No. 4 Gonzaga takes on Pacific in WCC tourney after lone loss (Mar 04, 2017)
By the time No. 4 Gonzaga takes the court to play Pacific in Saturday's West Coast Conference tournament quarterfinals in Las Vegas, the Bulldogs will have had seven days to stew about their one and only loss.
No longer is Gonzaga ranked No. 1. No longer is it undefeated. In fact, Pacific (11-21), which beat Pepperdine 89-84 in a first-round game on Friday, will be the team coming off a win, while the Bulldogs (29-1) are trying to rebound from a defeat.
Gonzaga has heard a lot about what last Saturday's 79-71 loss to BYU means about the quality of Bulldog basketball.
"Just a lot of people spouting a lot of different opinions," Gonzaga coach Mark Few said, according to the Spokane Spokesman Review. "From our point of view, we're all about the process and the process has led us to 29 wins. We kind of deviated from the process (against BYU)."
The Bulldogs know they will play in the NCAA tournament regardless of what they do in the conference tournament. But they are still shooting for a No. 1 seed, and would like to erase the bitter taste of the loss.
"One of the things coaches have harped on is, we've shown what we can do in 29 games," freshman Zach Collins said, per the Spokesman-Review. "We just have to get back to doing the little things and our identity. We weren't the same team against BYU. We have to get back to that toughness."
The Bulldogs handled Pacific in both regular-season meetings by nearly identical scores of 81-61 and 82-61, but the Tigers were one of just three teams to hold a second-half lead against Gonzaga this season. Back on Jan. 1 in Stockton, Calif., Pacific had an eight-point lead against the Bulldogs with 17 minutes left before Gonzaga took over.
The Tigers are feeling pretty good about themselves following their victory over Pepperdine, as they shot 53.3 percent from the field, made 8 of 15 3-pointers and had 22 assists on 32 made field goals in their highest scoring total of the season against a Division I foe.
"Tonight, I think we put it together," first-year Tigers coach Damon Stoudamire said. "Everything was clicking offensively for the first time together."
The Tigers are eager to play Gonzaga again.
"I look forward to the opportunity to just experience tomorrow night," Stoudamire said. "I tell these guys, 'Tomorrow is going to be a fun game, win, lose or draw.' We don't have anything to lose anyway. Everybody's coming to see them. If we can just hang around, then anything can happen."
Ray Bowles, the Tigers' leading scorer at 13.0 points per game, scored 26 points in Friday's win, and is looking forward to playing Gonzaga again.
"It's definitely going to be a challenge," he said. "We've played them twice. It's not like we haven't seen what they do. I think both times we played them well for about a half, and the other half we fell off a little bit. But everybody's pumped about being able to play Gonzaga again."
The Tigers will have trouble containing the Bulldogs' wealth of talent. Guard Nigel Williams Goss, who leads the team in scoring (16.3 point per game) and assists (4.8), was named the WCC player of the year this week and is joined by two Gonzaga frontcourt players, Przemek Karnowski and Johnathan Williams on the first-team all-conference squad.
Few, the WCC coach of the year, knows Saturday's game will be physical.
"They're going to beat the living daylights out of you, the way they rebound and play post defense, the way their guards come at you downhill," Few told the Spokesman Review. "The physicality they bring is something that needs to be prepared for."
If Gonzaga wins, as expected, it would play a semifinal game Sunday against the winner of Saturday's game between Santa Clara and San Francisco.
