San Diego Has History Of Giving Gonzaga The Fitz
There will be a certain degree of payback on the minds of Dan Monson and his Gonzaga men’s basketball team Thursday night when the Bulldogs entertain West Coast Conference rival San Diego in a 7 p.m. matchup at Martin Centre.
The Toreros beat GU three times last season and played hell with the final days of former Bulldog coach Dan Fitzgerald’s distinguished career.
After dumping the Bulldogs in San Diego early in the year, the Toreros came back in the last regular-season game and stunned GU 76-69 in Fitzgerald’s final Martin Centre appearance. A week later they knocked the Zags out of the WCC tournament and prematurely ended Fitzgerald’s career with a 64-59 first-round upset.
“They’ve always played Gonzaga really well,” Monson, the Bulldogs’ first-year coach and a longtime Fitzgerald assistant, said of the Toreros. “They know how to guard the flex (offense). They understand our system really well and are always well-prepared for us.
“But I don’t think any of us will ever forget what they did to Fitz’s last game. That will be something that I’ll always remember about San Diego - and something I’ll always be trying to get back, even though I know I won’t be able to.”
Big void
Saint Mary’s, Gonzaga’s Saturday night opponent, will arrive minus the services of Brad Millard, its mammoth junior center.
Millard, the biggest Division-I player in the country at 7-foot-3, 345 pounds, is still wearing a walking cast to protect the fractured foot that will probably keep him sidelined the rest of the year.
That’s good news for GU center Axel Dench, who would normally guard Millard. But Monson insists the absence of “Big Continent” makes preparing for the Gaels even tougher than it has been in the past.
“As a team, they will execute and play better without a big kid like that - just like we did without (7-foot center) Paul Rogers last year,” Monson explained. “They will miss him, but as far as our preparation is concerned, we’re looking now at a more multi-dimensional team that is more uptempo, can break more and can press more than they can with the big kid in the lineup.”
Millard played in SMC’s first two games and averaged 14.5 points and 8.5 rebounds.
E-E-E-E-E-E-E-K!
Keeping with the Millard motif, it should be noted that John Stollenwerk, president of the Wisconsin-based Allen-Edmonds Shoe Corp., has verified that the largest pair of dress shoes ever made by his company were 16-1/2 inches long, 6-1/2 inches wide and a size 24EEEEEE.
They were shipped to Millard.
3-pointers
Loyola Marymount point guard and scoring leader Haywood Eaddy, who is averaging 16.1 points per game, will be out indefinitely after breaking the little finger on his right (shooting) hand last weekend… . After playing six consecutive road games, Portland returns to Chiles Center this week for the first time since Dec. 15 to host Saint Mary’s (Thursday) and San Diego (Jan. 17)… . Santa Clara, which hasn’t lost at Toso Pavilion since the first round of the 1996 WCC tournament, and San Francisco currently boast 12-game home winning streaks. … All-WCC guard M.J. Nodilo saw his first action of the season for USF last weekend after recovering from a stress fracture in his foot… . With last week’s victories at LMU and Pepperdine, Gonzaga matched it number of WCC road wins for the entire 1996-97 season.
, DataTimes