clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Gonzaga utterly dismantles BYU, 102-68

Senior Night like wow.

NCAA Basketball: Brigham Young at Gonzaga James Snook-USA TODAY Sports

The Gonzaga Bulldogs were not having any of the BYU Cougar’s shenanigans on Senior Night this time around, sending BYU back to Provo with their heads held as high as a newborn baby can, 102-68.

BYU was able to keep it rather competitive for the first seven minutes of the game, and then the wheels absolutely fell off. After pulling within five, Zach Norvell hit two consecutive three pointers (he finished with 25 points) to give the Zags an 11-point lead, one they wouldn’t ever look back from.

If you missed this game, borrow someone’s cable credentials, hop onto Watch ESPN, and give this one a whirl, because you would be hard pressed to find a Gonzaga team having more fun than the Zags did tonight. The fact that it also came against BYU, the party crashers of previous Senior Nights in 2015 and 2017, made it all the more sweeter.

Things got so bad during the game, Jay Drew, the Salt Lake Tribune beat writer for BYU accidentally let his 15-year-old son onto his Twitter account (or else I can’t figure out why this was actually tweeted).

Where do we start, and more importantly, where do we end? Josh Perkins, in his final game in front of the Spokane faithful, was absolutely perfect, finishing with 21 points and seven assists. He was almost overshadowed by Rui Hachimura, who most likely also played his final game in front of the hometown crowd, and finished with 23 points and eight rebounds.

The highlight of the night, however, came from senior guard Geno Crandall, who although only with Gonzaga for one year, is instantly etched in all of our hearts forever when he destroyed the physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental body of Nick Emery.

You can literally make a Sportscenter top 10 highlight reel just from Gonzaga this evening, and the BYU coaching staff took note. The assistant coaches received a technical foul and head coach Dave Rose joined the party on his own, pre-empting the students by storming the court after this Corey Kispert block.

Sorry Dave, it was all ball.

TJ Hawes and Yoeli Childs each tried their best for BYU, leading the Cougars for 18 points. But there was no hope here. Gonzaga was running the ball up the court with such ease it was hard to figure out if the Zags are truly this good or if BYU is somehow actually this bad.

The Zags finished scoring a rather nutty 1.31 points per possession. When you think about it, the Zags best 120 minutes of basketball have come against Saint Mary’s and BYU (x2), a rather impressive feat considering those two teams are supposed to be the other top dogs of the WCC. This year, Gonzaga has made them look like the piles of vomit your dog makes after it eats its own vomit the first time around.

Gonzaga was the most fun basketball team to watch tonight, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. And if the team continues to play like it did tonight, March, and the beginning of April, is going to be a freaking party.