Frahm Ignites Zags; Gu Cruises To 6-1 Sophomore Nets Five 3s Before Reserves Take Over In 97-51 Win Over Chicago State

Richie Frahm shot lights-out in the first half and the reserves closed the doors late as Gonzaga University cruised to a 97-51 nonleague men’s basketball victory over Chicago State Monday night.

Frahm, a 6-foot-5 sophomore guard, hit 5 of 6 3-pointers and got all of his team-leading 15 points in the first half as GU mounted a 60-24 lead at the break.

Before the second half was 5 minutes old, the Zags led 67-30 and coach Dan Monson turned it over to the reserves.

“Richie came out and hit some big jumpers,” Monson said. “He’s shooting the ball so well. He’s open, but he still has to hit the shots.

“He’s a big reason we went from 10 (ahead) to 30 in a manner of minutes.”

It gave Monson the luxury of getting deep into the bench, and he was happy with the results. The reserves scored 51 points, led by Casey Calvary’s 12 and 11 from Doug Griffin.

“Guys off the bench came in and played hard,” Monson said. “We had guys who hadn’t been playing a lot of minutes … make a big contribution.

“We said at halftime we knew we were going to win the game, but we needed to keep playing hard and work on some things, and we did that.”

Monson was also happy with the effort of the starters as Gonzaga improved to 6-1 against a winless (0-7) opponent.

“We were happy our kids didn’t take them for granted,” he said. “We’ve been on the road a little bit and we’re tired, but we didn’t play flat and tired. We sucked it up and played hard as a team.

“We jumped on them early, didn’t let them in the game, and didn’t let the crowd get in the game.”

Gonzaga, which hit on 52 percent of its 3-point attempts, also got 11 points and 10 rebounds from Bakari Hendrix and 10 points from Mike Leasure.

Jermine Hicks was high for Chicago State with 16 points.

Gonzaga returns home for a couple of “neighborhood” games later this week. The Bulldogs are at Washington State on Thursday night, then entertain the University of Idaho on Saturday night. Both are at 7.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: COMING UP Gonzaga plays at Washington State Thursday night at 7 o’clock.