It’S A Shame This One Only Counts Once

Next?

One game into the West Coast Conference men’s basketball season, and already it’s taking on the look of a waiting room full of terminal cases.

On Thursday night, scalpels were sharpened and the doctors of Gonzaga were definitely in. Isn’t this pretty much where we left off?

Sure, fans and civilians alike had a ball gobbling Dramamine during the NCAA ride last March. Then the come-lately members of the Warped Perspective Club amused themselves this fall by asking, “What’s wrong with the Zags?” when America’s sweethearts somehow didn’t go 15-0 during a preseason schedule that had overtones of Bataan. It’s the kind of question you’d expect to hear at Kentucky, say - an irony completely lost hereabouts.

In any case, these diversions have made us forget that Gonzaga’s competitive apex a year ago, arguably, came in the WCC Tournament final - a passionate dissection of Santa Clara, an echo of which wafted back into The Kennel this night against the University of San Francisco.

Alas for GU, that Santa Clara game meant everything.

Regarding this one, the Bulldogs may have hijacked the Dons’ honor in administering a lethal 96-73 injection, but it only counts once.

“You wish it meant more than that,” admitted Gonzaga coach Mark Few, “but it doesn’t. It’s one of 14 games - and only the first one, at that. Before you fall asleep tonight, you better start focusing in on Saturday and get ready for another war.”

That would be Santa Clara’s date in The Kennel, and it would be a shock if it’s not more of a ballgame than this. The Broncos have some history of success here, anyway, and their approach is essentially as tough-minded as that of Gonzaga.

The Dons assume a tough-minded posture, too, but it sure didn’t last on this evening.

After 12 minutes of basketball, they were pretty much the Dones.

Maybe this shouldn’t have been a surprise. No WCC team has been quite so impotent in The Kennel as USF. The Dons never won here in the 1990s and are 2-15 in Spokane since the Bulldogs joined the league for the 1980 season. The numbers would be worse, but USF took three years off in the ‘80s as an act of contrition.

The smart money guys in Vegas had this as an 11-pointer, persuaded not at all by USF’s snazzy 12-1 start - or realizing that the Dons had run up that record mostly against C stockers and street machines, and not the top fuelers. One of the almighty computers ranks USF’s early schedule as 237th out of 319, while GU’s still in the Top 40.

But, hey, nobody in San Francisco was asking, “What’s wrong with the Dons?” Right?

Let them not start now. Even if USF coach Phil Mathews wanted to go on about how his players responded to little that was asked of them, this one was all about what was right with Gonzaga. And it touched just about all the bases - shooting, rebounding, interior and perimeter defense, and sheer effort.

“Just the number of hustle plays is what stands out to me,” said Few, “where we were able to tip things and get on the floor and throw it ahead to somebody for an easy basket. That’s the stuff that makes such a huge difference.”

The classic illustration came a minute before halftime, when Axel Dench got an extended paw on a USF pass and tipped it out toward half court. Richie Frahm didn’t just dive to the floor to corral the ball, he nearly dove through it - outwrestling a USF rival long enough to nudge the ball downcourt to Ryan Floyd. Knocked off balance and nearly down himself, Floyd managed to maintain control enough to get a short pass to Mark Spink, who converted it into a basket.

There wasn’t one pretty thing about the play, and yet the Zags may not make a better one all year.

When Matt Santangelo beat the buzzer with a 3-pointer for a 51-32 lead, you had to imagine Mathews’ halftime screed peeling the lockerroom paint down to whatever color GU had on the walls during the Hank Anderson years.

At that point, it was merely a matter of waiting around for Santangelo to write himself into the Gonzaga record book. Needing five assists to pass John Stockton as the school’s all-time leader, he got it on the most elementary of plays - an inbounds pass from his own baseline to Floyd, who was curling around a screen in the corner for a 3-pointer.

“The sweetest thing is that it was in this kind of game that it happened,” Santangelo said.

A test, he meant, as much as a blowout.

The Dons are as physically imposing a WCC team as has been seen for a spell, thanks mostly to the arrival of Cal transfer Kenyon Jones and a scary freshman named Darrell Tucker who is going to be a big slice of hell for the next few Januarys and Februarys. There are four holdover starters and some gifted young reserves, and already the Dons have won a few maybe they shouldn’t have.

The Zags, meanwhile, having been physically imploding - Dench, Floyd and Casey Calvary all nursing hurts of significant severity. When Frahm - playing on a tender ankle himself - had a quadricep muscle knot up in a warmup drill Tuesday, Few started checking the Yellow Pages for faith healers.

Maybe that’s why Santangelo was reluctant to ever acknowledge that this was one of those nights.

“It really didn’t happen until the second half,” he said. “I hit a couple of 3-pointers, then Casey (Calvary) hit a 3 and Axel hit a 3 - and Richie hits 3s every time he shoots it. Then I knew.

“But even when I got taken out in the second half and looked up and saw we were ahead 25, it was one of those games where you could never be ahead far enough. You wanted it to end at that point. You knew it couldn’t get any better.”

But at that point, it didn’t have to. At that point, the Bulldogs could turn their attentions to what’s next.