Nobody should step in to stop this yearly dogfight

Just in case not enough ink, air, RAM and general anxiety was being expended in setting the table for today’s roundball banquet – Gonzaga vs. Washington, with world peace and the American way at stake – Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar sprinkled a little butane on the candlesticks during the salad course.

The series, which alternates between Seattle and Spokane, comes to its contractual end next year at Gonzaga. We know, of course, it’s been the best thing to happen to college hoops in the Northwest since, well, somebody thought to build a college, and obviously it should continue without so much as a handshake. But when pressed last week, all Romar would vaguely commit to is that “we’ve got to talk about it.”

Given that the Huskies haven’t won in the last seven tries against Gonzaga, it might be suggested that all the Huskies have done is talk. But someone else will have to suggest it.

The guess here is that far too much was read into Mr. Mysterio’s remark. Romar and his wife probably had to talk about the mortgage, too, before they signed the papers, but that didn’t mean they were planning to live in a van down by the river.

Surely both he and Gonzaga coach Mark Few (who is unqualified in his desire to keep playing) know the current arrangement makes all kinds of sense for both programs, and that if either pulled the plug at this point he’d be ridiculed for obtuseness, if not cowardice – even if the replacement on the schedule was Duke, or the Detroit Pistons. Not that either couldn’t live with the sticks and stones, but why would you want your program cast in that light?

The arrangement isn’t only just fine as it is, it’s sensational. And it’s being played in the proper buildings – on campus, in front of rabid student support that elevates the game. Leave it be.

If Romar truly has any notions otherwise, his best player will tell him he’s trippin’.

“I think the game is great,” said Brandon Roy. “They should keep it forever. It’s one of those rivalries like Florida State and Florida in football, where they’ve got to play every year even if they’re not in the same league. It’s something we should continue as long as both teams are good.

“Heck, even if one team isn’t good.”

That doesn’t seem likely to be the case for a while, but having actually played on such a team as a freshman – though not in this game, since he hadn’t been cleared for eligibility by the NCAA – Roy scores all sorts of credibility points.

The only aspect that could use some toning down is the self-importance some of the paying customers on both sides have assumed in their mutual dismissals of one another. But even this warrants only an amused roll of the eyes, given Gonzaga’s still relatively recent ascension to prominence and all the years UW’s program spent as an afterthought on its own campus.

Gnawing on the same bone, the constituents can’t seem to agree that it’s a game of equal – if transient – importance to both teams.

Transient? The Huskies’ loss last year in a pick-‘em game in Spokane was so debilitating that they only went on to win 29, land a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and reach the Sweet 16, or a round past GU’s exit.

The Zags, meanwhile, will emerge from this game and turn around to meet Washington State, Oklahoma State and Virginia in the next fortnight. Onward, as they say.

But for a day or a week, it’s all white heat.

“It’s a huge game,” said Gonzaga’s Adam Morrison after the Zags’ desultory effort against Portland State on Wednesday. “It’s in-state. It’s U-dub, man. They hate us, and we hate them.”

Hate might overstate it, but Roy knows where Morrison is coming from.

“Yeah, it’s important – we’re always excited to play them and even more so this year, for the seniors,” he said. “We haven’t beaten them and this is our last chance. They’ve been the best team out of Washington the last six or seven years.

“And that’s the thing about it – every year they’ve beaten us, they’ve been good. It’s not like we lost to a bad team.”

Ken Bone, who used to be Romar’s assistant and is now the head coach at Portland State, acknowledged that the frustration factor of not beating Gonzaga weighs heavily on the Huskies – who in other respects have conquered all the peaks short of a Final Four and sustained excellence.

“I think it does mean a great deal to them,” he said, “but I also think it means just as much to Gonzaga. The UW kids might verbalize it more than the Gonzaga kids, or the media might just do it for them, but I know it means just as much to Gonzaga.”

Then he considered that for a moment.

“Down deep, my own personal opinion,” Bone said, “I think it means more to them.

“Mark and his staff have done an unbelievable job here. They have a top 10 – or seven or six – team, legitimately. They are good. But I still think because of some of the recruiting battles and the Huskies’ recent success, this is a big game for them. UW has stolen the show a little bit – yet Gonzaga hasn’t missed a beat. They’re even better now than they were four, five, six years ago.”

But though he’s betrayed some irritation in the past that the better Seattle-area players haven’t enlisted as Zags, Few has certainly made peace with finding players just as good and better elsewhere. At the moment, a slew of them he found right in his backyard, which has only served to intensify the rivalry along geographic lines.

“East vs. West,” said Roy. “That’s a big part of it.”

And, at the moment, it’s only the West that has something to prove. Seven Gonzaga victories have seen to that.

The oddsmakers seem to think this is the year – UW is a four-point favorite – but the Huskies have been of such a mind before, without the results.

“They’re such a good program,” Roy said. “We feel like we’re getting our program to that level, but until we beat them there’s something missing.”

Yeah. But just think if they didn’t get the chance.