Healed-up Raivio shoots missing element back into GU offense

If he wasn’t the best guard on the floor Saturday night at the McCarthey Athletic Center, Derek Raivio was surely the best medicine.

But first, a word from the sponsor about Sean Singletary.

“He’s Jameer Nelson, isn’t he?” marveled Gonzaga coach Mark Few.

All of that – and even a little Adam Morrison.

The Zags got a tiny taste of how the other half lives trying to defend the unstoppable when Virginia’s sophomore point guard took over the gym in much the same way the little tsetse fly from Saint Joseph’s – and now the Orlando Magic – did in the joint next door three winters ago. In fact, he did Nelson one better in the scorebook – scoring 35 points, an opponent record in the McCarthey – and filled out the rest of his remarkable line with six rebounds, four assists and six steals.

What he didn’t do – and Nelson did – was will his team past the Bulldogs, who finally squeezed the fight out of the Cavaliers in the last eight minutes of an 80-69 victory. So then you must redefine what the best actually is – and in basketball, of course, it’s best to be the winner.

And after three games of forced inactivity, Raivio allowed himself a winner’s smile again Saturday night.

There was even a hint of one on the floor at one point – very un-Raivio. The Zags were desperately trying to keep pace with the upstart Cavs – a hell of a way to describe an Atlantic Coast Conference team, no? – midway through the second half, Virginia having stretched its unlikely lead out to six points. Just seconds later Raivio sliced it in half with a 3-pointer in perfect rhythm on the break.

“I felt like my old self when I was healthy,” he said. “I knew I was back in the flow of things then.”

There hasn’t been much flow lately.

When Raivio went idle with a severe back bruise – slammed to the floor about 10 minutes into Gonzaga’s loss at Washington on Dec. 4 – Gonzaga’s offense went into idle a bit, too. Sure, Morrison was there with his usual gas – 43 points against the Huskies, 25 each against Washington State and Oklahoma State – and J.P. Batista bulled around for his share, but the Zags often looked like a teenage driver wrestling with a manual transmission for the first time.

Which isn’t surprising, given the limited drive time freshman Jeremy Pargo and sophomore Pierre Marie Altidor-Cespedes have had.

“It’s not to say the two other guys didn’t do a good job,” Morrison said, “but most of these guys, Derek’s always been their point guard – especially mine. I came in here with him, so I’m more comfortable with how he plays and how he shoots the ball.”

Well, let’s get right to that shooting part, shall we?

One of the night’s more revealing numbers from the box score was GU’s 7-of-15 showing from 3-point range – five of those from Raivio, who a year ago was the West Coast Conference’s most prolific long-range shooter.

Seven. Exactly as many as the Zags managed in the last three games combined.

For a program that has led the WCC in 3-point percentage 12 times in 19 years, this is not one of Gonzaga’s best perimeter shooting teams. Morrison’s deep marksmanship, obviously, has improved – especially off the glass, heh, heh, heh – and Altidor-Cespedes has begun to knock down the odd 3, but with forward Josh Heytvelt out until at least February with a broken ankle, this team can struggle keeping zones and sagging man-to-mans honest.

Yet after surviving the scare against Oklahoma State, Few insisted that it was Raivio’s shooting the Zags missed the most.

“It’s his decision-making,” Few said then.

On Saturday night, he acknowledged it was both.

“He can really jump-start us on runs with his shooting,” Few said, “and he can stem a run by the other team, which is what he did today in the second half. We’re struggling to score, and if you can just find him, he’ll knock down a 3, and that solves some of the problems.”

True enough. All of Raivio’s 3s this night either gave GU a lead or halved a growing Virginia lead. None was bigger than the one off a P-mac feed that gave the Zags the lead for good, coming as it did in the middle of a terrific, six-minute defensive stretch in which all the Cavaliers could manage was single free throws.

Still, an even more telling number was 4:1 – Raivio’s assist-to-turnover ratio.

“He’s got a knack – and it’s good and bad,” Few said. “He doesn’t take many risks, so he’s very steady with the ball. Sometimes he misses things that are inside the defense that some of our other guards would have exploited. But at the same time, when in doubt, err on the side of caution. Every possession counts.”

It’s a lesson Raivio had confirmed by watching from the bench.

“The young guys are great players,” he said, “but they still have things to learn about forcing things that aren’t there. There are situations in games – close games, when you get a stop and need to get a basket yourself – and it just comes with experience, knowing when you’ve got to grind it out and when you can kick it ahead on a leak-out and go for a big play.”

Victory made the warm-and-fuzzies complete. Along with Raivio’s return, the McCarthey crowd was emerged by the brief – 2 minutes, 18 seconds – season debut of Erroll Knight, who until Friday hadn’t done so much as a five-on-five drill in practice since Sept. 19. Eleven seconds after he subbed in, he got a steal off the press (“I’m taking credit for that,” Pargo teased, “I cut off the sideline”), and the roar suggested the Zags had just passed Go and advanced to the Final Four.

They’re a ways from that, of course. But at least now they have their best guard on the floor.