His Aim Was Always True When Points Were Scarce, Santangelo Counted Wins

You wouldn’t think anybody would still need convincing, but apparently they do.

So Matt Santangelo keeps telling them.

“It’s all about winning,” he says, with a studied patience.

Do they believe him? Mostly they do. They should, being the same people who tend to sit in judgment of Hall of Famers who happen to be without championship rings. They should already know it’s all about winning.

Especially this week.

This week, the Gonzaga Bulldogs go off to Seattle and March Danceness for the second time in the school’s basketball history - but only the first time, frankly, with any popular sentiment that they have the goods to ride the wild NCAA Tournament surf for more than one wave.

The kind of faith building behind the Bulldogs comes only from witnessing something borderline supernatural - an apt enough description of Gonzaga’s most recent opera and Santangelo’s aria, which pretty much pre-empted the fat lady.

In this case, it was the Bulldogs announcing it was over, all of it - the doubts, the haunts, the tiny corner of their lives left vacant for a year - gone with a 25-point rout of Santa Clara in the West Coast Conference tournament finals.

The Zags had won 24 other times this basketball season, but not for a goodly spell in quite the way they won their way into the NCAAs.

And not for an even longer spell with Santangelo as such an obvious maestro.

Statistically, is it the all-time Zag line? Thirty-four points on 12-of-18 shooting, 8 of 11 from 3-point range, six assists, a steal, no turnovers.

Those were the glory details.

“I wouldn’t call it instant gratification,” Santangelo insisted afterward. “The goal was to win, no matter how it came about.”

Sure thing. But don’t think he wasn’t happy about the how part, too.

Now Gonzaga is one of America’s little darlings, everybody’s upset special in the office pool, and its marquee player is asked daily to retrace his steps through a season that was, in one respect, less than what he’d hoped for and yet more than he ever dreamed.

He’s cooperative, but mildly troubled. What the Zags were about this winter was achievement and sacrifice. This topic, he knows, implies something else.

It implies that GU’s finest hour was not Santangelo’s finest, a notion he resists.

“It depends on how you define frustration,” he said. “We were winning and I was playing a role in that. Maybe it wasn’t the role I was used to, but winning cures a lot of ills.”

It just wasn’t curing his jump shot.

From the minute he put on a Gonzaga uniform in 1996, Santangelo has been defined as a scorer. Well, OK, maybe not from the start - he was 0 for 12 in his first two Division I games. But by season’s end, he was averaging a shade over 13 points a game, and he bumped that to 16.2 as a sophomore. With WCC player of the year Bakari Hendrix moving on, Santangelo’s points figured to be even more vital this season.

Instead, his scoring average dropped nearly four points, and even in some of GU’s biggest wins his struggle to find his shooting touch could be painful to watch.

In the meantime, the Zags became the ultimate ensemble, a five-finger exercise.

And Santangelo was still the key component in that ensemble. Opponents understood, even if the casual fan didn’t.

It’s curious how one statistic can skew perceptions. Even as Santangelo’s shooting accuracy suffered, his efficiency in other areas improved. His assists climbed, his turnovers dropped. Richie Frahm became GU’s first offensive option and often as not, it was Santangelo’s pass that found him. His defense improved and his assignments got tougher.

“Maybe it wouldn’t even be a shot or pass, but just settling the team down when we needed it,” Santangelo said. “Contributions like that helped me keep my sanity when my shot wouldn’t fall.”

He was straight off the tee and great around the green. But he had a case of the yips.

“I couldn’t get into a rhythm,” he admitted, “and I guess I was frustrated for a while because I didn’t understand my role.”

It wasn’t a stretch to see this coming. The emergence of transfer Quentin Hall as Santangelo’s relief at point guard a year ago made it plain that coach Dan Monson would have to find a way to play them together this season.

“There was no doubt about it,” Santangelo said. “We’re a much better team with Quentin on the floor.”

But Santangelo, going back virtually to his first dribble, had always been a point guard. So had Hall, whose particular skills and size - he’s 5 inches shorter at 5-foot-8 - made Santangelo’s switch to a different position the lesser of two evils.

“What I didn’t understand is that the coaches wanted it the way it is now, with Quentin and I just being guards,” Santangelo said. “If he gets the ball, he needs to push it up the floor. If I get the ball, I need to push it. The way we were interpreting it early in the season, he was the full-time point guard and I was running the wing.

“And that took me out of what I know. I’d been taught to play the game from the point. I don’t really understand it from the wing. You’re used to being in control and suddenly you’re relying on someone else, and that causes rhythm problems.”

And shooting is all about rhythm and feel - and confidence. Santangelo has never been accused of lacking confidence, but he may have misplaced it for a time.

“Around Christmastime, I kind of looked in the mirror and got upset with myself because I’d slipped from what got me here - and that was my work ethic,” he said. “At that point, I rededicated myself to the gym - putting up the shots at night like I did when I was younger and coming in and enjoying the game for the sake of the game and not for all the other stuff.”

The results weren’t immediate. Santangelo did have a 10-for-14 shooting night against Loyola Marymount in mid-January, then made just 7 of his next 31.

But even when he wasn’t making a lot of shots, he was making big ones. He had 14 points in the final 7 minutes in a two-point win at Santa Clara. A tough bank shot in traffic was the critical bucket in holding off pesky Saint Mary’s and avoiding a road sweep in California.

“I knew my jump shot would come back,” he maintained. “When it came back, I wanted to be a better player than when it left me.”

Somebody noticed. On Monday, Santangelo was accorded honorable mention on The Associated Press All-America team - only the fourth Zag ever so recognized. He was also the only WCC player honored.

Would his name have come up in an All-America conversation without Gonzaga’s name still being out there?

Hard to know.

But it’s another convincing argument that it’s all about winning.