West Virginia puts the brakes on Gonzaga’s transition offense
PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas – Job No. 1 for West Virginia in slowing down Gonzaga’s high-powered offense was, well, slowing down Gonzaga’s high-powered offense.
In other words, controlling Gonzaga’s transition game, and that’s what the Mountaineers did in springing an 86-78 overtime victory Wednesday at Imperial Arena.
“Really, our entire game plan, to be honest, was to not make this a transition game,” West Virginia coach Darian DeVries said. “As much as we love to run, this was a game where we just thought they were better at it than us and we needed to find a different strategy if we wanted to come out on top. Our guys did a great job really throughout both halves of trying to control tempo and play at pace we wanted to play.”
The key to achieving that was limiting turnovers and taking quality shots, DeVries said. The coach then took a quick glance at the stat sheet and noted that Gonzaga scored just nine fastbreak points.
There were several other keys in holding Gonzaga to its lowest point total of the season, even with 5 extra minutes of playing time in overtime.
Gonzaga led 39-31 at half, but that was primarily because of its defense. The Zags, No. 1 in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency through five games, only made 42% of their field-goal attempts.
West Virginia dialed up the pressure, focused on point guard Ryan Nembhard, and the Zags’ shot quality went down for most of the final 20 minutes and overtime.
“I thought they kind of bogged down some of our actions,” said Nembhard, who still posted 12 assists and just one turnover but misfired on 9 of 10 field-goal attempts. “They tried to deny our actions a little bit, and we just have to be better at getting to that second action and playing through that.”
Gonzaga backup forward Braden Huff came up big with 14 of his 19 points in the second half and overtime, but the rest of the Zags struggled. GU scored just 32 points in the closing half and seven in overtime.
The Zags finished 40% from the field.
“They were taking away Ryan the whole game,” Huff said. “Just being able to get into actions when he’s taken away on the inbounds, the first action isn’t always going to be there. We’ve got really good sets, really good stuff, but they’re a high-pressure team and they got us out of our stuff.”
West Virginia wing Tucker DeVries, the head coach’s son, credited Sencire Harris’ defense on Nembhard for helping contain the Zags.
“He did a great job, making everything difficult for him,” DeVries said. “Outside of that, we really rebounded well and tried to limit them to one shot. Especially how efficient they are on offense, we just had to limit the amount of good looks they got.”
Gonzaga had a slight edge in second-chance points (14-11), but the Mountaineers won the glass 42-36.
Graham Ike finished with five points, nine below his team-leading average. Second-leading scorer Khalif Battle had 14 first-half points but only scored two more the rest of the way.