Postgame Victory Thread: Gonzaga defeats Saint Mary's

Don’t expect SMC to shoot 34% next time they face Zags. Zags played great, Gaels played horrible. Good win nonetheless.

bench produced just enough, Dower contributed; but the starters stepped up.

Sacre, Harris, Pangos, & Bell are the key to how far we go into March Madness.

Gonzaga needs to answer this victory with another top effort against LMU as they are hungry; they the Zags, St. Mary’s, & BYU the next three so they will be focused.

GU IS GOING INTO MARCH.

What I didn’t like:

10-19 from the line. THATS IT.

What I liked:
+10 in rebounding
Only 11 Turnovers
WCC officiating, still trying to figure out this whole physical style of basketball, but at least they are making an effort. Example Waldows flob, clearly a flop the ref was so excited that he accidently blew the whistle knowing Waldow flopped, and called a blocking foul, he should have just let Big Rob Dunk on him. (As long as he doesn’t cock it back and get blocked from behind)

What I loved:

Passing out of double teams effectively
Guards taking it to the rim
Stout Defense( That I believe started with the BYU game just a bad stretch of unlucky basketball in the first half)
Guards hitting Contested three point shots.

WHAT WAS EPIC.

THE KENNEL WAS EPIC. INSANE, AWESOME, THE BEST ITS EVER BEEN. INSANE ENVIRONMENT.

Close your eyes and repeat after me, “The regular season championship streak is meaningless.” Now that we have resolved that, let’s get down to business! It is now like a golf tournament. You can only control what you are doing. It’s not a contact sport. If the opponent makes birdies, oh well, out of your control. Control what we can control. Obviously win out in the regular season and batten down the hatches for a rubber game with SMC in Vegas.
Listen to this hilarious scenario: SMC wins the regular season, limps into the NCAA’s with consecutive losses to us and we end up with a better seed in the tourney than they do. Hello Randy- better get your AD to schedule somebody. Besides hating on SMC- keep it up Zags- let’s roar into the post season!
One more thing: anyone think home court is more important than ever before. I tried to start a conversation on this weeks ago. Every one of these big games in the WCC have been resounding victories. Have you ever seen that before? (reason: teams shoot more 3’s. Can’t shoot as well on the road?) Congratulations Zags. Only got 4 hours sleep last night.

Great game, especially at the end when we pulled away from them. It was nice to see SMC become lifeless towards the end after what they did to us down there. And I’m glad to see the students didn’t storm the court. Total amateur hour.
My only complaint, and it’s not much since we won, but I wish we had seen more of Dower in the 2nd half. It really seems like the WCC has no answer for him right now. He almost scores at will when he’s in.
Now hopefully this team can keep up the intensity. They’re going to have to win out to play close to home. Your fans want to see you in Portland! (even if some of us are thousands of miles away on the east coast!)

The obvious…
Sacre played a nice game…setting up deep and converting shots he should make and strong post defense.
Pangos – Playing off the ball seems to get him going. Like most teams, hitting a few 3’s really energizes them.
GBJ – strong. When he starts looking for his shot over the top of the screen, he’s gonna find another level for this team.
Harris – I’m most impressed with his improved defense/rebounding.

BUT…last night Guy Edi was the difference in my mind. SMC goes as Dellavedova goes. Not taking anything from GBJ (he played him tough too), but Edi was in his shorts and Dellavedova got very few open looks from 3.

That said…will someone please introduce Mr. Edi to the free throw line…a few hundred times a day! With his slashing style, he’s going to be on the line alot and needs to convert.

Nice game Zags! I have to admit I didn’t see it coming.

As a 2008 alum, I think this was the most exciting game for me since I was a student in the Kennel. The team played better defense (against a good-scoring team) than I’ve seen a long time. If you were to tell me that GU would hold St. Mary’s to 59 points, I would never have believed it. I credit that to Few using several guys to harass Dellevadova and overall great team defense—Holt was held scoreless, Steindl had only one 3 and Rob Jones had only 8 points on an atrocious night from the floor. I really have to give some credit to Elias for the latter, early in the game he came out and denied Jones twice—I think this set the tone for the whole game.

On offense, I think they took it to a whole other level. Did anyone actually see some of Sacre’s post moves? He actually caught the ball, made a quick and strong move, and scored. The one move that really stood out to me was when he took an entry pass in the second half and Steindl was coming over to double team. Instead of waiting for him to get there, Rob took a power step into the key and made a jump hook. It all seemed to happen so fast (in Sacre speed) that I couldn’t believe it. For those of who want to see what I’m talking about, check out the ESPN highlight video. He is also passing out of the double team when it comes, again a big improvement. He still has a lot of work to do—in my opinion he over-analyzes things, he just needs to establish position, take the entry pass and immediately go into his move—but last night was huge.

I don’t have anything to add to what has been said about KP and GBJ, other than I’m excited to see their careers blossom at GU.

The only things I didn’t like about last night was the free-throw shooting (I’m looking at you Edi) and Stockton’s TO’s. Stockton has got to a better a job of playing within himself, when he does that he is an excellent distributor. But at other times, he seems to think he is a PG that needs to drive to the basket or make a difficult, high-risk pass. Just stop that David, play the fundamental ball that got you on the floor in the first place.

Concerning our championship streak, if it ends, I will still be proud of this team. Honestly, did we think they would lose only two conference games? I didn’t. Besides, if the streak ends, it will end more because of St. Mary’s than because of us. They are a legitimately good team and I would rather lose to a worthy adversary than choke away a victory against sub-par competition.

Sorry, don’t want to beat a dead horse here, but I still don’t get how St. Mary’s is ranked #13 (before the loss last night). If Gonzaga had played the same schedule as the Gaels and had the same record, they would lucky to be ranked 23rd, let along 13th. If St. Mary’s wants to be considered an elite mid-major program, they have to up the difficulty factor in their schedule. Other then Gonzaga and Baylor, they haven’t played anyone in my opinion.

and was sitting next to whoever sang the national anthem. she said that everyone was freaking out and thought that he was a big deal, but she had no idea who he was. Does anyone know who sang?