SAN FRANCISCO – It was starting to look familiar. Gonzaga, up against a halftime deficit, force-feeding Drew Timme with hopes the junior forward could establish himself the same way he did in the second half of the Bulldogs’ previous NCAA Tournament games against Memphis and Georgia State.

This was a kind of Greco-Roman basketball, with rugby scrums in the lane, full nelsons and submission holds in the backcourt. And in the end, we were left to watch the sad faces of large young men realizing that the competitive endeavor they’d devoted the previous six months of their lives to had come to a sudden end.

If you woke up Thursday with non-buyer’s remorse, because you didn’t book a San Francisco trip for Gonzaga’s West region game with Arkansas, you probably shed it halfway through Thursday’s second half.

The Razorbacks turned up the defensive intensity beating the Bulldogs in a sloppy NCAA Tournament game.

The Zags are well versed on Jaylin Williams’ stats, which includes 10.5 points and 9.8 rebounds per game, and the importance of the inside battle in the Gonzaga-Arkansas Sweet 16 matchup Thursday.

SAN FRANCISCO – A few months into the 2021-22 college basketball season, pundits and analysts could have made a fairly strong case as to why three of the four teams at this week’s West Regional in San Francisco would still be competing for a national championship in the third week of March.

SAN FRANCISCO – Picture Mark Few, tucking into bed, and like any coach this time of year, his mind is awash with anxiety. So much can go wrong on the basketball floor; how can a coach get any sleep at all?

The West nearly ended the title dry spell at 20 years when Gonzaga defeated South Carolina in one national semifinal, but Oregon fell to North Carolina 77-76, preventing a West vs. West title game. Gonzaga led with less than 2 minutes remaining but the Tar Heels won the championship by scoring the last eight points. Few figures the questions will be resurface with the Zags, the tournament’s top overall seed, set to face fourth-seeded Arkansas in the Sweet 16 Thursday at Chase Center.

As top-seeded Gonzaga and fourth-seeded Arkansas prepare to compete against each other Thursday in the NCAA Tournament with their seasons on the line, another important battle persists between Mark Few’s Bulldogs and Eric Musselman’s Razorbacks.