Fitzgerald Lights Fire In Bulldogs Halftime Tongue-Lashing Convinces Gonzaga To Rally Past Cal State Fullerton, 77-70
After nearly 15 seasons as Gonzaga’s head men’s basketball coach, Dan Fitzgerald claims to be running low on fire and brimstone.
But he mustered up enough disgust over his team’s uninspired first-half performance against Cal State Fullerton on Saturday night to fuel at least one more halftime tirade.
And his Bulldogs responded by clawing back from a six-point halftime deficit to knock off the much-improved Titans 77-70 in front of a Martin Centre crowd of 3,577.
“I don’t know how many of those I have left,” Fitzgerald said of his inspirational halftime oration. “We didn’t play hard the first half and our guys got a good chastising. But to their credit, they really responded.”
The Bulldogs (7-5) scored 51 second-half points and matched Fullerton’s strong, athletic front line rebound for rebound over the final 20 minutes. They also stepped it up considerably on the defensive end and contested nearly every shot the Titans (7-3) took.
Senior Lorenzo Rollins played through a poor shooting night to finish with 19 points, 10 rebounds and six assists for GU. Teammate Matt Santangelo added 12 points and seven assists, despite playing on a tender right ankle and fighting early foul problems.
Bakari Hendrix and Mike Leasure each added 11 points for the Bulldogs, who open West Coast Conference play on the road Thursday night against a Santa Clara team that tied them for last year’s conference title.
“We’re surviving,” said Fitzgerald, who will step down as GU’s head coach at the end of the season. “I thought one thing we were tonight was resilient. We kept battling and we did a pretty good job in the last 3 minutes.”
It helped having Santangelo back manning the point at crunch time after losing him for almost 14 minutes of the first half because of two early fouls. The redshirt freshman had not practiced all week after spraining his ankle, but - with backup point guard John Nemeth in street clothes with an ankle sprain of his own - Santangelo played through the pain and kept the Bulldog offense in synch down the stretch.
He scored 10 of his points and picked up five of his assists after intermission, helping GU recover from a 9-for-29 first-half shooting performance.
The Bulldogs outscored the Titans 8-2 to open the final 20 minutes and later distanced themselves, albeit momentarily, with a 20-10 run that produced a 62-53 lead with just over 7 minutes left.
Fullerton, which got 18 points from Chris St. Clair and 15 points and eight rebounds from John Williams, sliced GU’s lead to 65-64 on back-to-back 3-pointers by Dane Plock. But backup center Jeremy Eaton popped out and hit a couple of medium-range jumpers in the final 3 minutes to crush any lingering Titan comeback hopes.
“This wasn’t one of our better games,” Fullerton coach Bob Hawking said after watching his team convert just 35 percent (24 of 68) of its field-goal tries. “The execution wasn’t as good as it needs to be, and we definitely need to shoot better to be a competitive team.”
Gonzaga 77, Cal State Fullerton 70
Cal State Fullerton (7-3) - Dade 1-8 2-3 4, St. Clair 5-15 6-6 18, Wright 1-1 0-4 2, Whitehead 2-11 2-2 6, Williams 6-17 3-7 15, Rassloff 3-3 1-1 7, Leighton 0-1 0-0 0, Nayab 2-4 0-0 5, Plock 2-4 2-2 8, Richardson 1-2 1-2 3, Tyson 1-2 0-0 2. Totals 24-68 17-27 70.
Gonzaga (7-5) - Santangelo 4-7 3-3 12, Rollins 6-20 6-8 19, Dench 3-5 0-1 6, Leasure 5-6 0-2 11, Hendrix 3-9 5-6 11, Williams 0-1 3-4 3, Frahm 0-5 0-0 0, Crider 0-1 4-4 4, McKnight 1-1 0-0 2, Eaton 4-6 1-2 9. Totals 26-61 22-30 77.
Halftime-Cal State-Fullerton 32, Gonzaga 26. 3-Point goals-Cal State-Fullerton 5-20 (Dade 0-4, St. Clair 2-7, Whitehead 0-2, Leighton 0-1, Nayab 1-2, Plock 2-4), Gonzaga 3-11 (Santangelo 1-1, Rollins 1-8, Leasure 1-1, Frahm 0-1). Fouled out-None. Rebounds-Cal State-Fullerton 47 (Williams 8), Gonzaga 43 (Hendrix 11). Assists-Cal State-Fullerton 8 (St. Clair 3), Gonzaga 18 (Santangelo 7). Total fouls-Cal State-Fullerton 23, Gonzaga 19. A-3,577.
, DataTimes