Gonzaga finds the key: Bulldogged defense

There is nothing like hard evidence.

The Gonzaga Bulldogs have been Top 25 tenants for the last nine weeks now and 31 of the last 33, so the guard at the front gate knows them and there’s little question of whether they belong in the neighborhood.

Still, in some recent State-of-the-Zag remarks, coach Mark Few zeroed in on the one recurring deficiency that was making it obvious that they’d never quite own the joint:

“This group’s biggest challenge,” he said, “is being tough enough.

“They tend to fixate on offense and being able to outscore people and that’s not what gets it done. You’ve got to defend, you’ve got to rebound, you’ve got to have some toughness about you. You can’t base everything on the offense end. If that was the case, the Dallas Mavericks would have won seven world championships by now.”

Fast forward to Thursday night’s West Coast Conference showdown with Saint Mary’s, a Top 25 team in everything but actual votes – a niggling technicality, especially since no one in America knows for sure what a vote is worth anymore.

In any case, the Gaels are plenty good and were proving it, up 12 points with 20 minutes to play and on the verge of being the first WCC team since 1997 to sweep the season series from Gonzaga – and the first insurgent at all to win in the new castle on Cincinnati Street.

Tough going for the Zags. And, hey, what do you know?

That they managed to dig out a 68-63 victory and boost themselves back into a tie with the Gaels atop the WCC wasn’t all that surprising – the Zags are 33-0 as a ranked team at home, though the law of averages may be catching up with them.

But the way they went about it was a revelation.

Yes, without an 11-2 burst out of the blocks in the second half, we aren’t having this conversation – the Bulldogs never get close enough to make it an issue.

But it was later in the second half that the Zags truly asserted themselves. In a stretch of 20 possessions over 111/2 minutes, the Gaels managed just two field goals – five minutes apart – and a pair of free throws. Only once in those 20 possessions did Saint Mary’s get more than a single shot at the basket. Three other shots were blocked or deflected; another never made it to the rim. The only real uncontested shot was the 3-pointer by Jason Walberg that temporarily restored the Gaels’ lead.

And there it was: defense, rebounding, toughness.

“It’s something we’ve been trying to preach to this team – your defense is what you have to rely on when you’re struggling,” said assistant coach Bill Grier. “It’s got to be a constant.”

Now, eventually you have to make an offensive play, too – a statement bucket – and after a number of whiffs the Zags finally got theirs, a three-point play on a stealthy offensive rebound by Sean Mallon. That pulled them even for the first time all game, with six minutes to play, and after that even the tough baskets came easy.

For first place or not, this game did not seem to have either the grace or the gravitas of some of the old Kennel 15-rounders against GU’s rivals of recent vintage, Pepperdine – though it was certainly noisy enough and hotly contested. But there were too many unforced errors, too few big baskets.

Adding to the oddness was the presence on the officiating crew of one Tom Wood, who on Monday was one of three referees assessed a one-game suspension for a blatant flub of the rules on using television replay in last Sunday’s Saint Mary’s-San Francisco game.

Since there were no WCC games between Sunday and Thursday, apparently Wood had served his suspension by sitting out a CYO game or something. League coordinator of men’s officials Jack Ditty did not return a phone call for amplification Thursday night, but Gonzaga athletic director Mike Roth said he was told by the league office that “they could not schedule anyone else” to work the game.

Surely this means we can look forward to players and coaches in the league being able to postpone any future suspensions, on the grounds of inconvenience.

And maybe it was because so much of the regular season remains to be played – with the most meaningful games to follow in the tournament – that the Gaels didn’t seem all that broken up about their missed opportunity here.

“We’re going to win the conference this year and this was just a little setback,” said guard E.J. Rowland, the one Gael the Zags couldn’t seem to corral.

“We split with them this year and we could easily have got two – it’s not like the game was out of reach. We had the game. It hurts because we were up so much.”

Of course, that part hurt the Zags, too.

“This was the biggest game of the year,” said Bulldogs forward Adam Morrison, “and to get outplayed like that (in the first half) wasn’t a good feeling.”

It was Morrison – who was bottled up and held to just one shot, on which he was fouled, in the last 11 minutes of the first half – who jump-started GU with six quick points to open the second half. But, again, the real triage was done on the defensive end and on the boards.

For starters, the Bulldogs stopped trying to defend those 16 3-pointers the Gaels made in their 89-81 win in Moraga.

“So much was made about those 3-pointers for the last month that our guys just played that instead of being there in help defense,” Few said. “They just drove it, drove it, drove it and must have got 20 points off layins and 10-footers.”

Then they disrupted Saint Mary’s rhythm with a press spearheaded by Erroll Knight, and took control of the glass – 23-11 in the second half – with Ronny Turiaf doing the bulk of the dirty work. And the Gaels shot just 24 percent in the second half.

“Ronny really gave us a defensive presence the last 10 minutes, rebounding and blocking shots,” said Grier. “Even if he fouled, he made them think about it.”

Though the Zags did shoot 60 percent from the field after halftime, it wasn’t their normal show. Even once they took the lead, the Bulldogs then made three straight turnovers – the last of their 18 on the night.

“It’s a luxury and a blessing that they have the ability to score the ball,” Few said a week ago. “And it’s human nature – like in golf, you feel better if you’re driving the ball.

“But we’ve had other teams that understand you can feed off the defense and that’ll get the offense going.”

And now this team seems to understand, as well.