Gonzaga sits atop West Coast Conference Preseason Poll
by Zach Bell on Oct 22, 2009 12:26 PM PDT
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With seven newcomers and only one returning starter from a season ago, 2009-10 is expected to be a season where the conference championship could really be up for grabs. Today, the coaches of the West Coast Conference gathered to vote on the preseason poll and all-conference team. Many Gonzaga fans anticipated a new team sitting atop the rankings. The Portland Pilots are loaded with veteran leadership and return 12 players from their remarkably successful season a year ago including the best point guard in the conference, TJ Campbell. With that being said, the coaches decided that Portland's veteran team wasn't enough to put them ahead of Gonzaga and their nine consecutive regular season titles. Here is a look at how the coaches voted (first places votes in parentheses):
2009-10 WCC Men's Basketball Preseason Coaches Poll
1. Gonzaga - 48 (6)
2. Portland - 44 (2)
3. Saint Mary's - 34
4. San Francisco - 26
Santa Clara - 26
6. San Diego - 21
7. Pepperdine - 13
8. Loyola Marymount - 12
Two coaches voted Portland as the number one team in the conference, one of which was obviously Gonzaga coach Mark Few as coaches can't vote for their own team. Saint Mary's is definitely a solid choice at #3. They have one of the best big men in the conference in Omar Samhan and Wayne Hunter is a very solid WCC player. Four through six is basically anyone's game. Each team has one outstanding player they base their teams around. USF has probably the best player in the league, Dior Lowhorn, Santa Clara has Kevin Foster, and San Diego has Brandon Johnson who returns from injury. Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount both are pretty solidly locked in at seven and eight although Pepperdine does have my favorite non-Gonzaga player in the conference, Keion Bell.
The coaches also got together to vote on a preseason all-conference team and here's what they came up with:
2009-10 WCC Men's Basketball Preseason All-Conference
Keion Bell, PEP
Matt Bouldin, GON
T.J. Campbell, POR
Jared DuBois, LMU
Kevin Foster, SCU
Steven Gray, GON
Brandon Johnson, USD
Dior Lowhorn, USF
Nik Raivio, POR
Omar Samhan, SMC
No real surprises here. It's cool that every team in the conference has at least one representative. Gonzaga and Portland are the only two programs with two representatives. The conference player of the year will probably come from the regular season champion so I'd put money that it is either Matt Bouldin or TJ Campbell.
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Thanks
Just great stuff to read and watch. I’m really looking forward to anyones posts after this weekend at the Kennel! Being over here and limited to travel at times I so much appreciate the info and opinions provided by ALL. I’ve only seen the Zag’s live 3 times in 13 years but always look forward to critique from the posters.
Thanks for the great job!
Well Said Mike
I’ve only seen the Zags live once. Senior night for Pendo and Kuso. I Sat three rows behind the basket! Sort of next to Pendo’s posse. Anyways I also look forward to reading these clips and info posted by all! I’m a former Washingtonian that now resides in Montana, even though I have the Fox package and all the ESPN networks, it still seems to not be enough! This site makes up for that however and helps ease our “ZAG ADDICTION”
glen mccloud
Down year?
I was surprised that you said many Zags fans expected to see a new team atop the polls.
I understand expecting a down year, but that would be a disaster if we didn’t hold down this conference. I actually like our experience and scoring in our backcourt so much that I like this team better than last year’s. Last years team was a bunch of BIG heads wanting to up their average. Pargo disappointed, Heytvelt vanished offensively when we weren’t playing trash WCC teams, and Daye is the biggest team killing crybaby we have had. So good riddance to Daye, and losing Pargo and Heytvelt shouldn’t kill us because now we have an established pecking order, which every team needs as we learned first hand last year. This team will be inexperienced but in terms of team play there’s nowhere to go but up from last season. I can see this team could be less talented, but what good is talent w/o a flow to your offense?
Well if they are going to catch us, this is the year -- LOL
I’m more than a little surprised Portland didn’t get the nod in this poll. We have more question marks than anything else and Portland returns a very very good team. They will be tough.
Guess that Gonzaga mystique carries more weight than I thought.
mjc
mjc
Exactly my thought
As a Gonzaga fan, I guess I did expect us to be #1 but I thought it’d be closer and to be honest I wouldn’t have been surprised if the Pilots were #1. Anytime you lose four of your top six players with Pargo, Daye, Downs, and Heytvelt and then a tremendous glue guy and serviceable player in Ira Brown, you expect a fall off but it is clear that the coaches know what Gonzaga’s recruiting class is capable of.
It is also remarkable that Portland returns 12 players from a season ago. That’s unheard of typically! Reveno is a first-rate coach and the Raivio/Campbell combination is just sensational.
It’s gonna be a fun year.
The Slipper Still Fits - SB Nation's home for the Gonzaga Bulldogs!
Formerly BuffZag
Bol Kong for President!
Portland
Come on, have we forgot how bad this conference has been outside of GU and Patty Mills? Portland is good, for the WCC. I just don’t see it being close because SMC is nothing w/o Patty and Portland won’t beat us twice, and with the hype these games will get I don’t think they will beat us at all. I guess if you didn’t watch any games and therefore saw Daye as a positive influence on our team last year, losing him looks huge. But I think we added by subtracting, so our two best offensive players (Bouldin and Daye) can do their thing, without slipping in Austin’s tears or having Pargo turn the ball over.
Let’s see… they beat the Pac-10 champs (@ UP) last season, gave an experienced GU squad a run for their money in Portland, and were the 2nd best shooting team in the country. Yeah, terrible team. I’d look for UP to beat at least 1 if not 2 or 3 Pac-10 teams this coming season. They’ll be tough for GU, especially at home. Did you watch GU bball before last year? GU has lost to a lot worse teams than Portland in WCC play. All it takes is a couple of slips and UP, the veteran team, to not have those slips.
BTW, yeah, GU should never ever recruit near-lottery picks like Daye again. Guys with that kind of skill never do anything but hurt your team and stop them from winning the games they should dominate.
by Nevtelen on Oct 22, 2009 11:42 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Rec'd
Couldn’t have said it any better myself.
The Slipper Still Fits - SB Nation's home for the Gonzaga Bulldogs!
Formerly BuffZag
Bol Kong for President!
Curious?
Why don’t you think Portland has a chance to beat GU this year? Is that based on your evaluation of their skill level as a team and their play? I haven’t seen our 9 new players (including Rob S’s 1 year) play together in the GU mold yet but I would guess that molding those 9 with the other 4 will be a real challenge for quite awhile this year. I believe they will be really good though, eventually! Because of that reason, I think GU is primed to get beat. I have seen Portland play with the same team for 3 years and they are GOOD! Having players in your system for 3 years straight, with NONE leaving, winning 19 games, including the UW, then coming back the next year with exactly the same team, speaks volumes to me about how competitive they could be! I think I get the your point on last years team. If your talking about chemestry instead of talent you might have some points there. However, last years talent vs this years talent is night and day in favor of last years, AT THIS TIME. That could change in time. Austin…………..tough guy to coach……..I’ll take all the Austin’s you can bring me, I’ll take those chances if I were coaching. Talented first round pick? You kidding me? Let’s see, did I miss anything? Oh yeah, did you mean Bouldin and Gray instead of “Daye”? If so, I’m with you there.
UP/Daye
mikesequim I’ll assume that was directed at me, even though I barely understand your last sentence there. I didn’t say Portland didn’t have a chance to beat us. Did anyone say that on this thread? I couldn’t find us. I said UP wouldn’t beat us ***TWICE***. Read a little more closely. It will take someone beating us TWICE (two times) to dethrone us. Every couple years it’s a new team that’s gonna take us down (Pepperdine then SC then SMC) and it just hasn’t happened. Didn’t UW lose to Portland in the early non-conference? Take a look at the two schools’ nonconf schedules and tell me UW was even close to as jacked for that game as UP. UP’s biggest game vs a virtual practice in UW’s mind, UP won, but they wouldn’t have hacked it w/ UW in tourney time when UW was taking them seriously.
Portland is legit, but this conference is so inferior that they will get caught up in their own hype at some point, just like we always do, and won’t have the standout talent to get away with it like we have.
Are you saying that Daye had a more positive influence last year than Bouldin and Gray? That’s how I understood that last little piece. Please clarify before I tell you how ridiculous that is, if it IS what you meant. Austin was a first round pick as a result of a GARBAGE draft class(i.e. Austin Daye) and our contract with ESPN.
Soundpound
Yeah, it was at you. you said, “and with the hype these games will get I don’t think they will beat us at all”. Your sentence seems to be referring to PU just prior to that, isn’t it? I read your post VERY CLOSLEY. Maybe you just didn’t read your post as closley as I did, I don’t know but you said it not me!!!!! As for the UW losing to Portland, I was there for the game and I can assure you the UW Coaching staff didn’t consider it a “Practice” and were quite “Serious”. They got their lunches handed to them by UP. By the way, just curious, what makes a loss for you in a game? Could you provide some insight into that? Most of us hooper’s and the General Public use the Final Score as a good indicator, however, there could be other possibilities, I just can’t think of any but I’m open to some as is any other coach who has ever lost a game..
Regarding Portland’s talent, you answered my first question in my post to you. Thanks. As far as Austin goes, I simply disagree with your evaluation of his talent. No, I didn’t say he had a more positive influence than Steven or Matt. YOU referenced (Bouldin and Daye) in your first post and the way you wrote the post I figured you didn’t mean to reference “Daye” but Gray? Maybe you should re-read that one too! Austin was a first round pick in the NBA because Detroit took him……….Period. It appears you obviously didn’t like Austin, your choice……I did, my choice! I didn’t like some of his antics but I would recruit every Austin Daye who was willing to come to GU, thats all. Finally, as far as last year’s chemistry, it was bad! I agree with you on that part only. However, it wasn’t just Austin, IMO. Soundpound, please re-read my post. I seriously asked you some questions about Portland and why you didn’t think they would beat GU? I was only responding to your post. Now if you miss-typed your post with a different thought, OK but if you didn’t, it’s absolute that you said what you said in your post and I “Quoted”. Sorry.
Oops
Yeah the Daye-Gray thing was a typo by me, and I misread it again after reading your post,. Guess I should put down the waterpipe and pay a little more attention, wow My bad. You’re right.
I don’t like Daye, you do. That can be a different discussion if need be.
Moving on to UP…
Looks like they have everyone coming back, but in a conference as weak as ours (lets try not to argue about the quality of the WCC, it’s bad) I can’t see a team as legit until they make it to the dance. The Pilots are gonna win a lot of games, with a cupcake schedule overall. If they don’t beat Butler, Minnesota, or UCLA they are in blazing hot water for an at-large bid, like SMC last year. And they aren’t good enough to where they are a lock in all their “easy” non conference games. This is where I see UP having trouble. They have always come into the season as just another potential GU spoiler, and this year they are expected to win at least 12 WCC games. It’s a totally different mentality, now that they have something to play for themselves. There is a slight chance they get us in the WCC opener in Portland, but I don’t think they can beat us in Spokane. I really just don’t think they can handle the race with the Zags. Reveno and these guys have a good thing going on but how many times have they gone to the Dance? Or threatened to?
Returning an entire team is rare, but when it’s a team that went 9-5 in the WCC and lost to teams like EWU and Northern Colorado, how good can they really be? I think that as Zag fans we’re always a bit scared of who’s going to end our dominance of this league. UP is the next little scare, but we will win this conference again. We have guys with something to prove that aren’t going to be held back by WCC play like before, but grow through it and still win due to the lack of competition. You have a much different opinion on Portland, which I can see because UP is the next best thing to us in this conference. I don’t think they have what it takes to dethrone us, though.
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