John Blanchette: Bulldogs brace for wild, woolly time in Big Apple

NEW YORK – It looks like they picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

Wait, that’s Lloyd Bridges’ line in “Airplane.” Sorry.

What the Gonzaga Bulldogs picked, perhaps, is the wrong week to play Duke. In New York. At Madison Square Garden.

The city is a little preoccupied at the moment. O.J.’s publisher got canned and, reportedly, tried to blame it all on a “Jewish cabal” which is not, I’m assured, a Hanukkah dessert. Miss USA had to put down her martini long enough to grovel in front of Donald Trump to keep her crown and, what seems inevitable, his next wife. And, of course, Gotham basketball is all atwitter over New York Knicks coach Isiah Thomas getting off scot-free for the Garden brawl with the Denver, and Nuggets coach George Karl calling him a “jackass.”

Maybe Isiah and Miss USA are looking for a publisher.

In any case, Gonzaga coach Mark Few covered the eight blocks between his hotel and ESPN’s “Cold Pizza” studios – and back – on Tuesday without once sparking a flicker of care in some bored Manhattan eyes. That’s not unusual, of course. I once saw a guy walking a sheep on a leash down Broadway and nobody turned a head.

Except me. I asked the sheep’s name.

“Meryl,” the guy grumbled. “Meryl Sheep.”

Anyway, the Duke-Gonzaga game isn’t until Thursday, and by then New York will have glommed onto and cut loose a dozen other stories. Meanwhile, Few is consumed with issues other than anonymity.

He was asked about the prospect of beating the two bluest of basketball bloods, Duke and North Carolina, at the Garden in the same season and recoiled as if he’d just watched Josh Heytvelt put up a hook shot from half court.

“It would just be nice to win a game after getting spanked by Georgia,” said Few, who brought his team here smarting from Saturday’s 96-83 defeat. “That’s what’s churning more than anything.”

Because if they don’t beat Duke, the Zags are looking at back-to-back losses for the first time in four years.

The home-court winning streak is quite a feat, but it pales a bit compared to that run.

It was just a few days after Christmas 2002 when the Bulldogs dropped an 81-71 decision to Stanford in the Pete Newell Challenge in Oakland, then came home and dropped that New Year’s Eve thriller to Saint Joseph’s in double overtime.

OK, technically, the 2003 NCAA epic loss to Arizona and the 2004 season-opening loss to Saint Joe’s were also back-to-back. But like no-hit innings, it’s not really consecutive when they’re 10 months apart.

In season, then, the Zags have managed to dodge a few bullets, but they’ve never followed a loss with a loss since those humble holidays. There have been winning streaks of nine, 21, 13 and 20 games.

But they’ve never followed a loss by playing Duke, either.

The Dookies need no introduction, of course, but there does need to be a disclaimer.

“These are two great programs,” Gonzaga forward David Pendergraft acknowledged in advance of their first meeting. “It’s interesting because it’s an East Coast/West Coast kind of thing, and it’s just a great opportunity for us.

“We’ve been called the ‘Duke of the West’ by a few people.”

OK, well, that needs to stop. What Gonzaga has accomplished and who it’s beaten over the course of eight years can never be devalued, but profile and pedigree and two different things, and it’s why Few relishes these “showdowns,” as he called them Tuesday, every bit as much as his players.

“Probably the best part of the whole thing,” he said, “is that you’re able to compete with people you have the highest respect for.”

OK, but the beating-them part is more problematic.

For one thing, the Zags have to repair what went horribly wrong against Georgia, which was defense (“really poor,” Few said) and blocking out on the glass (“our worst effort in eight years”). Only some remarkable shooting kept the Bulldogs close as long as they were.

And, naturally, those things – offensive rebounding and defense – are what the Blue Devils seem to be especially good at.

“You just don’t see that type of pressure,” Few said. “Rarely do you see guys that committed to being in passing lanes and playing that high. It makes it difficult to run your half court sets against that pressure. They can just get you out of it and get you frazzled.

“And they seem to be really pounding the offensive glass and that’s a concern, given the way we handled that (Saturday).”

If anything, the spikes of Gonzaga’s fortunes have been even more pronounced than expected with a team whose main players were so relatively untested. Because the victories have generated such elation – North Carolina, Texas, Washington – the losses have produced considerable bemusement, never mind how good those teams will turn out to be.

“What this team hasn’t done a great job of understanding is that people really want a piece of us,” said Few, returning to an old theme. “Our teams in the past have understood that – that you’re going into sold-out arenas and against teams that want a piece of us and will take care of business.

“But fortunately, we’ve been pretty good in these kinds of big-time showdown-type games. So we’ll see what happens.”

This week, on this stage, would be the wrong time to get sheepish.