Time To Prove It For Gu
The aura of invincibility that surrounded Gonzaga University’s men’s basketball team three weeks ago is gone, shattered by late-season road losses to San Diego and Pepperdine.
But West Coast Conference coaches, in a conference call conducted Monday morning, made it clear that the regular-season champion Bulldogs are still the team to beat in the WCC Tournament, which opens Saturday at Santa Clara’s Toso Pavilion.
“I wouldn’t say they’re the heavy favorite anymore, but I’d concede that they’re still definitely favored,” said Saint Mary’s Dave Bollwinkel.
Pepperdine coach Lorenzo Romar, whose Waves beat back the Bulldogs 75-70 at home last Friday, was asked if GU’s two losses were a blessing or a curse to the rest of the league.
Did they give other teams a renewed sense of hope in the tournament, or did they awaken a slumbering giant?
“The dynamics of what goes on in a team’s head - whether they’re undefeated or not - who knows?” Romar said of the Bulldogs, who finished the regular season 22-6 overall and 12-2 in the WCC “Maybe a couple of losses rattled their cage a little bit, but in either case, Coach (Dan) Monson is going to have his team ready to play.
“They’re a veteran team, they know what it takes to win and they know they can’t relax.”
Monson compared his team’s dominance of WCC opponents during the regular season to a backyard game of H-O-R-S-E.
“We’ve got `E’ on everybody in the league,” he explained, “but now we have to prove it. And until you prove it in the tournament, you haven’t had a great year.”
The Bulldogs open the tournament Saturday afternoon against eighth-seeded Portland (9-17, 3-11). Tipoff is scheduled for 2 p.m., or 30 minutes after the conclusion of Saturday’s noon opener between No. 2 Pepperdine (18-11, 9-5) and No. 7 San Francisco (12-17, 4-10).
In Saturday’s other opening-round games, No. 3 San Diego (18-8, 9-5) plays No. 6 Saint Mary’s (12-17, 5-9) at 6 and No. 4 Santa Clara (12-14, 8-6) faces No. 5 Loyola Marymount (11-15, 6-8) at 8.
Sunday’s semifinals will be played at 5:30 and 8 p.m., with teams being re-seeded so the two highest remaining seeds face the two lowest remaining seeds.
The championship game will be televised live on ESPN Monday night at 9.
The big man is back
The main topic of conversation during Monday’s conference call was the unexpected return of Saint Mary’s Brad Millard, who had been expected to miss the entire 1998-99 season with a broken foot.
Millard, a 7-foot-3, 345-pound junior center, missed all but two games because of the injury last season and had reportedly given up on trying to come back this year. But he made a surprise appearance, his first of the season, in Saturday’s 69-65 win over Santa Clara and could prove to be a major factor in the WCC Tournament.
Gaels coach Bollwinkel claimed he did not learn of Millard’s status until the morning of the Santa Clara game.
“On Monday of last week, I knew that Brad was hoping to be able to play,” Bollwinkel said. “The foot was feeling pretty good.”
But results of an X-ray taken Thursday were not confirmed until Friday, at which point the team physician gave Millard, the biggest Division-I player in the nation, written clearance to play.
Upon hearing of the clearance, Bollwinkel said he met with Millard and his parents over dinner Friday night to discuss the ramifications of his returning to action.
The Millards decided the next day that Brad should play.
“So it wasn’t until Saturday when we had our walk-through (practice) that I knew he would play at 7 that night,” Bollwinkel explained.
Millard, who was an all-conference selection as a sophomore, didn’t impact the game dramatically as far as the numbers go. He scored just one point and committed several turnovers.
“He had not played in 454 days, so he was not going to come out and score 30 points, and we knew that,” Bollwinkel said. “But he changed the game significantly. Suddenly, (Santa Clara’s) inside game wasn’t as strong, and we could get even tighter on their shooters, because of Brad’s presence in the middle.”
At one point, Bollwinkel said Millard came into the huddle at a timeout and told his teammate to funnel everything inside to him on defense. “I won’t let them get any layups,” he said.
Millard played only 14 minutes against Santa Clara and Bollwinkel admitted he has no idea how much he might play in the tournament - especially if the Gaels keep winning and are forced to play on three consecutive nights.
Dark horse candidate
Anyone looking for a surprise team in this year’s WCC Tournament might want to check out San Diego.
The Toreros, after losing four of last year’s five leading scorers, weren’t expected to be much of a factor in this year’s league race. But they finished the season with 18 wins and come into the tournament having won six of their last seven games.
“We’ve had a great season,” admitted coach Brad Holland, whose team, which was a consensus pick to finish seventh, handed regular-season champion Gonzaga one of its two league losses. “It’s a season I wouldn’t have predicted. We’ve done better than projected and, even by our own standards, better than we expected.
“We feel like we’re playing pretty good basketball coming into the tournament.”
3-pointers
The last No. 1 seed to win the WCC Tournament was Pepperdine - in 1992. … Gonzaga, which averaged 81 points a game, finished as the league’s top scoring team for the second-consecutive year and for the fourth time in the last five seasons. … Despite failing to score in two WCC games, San Francisco’s Gerald Zimmerman, with an average of 19.9 points per game, led the league in scoring against conference teams. … USF is the defending WCC Tournament champion, but in each of the previous two seasons the defending tournament champion - Saint Mary’s and Portland - were eliminated in the first round the following year.