Demetri Goodson is the worst GU player that I have witnessed in my four years at Gonzaga. His offensive game is non-existent. In fact, it is crippling to the rest of the team. Zach, I know that you continue to defend him, but his play has been indefensible. His turnovers really screw up the rhythm out of this team. Tonight we saw perfect examples of it. His palming violation and his five second call both show us that he lacks the necessary basketball skill to be a successful player. He is an incredible athlete. His quickness and agility are undeniable. But his free-throw shooting, high turnover rate, and non-existent three point shooting make him a huge liability on the court. He should receive far less playing time. I am glad to see him not receive any minutes in crunch time. Kong and Arop both are smarter players than Goodson. Goodson needs to fix his game by sitting on the bench and watching how a well executed offense is supposed to look.

but Sacre did fine. Meech is terrible. He always runs down the baseline, jumps in the air and hangs himself out to dry. He just does profoundly stupid things too much, and you can tell the guys don’t like it when he’s out there on the offensive end. He needs to be a defensive specialist until he becomes a competent shooter.

If you payed attention the times when they made there runs were IMMEDIATELY once he got put back in the game. I know lots of people around here praise his D, but I’m sick of hearing that because I’m watching every minute and I can’t remember the last time I thought, “Meech is playing good D right now.” He lets guys blow by him almost every play and then rides him with his hip (which should be a foul every time and is called half the time).

Additionally he’s an offensive black hole. He can’t shoot at all. He can’t play in the half-court offense with or without the ball. Basically his only, and I mean only, positive right now is that he’s Jeremy Pargo light when he can quickly penetrate on pseudo-fast breaks. That’s it.

He literally is the 10th or 11th best player on the team right now depending on if you think GJ should play more than him. Grant has a whopping 2 minutes over the past 4 games and he’s still far better than Meech. For goodness sake, (I’m shocked that it’s come to this but) Will is clearly better than him right now.

Teams that want to break into the Top 10 and want to make a deep run in March do not play their 10th best player heavy minutes, if at all.

1. Sacre’s hard foul on Man Boobs was my favorite play of the season so far. I was livid that it was originally called flagrant. That’s a good old-fashioned hard foul. So awesome.

2. For the 10,000th time in the past 4 years the Pargo play was ran before half despite working only twice ever. EVER. (And yes, I’ve watched every game over that time and kept track.) It’s the worst thing about Mark Few’s coaching.

3. Speaking of coaching here’s a big positive in my book from tonight (shocking I know), we ran the Heytvelt alley-oop in-bounds play! Some of you may recall we ran this play multiple times 3 seasons ago and it was always devastating (especially considering most of GU’s in-bounds plays are crappy crappy crap crap). Elias rode his guy like a pony on that play. WOOOOOOOT!!!

4. Give it up for Will Foster! He played great tonight. Actually, I have no clue why we didn’t use him in the second half to D up Man Boobs. Sacre’s D on him was bad and Will was giving him fits in the first half.

5. The no-call when Bouldin got hacked-and-a-half with a few minutes left was the first time a foul was so much of a mindboggling no-call that the announcer called it a foul and then was speechless “uhhhh” as play continued. “Bouldin drives to the whole and get fouled…uhhhhh…apparently they didn’t call it.”

6. When I looked at Gray’s line after the game it was one of those double take box score moments because you don’t recall the player getting anywhere near what he got. Wait…he scored 14 and had 13 assists? WHEN?!? I love it when that’s the case.

7. I know I’m gonna break some news here…but Elias is pretty athletic. I like him.

Here’s my $0.02:

Harris I didn’t think I could be more impressed with him, but last night really proved me wrong. He was amazing.

Gray Talk about being up for the challenge! I agree that this was one of his best games, if not his best. I just loved the way he looked and played all night.
 
Foster I didn’t have much of an opinion on Foster before this game other than, holy crap he’s tall! But after last night’s game, I was really impressed with how he did.

Goodson This is the first time where I thought that Goodson should not be the starting point guard. Last year (prior to the WKentucky game) I was excited at the thought of him as the point guard this year. Now, I think he’d be most effective coming off the bench.

Free Throws More than the TOs by this team, the free throw shooting is what really gets me. With the exception of last year, I can’t think of a Gonzaga team where I didn’t expect the FTs to be made.

I’m not going to spend more time reiterating what’s already been said (Elias is the Übermensch, Gray had an awesome game, etc). I really took three things from this game.

Bol Kong is a very unselfish player mainly because he has difficulty making his own shot. Unless he has an open three or mid-range jumper, it’s not his first inclination to throw the ball up. I assumed, considering all the hype, that he’d try shooting in all sorts of coverage from anywhere on the floor and we’d have to do whatever we could to prevent him from shooting every time he gets a look. I think part of his tentativeness comes from his reluctance to drive and attack the rim. I hope few works with Bol a little, and conditions him to put the ball on the floor more and be a little selfish from time to time.

Manny Arop needs more playing time! I don’t know who that time will come at the expense of, but he is such a well-rounded player and threat that I strongly believe he should be starting in Meech’s place. His ball control, court vision, passing, rebounding, and shooting are all very strong. He’s a team player yet not afraid to take it to the rim, or launch a mid-range jumper. Arop is quick, but not out of control. He is big, but not prohibitively so for a point guard or ball handler. I know it’s a bit of a crazy notion, but I would really like Few to have him become a more integral part of the offense. He wouldn’t have to be a true point guard with Bouldin and Gray on the floor as well, but I think it should at least be looked into.

Few has done a number on KO. I find it hilarious that whenever he is defending anyone, he is TERRIFIED to get a touch foul. Also, KO has really adapted the sort of shots he takes, and recently his shooting percentage has gone through the roof. Sure, he’s not scoring as much, but he’s rebounding solidly and not fouling out early. I give full credit to Few for KO’s continued development.

Foster impressed me. When Foster made that pivot and up-and-under move to the basket, although the shot bounced out, I told my wife that I wish he had played like that last year. She added, “or three years ago”.

You’ve got o admit, even though it stings, Samhan is a great center. He has a very lithe and gentle fade-away jumper that showed me how greaceful he really is, for a heavy guy. He scored a TON of points in the second half. Few remarked that we didn’t guard him very good. Well, everyone he faces has that problem.

Sacre’s hammer foul that made the highlite replays wasn’t all that hard. Samhan acted out the part pretty good. And speaking of Sacre, what little offense he did have was brilliant. It left me aching for more.

Dellavadova vs. Grey. The story next year.

I was pleased with the TEAM. Last night was one of the best efforts this year. They LOOKED like a top 25 team, feeding each other, setting picks, their half court offense was at a higher level. I seriously thought that we would play catch-up all night and maybe send it into overtime at the end, similar to the Cincy game, but it wasn’t like that. It was like watching an NBA team, confident and skilled. If they haven’t peaked yet, then they can get scary good – this year!

I wonder if the 7 people voting for Daye want their votes back?

How many points did we score in this game?

Uhhh 89.

I think this is an acceptable performance for any college team. Remember, it IS a Team Sport. Few’s offense takes what the Defense gives it. Those that know me know I am not a great Meech fan but . . .Meech didn’t have a great game because . . . well it looked to me like they were packing the middle most of the night. Meech is not a great outside shooter and he let better shooters take the outside shots. That’s not a bad night for Meech it’s a smart night on the offensive end. If you want to pick on Meech you might want to ask how St. Mary’s got those 82 points? Did anyone see Meech getting embarrassed on D or being scored on regularly?

I didn’t think so. Solid game for Meech.

Sacre: Might have had his best game of the year so far. We saw him play with a little fire for a change. He’s a work in progress. Personally I don’t think his defense was all that bad — not great but not bad.

Foster looked pretty good too.

IMO

Great game played by two great teams — both playing at a high level. This is the kind of basketball I live for. Hats off to all the players and coaches involved in the game. The fact that GU won just makes it sweeter.

Demetri Goodson is who he is. He isn’t a Kalin Lucas, Sheron Collins, Kemba Walker, Scottie Reynolds, John Wall etc. We have to accept Meech for what he is and he needs to accept himself and the role that he needs to play on this team. The thing that scares me the most is that I haven’t seen any improvement. We are now into conference play and he is still making the same mistakes he was making 2 months ago. Everyone knows he struggles shooting the ball so what he needs to be able to do is turn into more of a playmaker rather than a scorer. He is the best defender on this team along with Steven and will be a critical part of this team come tourney time. His defense will be a major factor in how much of a run this team can make. Who else on this team can guard the elite PG’s in the country? Meech is a vital part of this team whether you like it or not. What happens if we are matched up against Kentucky in the Sweet 16? I know of one person on this team who would be able to guard John Wall and that guy is Demetri Goodson. Everyone needs to calm down and look at the big picture here. This Gonzaga team is now 13-3 and is an Elias Harris ejection and a classic inexperienced meltdown away from 15-1!!! How can you complain about that? Just keep adding to the Win column and win the way we should win. No playing down to the competition this year. I would like to see some improvement though, just a little something that let’s me know we’re continuing to get better and heading in the right direction.

Good comments! My first post to this site. 3 thoughts.

1. While Will Foster was in the game, GU was +10 points. Nice to see there was no drop off with the back up center in the game against good competition.
2. I switched to the Pepperdine game on ESPNU a couple of times. It looked like 2 high school teams in slow motion compared to GU/SMC!!
3. How about the GU women???! They are awesome! Go watch them play if you haven’t yet!

…for what it’s worth. As mentioned in earlier posts, Meech is the quickest Zag defender and his good defense definitely adds stock to the entire team. Just having his presence as a defender creates turnovers, hurried shots, etc. He may never reach the level of the leagues best shooting guards, since he’s never quite displayed the ability to drive and dish, or drive to the hole against good defense. But, he will be a great spark on defense and move the ball on the break and play hard-nosed ball in critical situations. I was at the St Mary’s game and my thoughts are you’d be hard-pressed to find a guard that could keep in front of either of the Gaels guards when they drive. So, I guess it’s just a pity that Meech happens to lack the incredible talent of many of the talent-laden Zags. Few realizes that, and is beginning to use the bench very effectively, and sit Meech when he realizes that a change is needed. Effective bench play = NCAA tournament dominance.

Great game on Thurs, and the Gaels fans were really great even to the few of us in the crowd sporting Zags shirts/jerseys. This venue is a must-see if you ever get the chance.