Mallon option worked

Gonzaga’s Sean Mallon insists he was the third option, at best, on the out-of-bounds play that put him at the foul line and in position to decide Monday night’s West Coast Conference men’s basketball game between the Bulldogs and visiting Saint Mary’s College.

“Basically, the play is not designed for me,” admitted the 6-foot-9 junior forward, who ended up with the ball – and outcome of the game – in his hands with just a half-second left on the clock.

The original idea, according to Mallon, was for him to set a screen to free teammate Adam Morrison up for a shot from the corner, with J.P. Batista cutting off another screen and into the lane as a second option.

“What happened,” Mallon explained, “is I screened out Adam to the corner, my guy sucked and went with him and I was wide open under the basket.”

Faced with the obvious time constraints, Mallon took the inbounds pass from Derek Raivio just outside the lane on the Zags’ baseline and powered toward the basket, drawing a foul from the Gaels’ Daniel Kickert, who had left his man to help.

Then, with the score tied and just three-tenths of a second remaining, Mallon bounced his first foul shot off the front of the rim, but made the second to lift fifth-ranked Gonzaga to a 62-61 win in front of a sellout crowd of 6,000 in the McCarthey Athletic Center.

The win gave the conference-leading Bulldogs (19-3, 9-0) their 10th straight victory and ran their home-court winning steak to a school-record 35, the longest in the nation.

Mallon’s free throw dropped the curtain on an intense and physical game that left nearly everyone involved drained, both emotionally and physically.

Afterward, Kickert admitted it was a defensive breakdown on the part of the Gaels that led to Mallon shaking free on the baseline, but stopped short of fessing up to the foul.

“These refs are going to call it at Gonzaga even if it wasn’t a foul,” said the 6-10 junior, who scored a team-high 15 points for Saint Mary’s. “There were some questionable fouls at the end, and they made free throws.”

Kickert also expressed his frustration over the way Morrison, the Zags’ leading scorer, was “magically back in the game” down the stretch.

“He wasn’t scoring at all until the last 3 minutes,” he said.

Actually, Morrison had already scored 15 up to that point. But the Bulldogs’ junior forward added five more – three of them from the foul line – in the final 1:45 of the game to help reel in the Gaels.

Saint Mary’s, with the score tied at 61 and just 33 seconds left, had a chance to put some additional pressure on the Bulldogs, but let it slip away when Diamon Simpson misfired on a wide-open 3-pointer from the right wing.

Mallon chased down the rebound and the Bulldogs called a quick timeout to set up a final shot.

Morrison took it, but came up short with the 14-foot jumper he launched with 4 seconds left.

The ball deflected off a Saint Mary’s player and out of bounds, setting the stage for Mallon’s foul-line heroics.

“He got himself a good look,” Few said of Morrison and the short shot he missed. “You can’t make them all. I think we all expect him to make them all, and that’s just not fair. But Adam made some huge baskets and great plays when we were struggling with 4 minutes to go to get us back in that thing.”

Next up for the Zags is a non-conference matchup against Stanford on Saturday.

The game, which tips off at 6 p.m. in the McCarthey Athletic Center, will serve as the nightcap for ESPN’s weekly College Game Day telecast.