What we saw …
• Despite having Watson on the court for 17 minutes, the Gonzaga defense was overly porous in the first 20, which ended with, for the third time this season, the teams within a point of each other – something Farnham and Flemming marveled about more than once.
The Dons stayed in this one by connecting on nearly half of their 3-point attempts. Their seven long-range buckets accounted for 21 of their 37 first-half points. The Zags’ 38 came courtesy of good passing – they had 10 assists on 13 baskets – and second chances – seven offensive rebounds led to 11 points.
Ben Gregg, who Flemming feels might be the hardest worker in college hoop, had three of those offensive rebounds and eight overall. His effort helped 17th-ranked Gonzaga weather some tough early moments and stay close. An 11-0 run that spanned the last 2 minutes, 57 seconds (except the final .1, a Mogbo basket), allowed the Zags to jog to the Orleans Arena locker room leading.
“We’ve seen this game before,” Flemming said prior to the start of the second half, alluding to last week’s game in the Golden State Warriors’ Chase Center. In that one the Zags blitzed – Farnham’s word – the Dons in the second half, outscoring USF 19-3 in the first 4-and-a-half minutes after intermission.
“They’ve seen this story twice,” said Farnham as the second half began, including the first meeting in Spokane, when a late 19-4 run put the Dons away.
And a third time, though not to those extremes. In this one, Gregg, who finished with 17 points, led the Bulldogs (25-6) to a 36-12 run bridging the last 3 minutes of the first and the first 6 of the second, hitting four consecutive 3-pointers to build a lead that ended up reaching 19 at one point.
“It’s amazing how similar this is,” Flemming said, as the Dons (23-10) missed more 3-point attempts in the first 10 minutes after halftime as they did in the entire first half.
“Just an offensive clinic,” Flemming said with about 8 minutes left, not long after Farnham had shared this stat: At that point Gonzaga had 19 assists on 25 baskets. (They finished with 23 on 31.) Twelve of their overall assists came from Ryan Nembhard. But it was his 10th, a laser to Nolan Hickman, that excited Farnham the most.
“Look at that pass, Farnham said of a pass through two Dons from the wing to the hoop. “That’s a Patrick Mahomes, throw-it-in-a-small-window (pass).
“Hickman was like, ‘how did the ball even get to me’,” Farnham continued.
The pass gave Nembhard a double-double (to go with 16 points) and Hickman his 20th point.
• One last note. The Zags scored 89 points with Ike, their most valuable player during the late run to the NCAA tourney, scoring just 10 points on 4-of-11 shooting.