Spirited in St. Louis
ST. LOUIS – Saint Louis coach Brad Soderberg, a huge advocate of the man-to-man defense, got all gimmicky against the eighth-ranked Gonzaga Bulldogs on Thursday night and almost crafted one of the biggest upsets of the college basketball season.
Soderberg went against his deeply engrained defensive affections and scrapped his pet man-to-man in favor of a triangle-and-two that seemed to baffle and bother the normally high-scoring Zags.
But in the end, GU’s preseason All-American Adam Morrison played his way through the confusion and hit three huge shots in the final 5 minutes of the game to rescue the Bulldogs 60-57 in front of a season-high crowd of 15,707 at the Savvis Center.
Morrison, who came in as the nation’s leading scorer with an average of 28.4 points per game, managed only four in the first half, but burned the Billikens (5-5) for 14 in the second – including six straight that put the Zags (9-2) up 58-51 with just less than 3 minutes remaining.
“The story of the game was that the headliner stepped up,” Soderberg said afterward. “It as pretty much in the balance until their All-American decided they were going to win the game. And he won it for them right there at the end.”
Even with Morrison’s late scoring surge, Saint Louis had a chance to tie the game at the buzzer, but watched its upset bid slip away when Kevin Lisch’s long jumper bounced off the rim.
“That’s a great win for us,” said a relieved Mark Few, the Bulldogs’ seventh-year coach. “We knew it was going to be tough. They came out in that triangle-and-two (defense) and we hadn’t seen that before.
“We knew it was coming, with just how well a couple of our guys have been playing. But to have to face it in a game on the road in a tough environment for the first time … I was just really proud of our guys. And we accomplished what we need to. We got out of here with a W.”
Soderberg said he decided to go with a gimmick defense after watching what the Zags have done this season against the man-to-man defenses of some of the best teams in the country.
“Essentially, what we did was we didn’t defend two of their players,” he explained, adding that the called his father Don, a former high school coach, back in Stevens Points, Wis., for some tips on implementing the triangle-and-two.
On the advice of his dad, who Soderberg described as a “big gimmick defense guy,” the Billikens shadowed Morrison and Zags’ point guard Derek Raivio all over the floor and double-teamed the Bulldogs’ J.P. Batista every time he touched the ball on the low blocks.
The unorthodox defensive approach worked splendidly for most of the game. Batista, a 6-foot-9, 269-pound center who came in averaging just more than 20 points a game, took only eight shots and finished with eight points and five rebounds. Raivio, who was averaging 13.4 points, also finished with just eight.
As a team, the Zags shot a meager 39.7 percent (23 of 58) from the field and were just 7 for 25 from 3-point range. But they managed to sneak away with a much-needed win heading into an abbreviated holiday break.
Few said he was particularly pleased with the way Morrison handled himself in the face of the trick defense.
“Last year he would have gotten frustrated,” Few explained, “but tonight he didn’t, and that was huge. He stayed with it and stayed with it and then hit some really tough shots at just the right time – kind of like he’s done all year.”
The 6-8 Morrison, who made 8 of 15 basket tries and also pulled down a game-high nine rebounds, said patience was the key to his second-half offensive improvement.
“I finally started picking my spots a little better in the second half and got it going,” Morrison explained.
It helped that the Zags were able to use some makeshift lineups in the first half to play through some early foul problems encountered by Batista and junior forward Sean Mallon, who had 10 points and three rebounds.
At one point near the end of the opening period, Few had Raivio, David Pendergraft and the seldom-used trio of Erroll Knight, Nathan Doudney and Mamery Diallo on the floor. Yet the Zags were able to slice a 28-24 Billikens lead to 28-27 when Doudney, a senior shooting guard, made his first basket of the season – a 3-pointer from deep on the right wing – just before the halftime buzzer sounded.
“I thought they responded well,” Few said of his lesser-known players. “It’s unusual for them to be out there with that mix of guys, but I think they handled themselves very well in a difficult environment and difficult situation, where we weren’t able to run our normal offense.
“We cycled a lot of different guys out there, and each of them contributed in their own different way.”
Saint Louis was paced on offense by junior center Ian Vouyoukas, who finished with 16 points and earned the respect of GU’s front-liners.