Gray puts on his own long-shot exhibition

RALEIGH, N.C. – Gonzaga’s Steven Gray let it be known early that there would be more than one sharp-shooting guard on the RBC Center court Friday.

The freshman guard from Bainbridge, Wash., deposited seven 3-pointers and scored a team-high 21 points in Gonzaga’s 82-76 NCAA men’s basketball tournament loss to Davidson, which relied on sophomore guard Stephen Curry’s 40 points to knock off the higher-seeded Bulldogs.

Gray made his first five from long distance and finished 7 of 12. He didn’t attempt a two-point field goal or a free throw. He made 6 of 7 3-pointers against Santa Clara nearly three weeks ago en route to 18 points, which was his previous high.

“That’s just the way it developed,” Gray said. “We have been working all week on finding shots off the penetration and early on Jeremy (Pargo) and Matt (Bouldin) found me open and toed up on the line.”

“His approach was great,” Bulldogs coach Mark Few said. “We really wanted to come out and let it rip.”

Gray drew the starting defensive assignment on Curry, so it wasn’t like he was getting a break at the other end of the floor. Gray played 35 minutes, his third-longest stint of the season.

“He hit numerous really difficult shots,” Gray said of Curry. “I was kind of surprised to look up at the end of the game and see he had 40. I felt like most of his shots were contested, but he was putting them in.”

Senior sendoff

As sendoffs go, this wasn’t the best for Gonzaga seniors David Pendergraft and Abdullahi Kuso, who spent the closing seconds of the loss watching from the bench.

“This isn’t how I thought it was going to end, but I’m very proud and I appreciate my time here (at Gonzaga),” Kuso said. “I kept hoping we’d pull out a miracle. When that final whistle blew, it was really tough.”

Pendergraft was seated next to freshman Austin Daye in the Zags’ locker room after the loss and was noticeably dejected.

Daye, in an effort to pick up his teammate, said he planned on getting back in the gym and working on his game as soon as possible.

“Because I want to make this guy proud,” he said, nodding toward Pendergraft, who responded by tapping Daye on the knee and saying, “You already have, buddy.”

Morrison sighting

Adam Morrison, Gonzaga’s former first-team all-American and first-round NBA draft choice of the Charlotte Bobcats, was in attendance at the game sporting longer locks than he did during his days as a Zag – along with a couple of ugly scars on his left knee.

Morrison, who underwent surgery to repair the season-ending ACL injury he suffered in an Oct. 20 exhibition game, made the two-hour drive from Charlotte to watch his former team play.

“I just got here and haven’t had time to talk to the guys,” Morrison said during halftime of the Zags’ loss to Davidson.

Morrison planned to return to Charlotte for the Bobcats’ home game today, but was hoping to return to Raleigh for the Bulldogs’ second-round game, which never materialized.

Neutral-court advantage?

Much of the pregame hype centered on the fact this game was played in Raleigh, which is roughly a 2½-hour drive from the Davidson campus. There were plenty of empty seats at the outset, but they gradually filled up in the second half with blue-clad fans supporting No. 1 seed North Carolina, which defeated Mount St. Mary’s later in the day. Many of the Tar Heels’ faithful loaned their rooting interests to Davidson when the Wildcats staged their second-half rally.

Gonzaga’s Pargo said the crowd didn’t make a difference.

“It wasn’t difficult at all,” he said. “It’s a basketball game, no matter where you’re at. A lot of people forget that we played Saint Joe’s (in Philadelphia) and UConn in Boston. It was the same atmosphere there as here and we got two wins in those games.”