‘You can tell they’re on a mission.’ LBSU coach impressed by Gonzaga after getting help from old SDSU colleagues

Chris Acker made the most of the 48 hours between Gonzaga’s game against San Diego State on Monday evening and Wednesday’s matchup between his Long Beach State team and the Bulldogs at McCarthey Athletic Center.

In some form or fashion, Acker, a San Diego State assistant from 2019-24, touched base with seven members of the Aztecs’ coaching staff hoping to gather any pieces of advice or intel that could help his Long Beach State program against the third-ranked team in the country, in one of college basketball’s toughest road environments.

That included a conversation with San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher, who watched his team come up short against Gonzaga a few days earlier, losing 80-67 in front of 12,414 fans at Viejas Arena.

The feedback?

“They said, ‘You’ve just got to get back on ‘D,’ you’ve got to do the best you can on (Graham) Ike, try to keep (Ryan) Nembhard out of the paint,’ ” Acker said.

Oh, and one more thing.

“Basically just said, ‘Good luck,’ ” Acker said. “ ‘Good luck to you guys.’ ”

Aside from a brief 7-minute stretch toward the end of the first half, No. 3 Gonzaga controlled both ends of the floor, holding Long Beach State to a season-low point total while cruising to an 84-41 victory.

Acker found the scouting report from his old colleagues mostly accurate while acknowledging it served little to no purpose once GU and LBSU tipped off Wednesday night.

“You just throw the scouting report out the window when you’re playing against a team like that,” Acker said. “At the end of the day, you can do all of those things – (SDSU) did all of those things and still got beat at home in a tough environment. You know what you’re going up against, you know what they have at stake when they take the floor, so they’ve got a very good team and so they’re going to do whatever they decide that they want to do this season.”

On Gonzaga’s end, it was helpful to see another team that shared many of the same principles as SDSU, particularly on such a tight turnaround.

“It helped, it did going into it,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said. “Their coverages were similar, but yet they were a little bit – there were some nuances there that made it different. But by and large, yeah, yeah. And they were physical and athletic, just like San Diego State.”

Ike, who shared the team lead with 15 points to go along with five rebounds, also noticed similarities between the last two teams on Gonzaga’s schedule. Those also happened to be Ike’s best games of the season, with the veteran post scoring 23 points and grabbing eight rebounds in the SDSU win before delivering 15 points in 15 minutes two days later against LBSU.

“The staff had kind of informed us about that, so we kind of knew it was going to be physical just like SDSU,” Ike said. “The guys are going to hit the glass hard and we kind of knew what to look for.”

During Acker’s time at SDSU, the Aztecs never won fewer than 23 games, making four runs to the NCAA Tournament, including a trip to the national championship game in 2023. The first-year head coach said Dutcher’s SDSU program is the new model at LBSU, which parted ways with Dan Monson, Few’s predecessor at Gonzaga, after 17 seasons at the Big West school in Southern California.

“We’re trying to trend in that direction,” Acker said. “We’re still much further behind where I’d like to be as far as that’s concerned, but we are doing a good job of picking up the principles and the details defensively and things like that. We’re still just trying to figure it out.”

LBSU encountered another West Coast powerhouse that’s defending at a high level in Gonzaga.

The Bulldogs not only held the Beach to a season-low 41 points, but limited the visitors to 17 of 54 (31%) from the field and 2 of 20 (10%) from the 3-point line. Acker’s team went without a field goal for 9:54 in the first half, and had a scoring drought of 6:22 in the second.

“They’re elite defensively,” Acker said. “Their physicality, their size, their athleticism. Defense is all about a mentality, and you can coach it and preach it until you’re blue in the face, but coach Few’s done a good job instilling the principles and his guys are going out there and executing it.

“You can tell they’re on a mission and they’re competing, so they’re going to be exciting to watch for the whole season.”