Day after Oral Roberts
An abbreviated post with travel and a GU-Arizona preview to get to. Read on for the day-after Oral Roberts post and check back later for my
--We’ll start with Mike Hart, the junior forward who hadn’t made a 3-pointer since the 2009-2010 season. One of those came against Augustana early on and the other came in WCC play against Portland. He missed all four of his 3-point attempts last season and was 0 of 6 this season before draining one of GU’s biggest shots of the season, a trey from the wing that gave the Bulldogs a 62-57 lead with 3:20 left.
“He spent all summer shooting, all fall,” head coach Mark Few said. “He just needs to be rewarded with the lights on. Both he and Marquise are good shooters. It’s like baseball. You hit 10 line drives and they get caught and all of a sudden you look up and you’re 0 for 10. They kind of need to shoot their way out of it.”
Carter is still working on that part. He was 1 of 4 last night, the make a put-back layup, and he missed both of his 3-point attempts. He’s 1 of 11 on 3s for the season. He got pulled late in the second half after back-to-back turnovers, part of an unsightly stretch where GU had five turnovers in six possessions.
He’s keeping a positive outlook. Shortly after the game he tweeted: “Good win! Still can’t throw it in the ocean all good tho.” And later: “My head always up, just a little frustrating.”
--Turnovers have been a stumbling block for several games. The frustrating part for the coaching staff is that often they’re unforced and they’re committed against teams that don’t specialize in high-pressure defense. Oral Roberts fits into that category, but GU still had 17 turnovers that led to the Golden Eagles’ 22-12 edge in points of turnovers.
“These turnovers just come in the most bizarre fashion,” Few said. “A lot of them aren’t forced, they’re just plays at the end of a fast break or throwing the ball inbounds against a press when we have an arsenal of timeouts. We’ve been trying to tell them it’s the context. We turn it over and we have to be careful with the next few plays, but I think they’re thinking, ‘It wasn’t me, so watch this.’ We’re addressing it, but we’ve got to figure that thing out.”
--Gary Bell Jr. started for the second straight game. He had an early 3 and clutch late 3 for his six points. He also had four boards, four turnovers and two assists while playing a team-high 37 minutes. Bell Jr. also took some defensive turns on 6-6 forward Dominique Morrison. Hart and Carter also spent time defending Morrison, who had 13 points, three below his season average, on 4-of-12 shooting..
“He’s a strong player,” Bell said. “He’s an NBA prospect. I tried to make his shots tough, that’s all you can do.”
“He finds ways to get buckets,” Hart said of the ORU forward. “I don’t know how to describe it but he gets the job done.”
Carter started the second half, in place of Hart.
--Freshman forward Ryan Spangler provided a nice boost off the bench, scoring four points and grabbing three rebounds in nine minutes. His playing time had been limited – 24 minutes in four appearances. He had DNPs vs. Michigan State and Illinois, but he was ready when he got the call early in Thursday’s game, in part because the Zags were struggling on the glass.
He made a jumper from the free-throw line and helped GU turn-around the boards.
“I just have to keep practicing hard and try to earn more minutes,” he said. “When I do get in I have to be productive and be an energy guy. And once they can start trusting me a little more, maybe I’ll get a few more minutes.”
Spangler is from Blanchard, Okla., and Oral Roberts offered him a scholarship late in his freshman season of high school.
“I really liked coach (Scott) Sutton and it was close to home, but I couldn’t pass up (Gonzaga’s) offer,” he said. “There were a lot of folks at home watching (on TV). My parents had a bit of a party, 30-35 people over watching.”
Said Few: “I’ve really been disappointed in myself. I’ve been trying to get Ryan into those games because he can help us, but we’ve just been in all these gut-wrenchers and some of them have been hard matchups for him. This was a good matchup for him and he showed what he can do. And it was good to get Sam (Dower) back playing.”
STATS OF NOTE
--Elias Harris and Rob Sacre had almost identical numbers, with each having one stellar half and one so-so half. Harris’ first/second/overall: 10 points, 8 rebounds; 2 points, 2 rebounds; 12 points, 10 rebounds. Sacre: 2 points, 1 rebound; 7 points, 9 rebounds; 9 points, 10 rebounds.
--Carter’s second-half field goal was his first since the Illinois game.
--Harris went to the bench after committing his third foul with 16:28 left.
--GU’s 51.1 percent shooting was its second best of the season, trailing Illinois (53.3%).
--David Stockton had five assists but four turnovers in 20 minutes.
--Sam Dower made 6 of 7 shots en route to 12 points. He flashed his ability to put up points in a hurry, reminiscent of the latter half of last season.
QUOTES
FEW: “It was a grinder and a gut check. We beat a very good basketball team. … Once the get back home and get in their league with their toughness and physical play, especially their 3-4-5 guys, that’s an NCAA Tournament team.”
FEW: “I don’t like the timing or anything, but it does prepare us for how our league is going to be. It’s going to be different this year. We’re going to have to play a game at home, get on a plane and go play a road game or play a road game, get on a plane and come home and play.” (Referring to the unbalanced schedule with the addition of BYU).
ORU’S SCOTT SUTTON: “To win a game like this you have to make winning plays down the stretch in crunch time and they made two great shots (Hart’s and Bell Jr.’s 3s) to really allow them to pull that out.”
SUTTON: I thought we did a good job (on Sacre). Damen (Bell-Holter) was fired up. He had a lot of family here. He was tremendous early in the game and actually got Sacre in foul trouble, and then their kids off the bench came in and played great. Spangler hits a shot -- I love Ryan Spangler, we recruited him. But the kid who really hurt us was Dower. I’m not sure what he was averaging, it wasn't much more than three or four points a game, and he gets eight the first half and that really hurt us.”
