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Gonzaga Basketball

Wiltjer-White matchup may determine Gonzaga’s fate

SEATTLE – Fans of the skinny- forward motif in college basketball that watched the second session of Friday’s NCAA tournament games at KeyArena got a 2-for-1 deal. First they saw a 6-foot-9 guy use his octopus arms to lead his team with an array of slow-developing but impossible-to-stop jump shots, hook shots, putbacks and dunks. Then they saw his carbon copy in the encore. Lanky Aaron White scored 26 points in Iowa’s route of Davidson then Kyle Wiltjer put up 23 as Gonzaga fended off North Dakota State. “We’re both big, versatile forwards that can score and help (our) teams in multiple ways,” said White on Saturday. “It should be a fun matchup.” There are stylistic distinctions in their play. Wiltjer is a gunner and uses his reputation for letting it fly to set up an effective shot-fake that generally leads to a shot. White prefers to dive to the basket and use his athletic advantage over most similarly sized players to beat them to the rim and draw fouls. He averages more than seven free-throw attempts per game but has a pretty good jumper as well. But those differences are superficial when comparing players who have a deep bag of scoring tricks. Whichever player is better able to maintain his versatile game while limiting that of his counterpart is probably going to keep his team’s season alive. One of the NCAA tournament’s biggest, most-skilled frontcourts will be gone at the conclusion of today’s game between Gonzaga and Iowa. The battle between GU’s big imports and UI’s homegrown Midwesterners should be a good one will likely decide which team gets an envelope of airplane tickets to Houston for next week’s Sweet 16. On a smaller scale, this one comes down to the matchup between the two skinny forwards who lead their respective teams in scoring and rebounding. White, a native of Strongsville, Ohio, received one scholarship offer from a Big Ten school and eventually chose Iowa over Duquesne. “A lot of people looked at him. A lot of people thought he would be better suited at the Atlantic 10 level,” Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. “But we believed in him.” White has earned his coach’s belief many times over, ranking second in school history with 1,840 points and third with 900 rebounds. He leads the team in rebounds (7.5) and steals (1.3) per game, and is the only player in the country averaging more than 16 points and seven rebounds while shooting better than 50 percent from the field and 80 percent from the free-throw line. The guy he’s up against is pretty good, too. Wiltjer won WCC Newcomer of the Year two years after being named the SEC’s Sixth Man of the Year at Kentucky. His 45 points at Pacific were the third most scored in Gonzaga history, and his versatile methods of scoring extend even to the trick-shot, where he drew YouTube fame this year for making a behind-the-back shot from midcourt. He probably won’t break that out today, but in the battle between two of the tournament’s most creative scorers just about everything else is on the table.