Gonzaga’s Daye ready for road
California trip a homecoming for Zags forward
Austin Daye’s travel bag will be a little lighter this week.
“All shorts and T-shirts,” Daye said as Gonzaga travels to face Pepperdine on Thursday and Loyola Marymount on Saturday. They’re road games for the Bulldogs, but it’s a homecoming for Daye.
Daye, a sophomore forward from Irvine, Calif., will see familiar faces on the court and in the stands.
“A lot of my friends and my family are coming to the games,” said Daye, who is also looking forward to 70 degree temperatures. “I know guys on both teams, so it’ll be fun to go home and play against my friends.”
From his high school days, Daye knows Loyola Marymount’s Drew Viney, a 6-foot-7 forward who is redshirting after transferring from Oregon, and Pepperdine sophomore forward Mychel Thompson, who leads the Waves in scoring at 11.3 points per game. Viney is from Villa Park, Calif., and Thompson, the older brother of Washington State freshman Klay Thompson, is from Ladera Ranch, Calif. Thompson’s father, Mychal, was the first pick of the 1978 NBA draft.
Tough occupation
Loyola Marymount coach Bill Bayno stepped down recently for medical reasons. Max Good, who had been the acting head coach while Bayno was on a leave of absence, was promoted to head coach.
Gonzaga coach Mark Few has known Bayno for years.
“He’s a good friend,” Few said. “I just wish him the best. It was just kind of the stress of coaching that got to him. It can do that. It’s done that to a lot of people.”
Coaching, in general, “is a highly competitive arena and quite frankly the longevity of coaches has gone down steadily over the last 10 years, definitely over the last five years,” Few said. “It creates a pretty stressful environment. If it’s internalized or maybe you don’t have great balance (in your life) or maybe you just put a lot of pressure on yourself, it can really eat you up.”
Thumbs up
Senior point guard Jeremy Pargo said his left thumb, which was wrapped for most of the second half of Saturday’s game and also for Tuesday’s practice, “is pretty much fine.”
He said his thumb was “pushed back a little bit” by a pass that hit the top of his thumb during the San Francisco game.
“I don’t even need this (padded wrap), they just don’t want me to get it hit again,” Pargo said.
Dickau to Germany
Ex-Zag Dan Dickau has joined the Brose Baskets, a professional team in the top league in Germany, according to eurobasket.com. Dickau is expected to be in uniform for the Bamberg-based team’s game Saturday.
Brose Baskets (9-8) plays in the same league as TBB-Trier (8-9), which features former Bulldog Derek Raivio. The teams met Oct. 24, with Brose Baskets winning 79-68, despite Raivio’s 15 points and four assists. The teams square off again March 4.
Dickau, who has six years of NBA experience, started this season with Italian pro team Air Avellino, but they mutually agreed to part ways in September. He then joined the Golden State Warriors but was waived after playing in two of the NBA team’s four exhibition games.