Shown up

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Anytime you can hold an opponent without a field goal for the last 8½ minutes of a college basketball game, you have to like your chances.

Unless you can’t score yourself – which is the uneasy position Gonzaga University found itself in Thursday night during the stretch run of its non-conference showdown against Missouri.

So despite holding the Tigers to a pair of free throws over the final 8 minutes, 27 seconds of the contest, the 12th-ranked Bulldogs wasted a nice second-half comeback in stumbling to a 63-61 defeat that snapped their seven-game winning streak.

A Mizzou Arena crowd of 14,675, the largest to witness a Tigers home game, watched – along with a national ESPN2 television audience – as Missouri (7-5) survived some frigid late-game shooting and a couple of decent looks by the Bulldogs (10-2) in the final 4 seconds to avenge last year’s 87-80 loss in the inaugural Battle in Seattle.

Afterward, Tigers coach Quin Snyder said he wanted to cut short his postgame interview so he could get back and be with his players.

“Because it was that type of a win,” he explained. “I thought we were really a team tonight, and it showed on defense.”

It’s was the Tigers’ aggressive defense that helped them through their closing offensive swoon – which included 10 missed field-goal tries, a shaky 2-for-8 effort from the foul line and three turnovers – and noticeably frustrate Gonzaga’s Ronny Turiaf.

Turiaf, who came in averaging 19 points a game, was a mess all night, making just two of 15 basket tries and two of eight free throws.

“He’s a heck of a player,” Snyder said of Turiaf, who played 36 minutes and pulled down nine rebounds despite playing on a tender right ankle he sprained during a Christmas Day practice. “I would like to think we defended him tough.”

Snyder said the game plan was to deny Turiaf the ball by getting hard into Gonzaga’s guards on the perimeter and then using a double-team whenever they did enter the ball to Turiaf. It seemed to work perfectly as Turiaf was rushed into taking primarily off-balance shots from outside his comfort range.

His last one – an awkward 8-foot runner from the right side of the lane that could have forced overtime – came with just 4 seconds left and bounced wildly off the edge of the backboard. When Adam Morrison’s ensuing desperation 3-point attempt banged off the front of the rim, Missouri had its upset.

“I sucked, that’s it,” said the 6-foot-10 Turiaf, who had, perhaps, his worst outing as a Zag. “I can’t come out and shoot 2 for 15 from the floor. I can’t come out with no energy. I can’t come out and let my team down like I did tonight.

“I did a poor job. My team lost, it’s all my fault and, hopefully, I won’t do it again.”

Bulldogs coach Mark Few admitted his senior co-captain has a horrible night, but insisted there was much more behind his team’s loss than Turiaf’s poor shooting.

“We were just playing from behind from the get-go, because they were playing harder than us,” Few explained. “They consistently beat us to balls all night, and when that happens, usually that team is going to win.”

When asked if he thought his team might have suffered a letdown following Tuesday night’s emotional 78-75 upset of No. 3-ranked Oklahoma State in the All-College Classic in Oklahoma City, Few said: “We had a great opportunity tonight to come in and play a big-time opponent in a television game. I can’t imagine why somebody wouldn’t be fired up to fly around and play.

“My frustration is centered around the fact that when we did stop them, they got the scrap rebounds and got to the free-throw line, which put us in a bind all night. And offensively, we just didn’t deliver like we usually do.”

The only GU player who had much of an effect on the offensive end of the floor was backup center J.P. Batista, a first-year junior college transfer, who finished with 17 points and 10 rebounds – both team highs – to post the first double-double of his brief Division-I career.

Morrison finished with 12 points, more than seven less than his team-leading average of 19.8, and point guard Derek Raivio added 11, hitting 3 of 4 on 3-pointers.

But the Zags shot a season-low 38.3 percent from the field and made only 10 of 17 free throws.

“One thing we also didn’t do,” Few said, “was that when they took away our Option A, we weren’t tough enough to stick with it and look at Option B and Option C.”

Missouri, which got 16 points from Jason Conley and 11 from Linas Kleiza, took a 61-51 lead on a inside basket by Kevin Young that came with 8:27 on the clock – and proved to be the Tigers last of the game.

GU took advantage of the field-goal drought to close to within 62-61 on a Batista bucket with 2:40 left, but never scored again, missing its final four shots. Turiaf had a chance to tie the game with a pair of free throws with 8 seconds left, but missed both.

Still, the Zags had one last chance after Kalen Grimes returned the favor by missing a pair of foul shots a second later.

Few called Turiaf’s late runner “awful.”

The plan coming out of GU’s final timeout was to inbound the ball and take it to the basket.

“Chucking up a runner?” Few asked. “We just didn’t realize how much time we had. We could have gone all the way to the rim. Even Adam had time to set up and shoot it again.”

The travel-weary Bulldogs get a few days to rest before traveling to the Bay Area next week to open West Coast Conference play at Santa Clara on Thursday.

“This is a horrible feeling,” Batista said. “Now we’ve got to learn from it. We’ve got a little time before the next game, so we have time to fix it in time for our conference games.”

Missouri 63, Gonzaga 61

Gonzaga (10-2) – Turiaf 2-15 2-7 6, Morrison 5-9 2-2 12, Mallon 2-7 0-0 5, Raivio 3-8 2-2 11, Knight 3-8 3-4 10, Batista 8-13 1-2 17, Altidor-Cespedes 0-0 0-0 0, Pendergraft 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 23-60 10-17 61.

Missouri (7-5) – Conley 7-13 1-2 16, Kleiza 5-10 0-0 11, Young 2-2 1-4 5, McKinney 2-5 2-2 6, Horton 2-9 1-2 6, Gardner 3-8 1-2 9, Brown 0-3 1-2 1, Dandridge 2-3 0-0 5, Grimes 2-4 0-3 4. Totals 25-57 7-17 63.

Halftime—Missouri 38-35. 3-Point goals—Gonzaga 5-9 (Raivio 3-4, Knight 1-1, Mallon 1-2, Morrison 0-2), Missouri 6-24 (Gardner 2-5, Dandridge 1-2, Kleiza 1-3, Conley 1-5, Horton 1-5, Brown 0-1, McKinney 0-3). Fouled out—Kleiza, Young. Rebounds—Gonzaga 43 (Batista 10), Missouri 33 (Conley 13). Assists—Gonzaga 11 (Raivio 5), Missouri 13 (McKinney 4). Total fouls—Gonzaga 20, Missouri 18. Technical—Missouri coach. A—14,675.