Dave Boling: Saint Mary’s – not Gonzaga – is the leading force in the West Coast Conference

Now beyond objective debate: Saint Mary’s has taken over as the West Coast Conference powerhouse.

Not an insult or slam. Just the current reality.

The 74-67 Gaels win Saturday on Gonzaga’s homecourt was the fourth in the past five games against the Zags and gave the visitors their second consecutive conference regular-season title.

As painful as it had to be to know their rivals were celebrating the championship in the McCarthey Center, a surprising factor may have been equally demoralizing to fans of GU: The Zags (21-8, 12-4) didn’t play poorly.

There weren’t areas to pinpoint that could be easily corrected.

This loss was beyond reasonable mitigation. They didn’t simply fail to finish, as they had a number of times this season. They didn’t get a bad call or have a late turnover lead to the loss.

They simply got beat, again, by a better team. Convincingly.

They played with admirable effort and energy and motivation. All of them. Scratching and clawing. Dishing out the bruises as well as taking them. And they got beat.

They fought back from a 10-point halftime deficit to tie it at 46s, and trailed 58-57 inside of six minutes. And they got beat by seven.

Saint Mary’s was better from the start, leading this game for nearly 39 minutes. When the Zags rallied, the Gaels answered. Every time.

The Gaels won it on the boards with 15 offensive rebounds and 21 second-chance points. The Zags fought hard under there, too. Saint Mary’s was better.

And they won it with a hot-shooting freshman guard, Mikey Lewis, who scored 18 points in 18 minutes, sinking 5 of 7 from beyond the arc. For all its NIL- and transfer-fueled roster successes, GU could not match that kid.

Many things remain for Gonzaga to achieve. The Zags finish the regular season on the road at Santa Clara and San Francisco and will have another shot at an NCAA automatic qualifying berth if they could rally for a conference tournament title.

They finished second to SMC in the regular season and tournament last season and still made it to the Sweet 16 – also with eight losses along the way.

In the big picture, though, it’s worth noting that GU’s four conference losses are the most since 1997-98. It wasn’t just a matter of two Pac-12 leftovers being added to the conference fraternity.

Oregon State did win one from them, but this is more a function of the rest of the conference growing up around the Zags. Saint Mary’s has been at the vanguard of that conference growth.

Heading into this one, the Zags were on a positive trajectory, with heightened defensive tenacity being the most visible reason.

Three of their seven losses had been in overtime and two by one possession. That was good and bad. It meant they were playing it close, but also that they weren’t closing.

According to the KenPom ratings that have a chart assessed a team’s “luck,” the Zags were one of the unluckiest teams in the country. The website tries to quantify good fortune as “the deviation in winning percentage between the team’s actual record and their expected record using the correlated Gaussian method.”

Unless the correlated Gaussian method can be used to predict how many points Pythagoras would score if defended in the post by Archimedes, that’s baloney. In sports, players make their own luck.

Would this system say Florida had bad luck in 1999 losing narrowly in the NCAA Regional semifinals to Gonzaga? That wasn’t bad luck, it was a matter of Casey Calvary flying to the rim like an airborne Ninja for the winning tip.

Would UCLA complain about bad luck in the 2023 national semifinals when GU’s Jalen Suggs netted a near-halfcourt, buzzer-beater? Not bad luck at all.

It was because Suggs had prepared for that situation so many times that he confessed afterward that he was even prepared, when he made that shot, to run to the scorers’ table and jump up and celebrate.

Preparation. Perfect execution. Timely playmaking. Those are the things that make the difference. Saint Mary’s had it for 40 minutes.

It’s not just the Zags facing serious questions at this point. Kansas was ranked No. 1 in the preseason polls and is now 18-9 and sixth in the Big 12.

Almost as much as wins and losses, discussions regarding Gonzaga’s team this season have been about the vast difference between their competitive floor and ceiling.

Seven previous losses and inexplicable late stumbles have lowered the expected floor, while stretches of explosive offense against quality teams have raised the roof beams to elite level.

So, the Zags have been playing in a tall room this season.

At this point, they’re doing nothing but looking up at the Saint Mary’s Gaels.