Raivio rediscovers his shooting
With teammate J.P. Batista limping around with a sprained knee and bruised thigh, Gonzaga’s Derek Raivio figured he needed to supply some offense if the Bulldogs hoped to sneak past San Diego in the first of Sunday’s two West Coast Conference Tournament semifinals at the McCarthey Athletic Center.
So the junior point guard, who has been mired in a shooting slump of late, responded by scoring 21 points, dishing out four assists and making three steals as the top-seeded Zags turned back the Toreros 96-92 in overtime.
“I had a lot of fun out there, just playing loose with my game and not thinking about anything but basketball,” Raivio said after making 5 of 9 field-goal attempts and 8 of 9 free throws to post his highest point total since Jan. 16, when he threw in 24 in a 92-80 win over Loyola Marymount.
Raivio said earlier that part of his shooting problems stemmed from his inability to find a rhythm and fingered his lack of shot attempts as a possible cause.
And following Sunday’s game, teammate Adam Morrison concurred.
“You guys got to remember he’s playing with two black holes in myself and J.P. (Batista),” said Morrison, who leads the Bulldogs in shot attempts by a huge margin, “so maybe it’s our fault he’s not getting enough shots.”
To which Zags coach Mark Few added, “Well put, Mo.”
Morrison vs. Belser, Part 3
Sunday’s matchup between Morrison and San Diego’s defensive whiz Corey Belser was their third of the year and led to several more dust-ups and a lot of trash talking.
Belser was whistled for a technical foul for apparently flipping the ball at Morrison after being called for a personal foul.
“He put the ball in my chest, and I pushed the ball back at him and I got the ‘T,’ ” Belser explained.
But Morrison said Belser “kind of threw the ball at me,” adding, “I’ll just let the ref make the decision.”
Belser went on to say he thought Morrison baited him on several occasions.
“He was trying to get me to buy into some dirty tactics, I guess you could say,” Belser explained. “He got the best of me tonight.
“He knows how to get to the free throw line, knows how to get people to foul him. Whether it’s saying things or hooking your arm to make it look like you’re fouling him, or whatever – it’s not playing basketball to me.”
Foul play
San Diego coach Brad Holland didn’t go as far as San Francisco’s Jessie Evans did earlier this week and claim that Gonzaga’s home crowd intimidates officials.
But he did express dismay over the fact that his Toreros were just 14 for 19 from the foul line in Sunday’s semifinal, while the Bulldogs were 35 for 45.
“Make sure you write in your article that they shot 26 more free throws than we did,” Holland told reporters after the game.
Bombs taken away
Though Santa Clara was near its season scoring average in a 71-67 loss to Pepperdine in the women’s championship game the Broncos got there the hard way.
The Waves allowed Santa Clara only 14 3-point attempts and just three went in. Normally it’s bombs away for the Broncos.
“They were playing us fairly tight on the perimeter,” SCU coach Michelle Bento-Jackson said. “We didn’t get a lot of the transition we do and lots of our 3s are in transition.”
That was a point of emphasis for the Waves.
“They are hard to play,” coach Julie Rousseau said. “Our focus was to take away their 3-point attempts.”
All-tourney team
Pepperdine sophomore Daphine Kennedy was the MVP of the women’s tournament, joined on the all-tournament team by junior Jasmane Clarendon.
Santa Clara also had two on the all-tournament team, senior Michelle Cozard, the regular-season MVP, and sophomore Chandice Cronk.
Sophomore Dominique Carter, who sparked San Francisco’s first-round upset of second-seeded Gonzaga and helped the Dons take top-seeded SCU to overtime, rounded out the team.