Experience gave No. 3 Gonzaga a leg up in key moments during 80-67 win over San Diego State

SAN DIEGO – Gonzaga scored a number of small wins on the stat sheet to emerge with a larger victory on Monday night, beating San Diego State 80-67 at Viejas Arena.

There was a 39-33 advantage in the rebounding column, a 14-5 edge in second-chance points and a 31-18 discrepancy in free-throw attempts, just to name a few. The Zags also had the upper hand in field goal percentage (42% to 38%) and had three fewer turnovers ( eight) than the Aztecs.

Yet, with a box score often telling just a portion of the story, Aztecs coach Brian Dutcher acknowledged another a key area in which the third-ranked team in the country was superior.

“We ran into a really good Gonzaga team with a lot of experience and I think that experience paid off for them,” Dutcher said. “There’s not many things they haven’t seen as a group and as a team.”

Gonzaga’s core eight-man rotation features four players who’ve played in more than 100 college games, giving them the leg up on SDSU, which didn’t have one such player on the court at Viejas Arena.

The Zags also have experience in marquee games such as the one that played out in front of a national audience Monday evening. They’ve been in intense, second-weekend NCAA Tournament showdowns, conference tournament championship games, high-pressured nonconference matchups against top-ranked opponents and everything in between.

Another box the Zags can check? Experience in challenging road environments.

Through a nine-game road winning streak – tied with Saint Mary’s for the longest active run in the country – Gonzaga’s earned wins at Kentucky’s famed Rupp Arena, the Gaels’ hostile UCU Pavilion and now SDSU’s Viejas Arena, which overflowed with 12,414 fans who seemed eager to crank the decibel meter up every time the Aztecs went on a run.

And there the Zags were, composed and ready to absorb anything thrown at them – officiating whistles, Aztecs scoring surges, taunts from SDSU’s student section – for the better part of 40 minutes.

Gonzaga coach Mark Few credited it to “having a bunch of veterans out there” and “not getting rattled.”

“They’ve played in big arenas, loud environments and all that,” Few added.

Early foul trouble to an All-American-caliber big man could have spelled disaster for another team, particularly in a hostile environment like Viejas Arena, but Gonzaga hardly flinched when Ike went to the bench with his second foul less than 2 minutes after the opening tipoff.

Braden Huff held things down in the frontcourt, scoring 10 first-half points in 14 minutes, and Few reiterated his trust in Ike by sending the veteran big man back into the game for a 4-minute stretch with roughly 10 minutes remaining in the half, understanding the potential repercussions of a third foul.

“He’s a senior and been around,” Few said. “He’s been around us, he knows what to expect. You trust all your players like that until they make plays that don’t let you trust them anymore. It’s kind of how it works.”

Dutcher reverted back to experience when talking about SDSU’s assignment against Ike, who scored 20 of his team-high 23 points in the second half while making 7 of 9 shots from the field and 9 of 11 from the free-throw line.

“He’s a big, strong player and he’s good,” Dutcher said. “He’s a very good player and I just feel fortunate we came out on the winning end most of the time (against Ike), but not this time.

“… Magoon (Gwath) is a freshman and Pharaoh (Compton) is a freshman. That’s a challenge going against a fifth-year senior. That’s like freshmen going against Jaedon LeDee last year as a fifth-year senior. Those guys are hard to guard. They’re grown men and he played like a grown man in the second half. He was hard to deal with.”

SDSU’s defensive ball pressure and athleticism can be disruptive for opponents, but Nembhard, a veteran point guard, dictated Gonzaga’s pace for 40 minutes, ensuring most of the Bulldogs’ offensive possessions ended with quality looks at the basket, rather than turnovers.

“Nembhard was the No. 1 challenge,” Dutcher said. “He did to us what he’s doing to everybody. … He’s good on ball screens and he makes you pay all the time. We tried a number of things. We tried to get underneath it, tried to beat him to the rim and not help as much as we had to. We tried to switch late to try to make him make a play.

“… Ike should take Nembhard out to dinner every night as easy as he makes his life sometimes. He makes everybody’s life easy.”

BJ Davis, a sophomore guard for SDSU, embraced the opportunity to match up with Nembhard, who inevitably provided some valuable teaching moments to the Aztecs’ younger backcourt players.

“Nembhard is experienced, so it’s good for me to be matched up with somebody like that,” Davis said. “I can really just go back and watch it over and over and over and see the things I could do and apply it to the next game.”

As for Davis’ lasting impressions of Gonzaga walking away from Monday’s matchup?

“It just feels like there’s no weak links out there,” he said. “They were able to just come up in crucial moments and make crucial plays.”