Changing of the guard: P-mac finds new home

Of the many ways of tracking the evolution of Gonzaga basketball, the new favorite seems to be the high-profile recruit. The Bulldogs are getting them now – one recruiting service ranked this season’s incoming class as the 11th best nationally, for whatever that’s worth.

Then there’s the flipside: the high-profile departing transfer.

The Zags had one of those for the first time this year.

The basketball promise of Pierre Marie Altidor-Cespedes went mostly unfulfilled at Gonzaga, and he recognized it, too. So at the end of the 2007 season, he took the change-of-scenery approach to jump-starting his game – though as might be expected with the player Spokane came to know as “P-mac,” the move came with an unexpected twist.

His college degree.

Altidor-Cespedes is now the starting point guard at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va., and he’s able to play immediately because he was grandfathered in on a little-used and since-repealed bit of NCAA legislation that allowed graduated players with a year’s eligibility remaining to transfer to a new school without having to sit out a season.

Odder still in his case was that he was able to graduate from Gonzaga in just three years – he never redshirted.

“It was a couple of things,” he said. “I came up with some credits (from high school) in Canada that counted toward my degree. And because Gonzaga required us to be there for both summer sessions, I took advantage of enough classes to make more progress. It wasn’t planned or anything, but that’s how it worked out.”

No, if anything, Altidor-Cespedes planned on playing all four years at GU – and in an increasingly prominent role.

But after starting 31 games as a sophomore – including a 17-point performance at Pepperdine and a game-winning shot in the regular-season finale at home against USF – his production slipped and his playing time with it. Matt Bouldin moved into his starting spot at midseason last year, and in the season’s last nine games Altidor-Cespedes played just 61 minutes and scored a mere 10 points.

“At the end of last year, I felt it was time for me to move on and take a different direction in basketball,” he said, “just because of the way my game had been going at Gonzaga. I felt from my freshman to sophomore year I made some good improvement, but not much from sophomore to junior year. It was time for me to go.”

In addition, he has always seen himself as a point guard – “and I wanted to give myself a chance to do that before I finished my college career.”

That obviously wasn’t going to occur at GU, where Jeremy Pargo took over the position last season – and will probably play it upward of 39 minutes a game this year.

The Zags recently have had a couple of other transfers surface elsewhere as Division I starters – Jimmy Tricco for two years at Duquesne and Dustin Villepigue at UNLV after a stop in junior college. Calum MacLeod, the 7-footer from New Zealand, is now a backup at Valparaiso.

But never has a player who started so many games – 49 – left the Gonzaga program before exhausting his eligibility.

It wasn’t a decision made without some angst. He was, after all, leaving a Top 25 program with probable entrée into the NCAA tournament every year. He had formed all the usual attachments since coming to Spokane from his home in Montreal.

“It was really difficult,” Altidor-Cespedes said. “I was very comfortable with everything there – the university life, friends, the team. It was hard to leave people I was so comfortable with. But at the end of the day, the people who care about me will stay in touch regardless.”

And some of the anxiety was dispelled by finding a place where he was both needed and wanted.

First-year Marshall coach Donnie Jones had recruited Altidor-Cespedes as an assistant at the University of Florida. He was also taking over a program with no veteran point guard.

Timing and circumstance both seemed perfect – until Altidor-Cespedes severely sprained an ankle in the waning minutes of Marshall’s season-opening win over Pikeville. He missed the next four games, got some spot duty in a loss at East Tennessee State and returned to the starting lineup in a romp over Rio Grande – in which he, typically, scored sparingly (just two points on four shots) but equaled his Gonzaga career high with seven assists. He had five assists, no turnovers and seven points in a pre-Christmas win over Princeton.

“It’s been pretty challenging,” he said. “Right now my job is not to focus on myself but on helping my teammates do what they have to do. I have to make sure I keep everyone motivated and involved.”

And, yes, keep himself looking ahead.

“I don’t think I’ll ever really let go of Gonzaga,” he said, “no matter what happens. I’ll always have a soft spot for the program and all the great experiences I had there.”