There Are Winners, Losers, Then Santa Clara And Gu

So here’s the consolation prize: Gonzaga can still call itself a champion and Santa Clara has to host the tournament.

Not that you could say the Broncos drew the short straw in spoiling Gonzaga’s 1996 curtsy Saturday night at the Martin Centre. But they didn’t exactly win the lotto, either.

What it was, was a measure of relief.

Sure, now they’re stuck making the hors d’oeuvres and cleaning up after the guests - to say nothing of cleaning up after the ghosts - at next weekend’s West Coast Conference basketball tournament. Three of the last five WCC tourneys have been at Toso Pavilion; each time, the Broncos have lost in the first round, giving coach Dick Davey this valuable insight into the tournament beast:

“We’ve been the pits,” he said, allowing us to tidy it up for a family fishwrap.

Well, most of the hosts have - six of nine, to be exact. That hasn’t stopped people from wanting the damn thing in their gyms.

But the Bulldogs weren’t going to get that wish even if they’d reversed the 77-71 final score. The best they could hope for was winning the regular-season championship out-right, a cushier first-round draw (Pepperdine, rather than who they will play, Saint Mary’s) and a feelgood bon voyage from a loud, adoring and greasepainted mob of 4,100 that started queueing up 2 hours before tipoff.

Still, the trophy a conference functionary toted up from California stayed behind - without ceremony.

“Certainly I’m happy with where we are,” said Gonzaga coach Dan Fitzgerald. “I’m enormously proud that our kids are co-champions.”

But being No. 1 isn’t all it’s cracked up to be - at least it wasn’t this past week. From UConn on Monday to UMass yesterday, 20 different league leaders were knocked off.

That it was Santa Clara doing the knocking and Gonzaga as the knockee on the last day of the regular season skews that a bit, given all that was conceded to the Broncos early on.

This was, after all, the identical team which won the WCC round-robin by two games a year ago, led by Steve Nash - the Canadian curiosity Sports Illustrated dubbed “Little Magic.” The Broncos then enhanced the hype by bagging UCLA, Michigan State and Georgia Tech in the first month of the season.

“There’s been a lot more pressure on our group this year,” acknowledged Davey, “for a number of reasons. The schedule we played. Every house we’ve gone to this year was full - places that don’t fill up all the time are full when we’re there. Not because we’re great or anything, but because the expectations are high for us and they read about Steve and want to get on his case.

“This win is a chance to get rid of that. I think our kids are going to be as relaxed as they’ve been able to be all year long.”

The hardest thing for the Broncos to explain is how the team that beat the Bruins in Maui - or the Bulldogs in Martin, where they’d won 51 of their last 53 - can be the same team which got spanked by Pepperdine at home.

“Well, we’re the type of team that can beat anybody outside of the top 10 or 15 in the country on a given night,” Davey said, “but we can also lose to the top 250 in the country on a given night if we’re not focused in.

“Mainly, in most of those games, we shot the ball poorly. Part of shooting the ball poorly is what a defense does to you, but I think Gonzaga’s was as good as anybody’s.”

It’s just that while the Zags and everyone in the building kept waiting for Nash to blow up the safe - and with 24 points he wasn’t exactly unarmed - his little known accomplice, Marlon Garnett, cleaned out the cash drawers. The Broncos went from three down at halftime to five up 3 minutes into the second half without Nash scoring a point.

“A lot of time, that kind of pressure falls on me,” Nash said of Garnett’s contributions. “It’s so nice to see him knock those shots down.”

How much you should read into this last game is hard to know. Is the momentum the Broncos generate from winning here any greater than the step back they took two nights before in Portland? After such a remarkable run, has GU hit a wall with the overtime struggle against St. Mary’s and this setback?

“Every team in college basketball has lulls,” Nash shrugged.

And they don’t get to pick when they have them.

“I have a lot of respect for those teams that go 24-1 or 25-2,” Davey said. “How they do that, I don’t know. It wears on you every night. It’s tough to keep that high level of play.”

Particularly with a tournament dead ahead.

“I’ve got a pretty good perspective on the tournament because I’ve won on every night of it and lost on every night, too,” said Fitzgerald. “You don’t worry about the tournament, per se, you worry about the first game. The difference now is, there’s more for us to worry about.”

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review