Weekly Zag Briefing

We finally have a good feel for the caliber of this team after PK80, and that’s reflected in the words written about the Zags around the interwebs following Feast Week: \

• Ken Pomeroy took a deep dive into Gonzaga’s defensive numbers (subscription required) and he liked what he saw. Pomeroy doesn’t put much credence into the predictive value of a team’s “3-point defense,” but he does write that a team’s early season “2-point defense” is a good indicator of how the team’s defense will perform over the course of the year. As you may know, Gonzaga is currently on an impressive streak of 30 games in which it has forced opponents to shoot lower than 50% on 2-point attempts (the next closest team is 12).
• Also at The Athletic, Seth Davis did a mailbag answering questions from Twitter and he walked back his “all in on Saint Mary’s” position ceding that even a so-called “down year” for Gonzaga is still more than enough to hold the WCC. We tried to tell you, Seth.
• Mark Few arrived at the same conclusion we did after PK80, Gonzaga can play with the best teams in college basketball.
• Jeff Eisenberg dished out grades for each of the PK80 participants, and the Zags walked away with a respectable B+.
• Our friends over at Mid-Major Madness updated their mid-major rankings and rightfully returned Gonzaga to the top spot after inexplicably posting Saint Mary’s there until the Gaels’ face-plant at the Wooden Legacy.
• Will Maupin also returned Gonzaga to the top of his WCC Power Rankings for Mid-Major Madness and named Josh Perkins and Johnathan Williams to his WCC Team of the Week. San Diego has snuck up to #2 as it remains undefeated to start the year.
• Not directly about Gonzaga, but Jeff Eisenberg examined the potential fallout for Saint Mary’s after it dropped two games at the Wooden Legacy...Randy Bennett only has himself to blame.
• In case you haven’t seen the clip from the post game presser after the win over Texas, there’s some real gold in there and I encourage you to check it out (couldn’t embed it here for some reason so you’ll have to follow the link). And in case you’re not sure if they’re being serious, Josh Perkins is legit a robe guy. Here’s the visual proof: