Life after Adam

As Gonzaga coach Mark Few looks ahead to the 2006-07 college basketball season, he can take some comfort in looking back – to the fall of 2004, to be precise, when he was facing a major rebuilding task after losing five seniors to graduation.

When Blake Stepp, Cory Violette and friends departed they took 53 percent of the Bulldogs’ offense with them and left Few in a frantic search for points.

GU’s eighth-year head coach finds himself in a similar situation as he attempts to cobble together enough offense to offset the loss of last year’s two leading scorers, Adam Morrison and J.P. Batista, who accounted for 59 percent of the Zags’ points during a 29-4 season that produced another West Coast Conference title and a trip to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.

What was different back in 2004, however, was that Ronny Turiaf, the team’s leading scorer from the previous year, was returning. And Batista, a first-year junior college transfer, was about to emerge as one of the most productive low-post scorers in the country.

No such luck this time around.

Which means the Bulldogs will need to scrape up points by committee if they hope to remain among the elite programs in the country.

“We’re going to have a couple of guys who can put some points up,” said senior guard Derek Raivio, who averaged 11.1 points as a junior and stands as the top returning scorer from last season. “But we’re going to be pretty balanced.

“We’ll be a lot different than last year. We’ll share the ball a lot more. I think we have a chance to be a better team all around.”

Raivio, who expects to play more as a shooting guard, will be GU’s first scoring option early in the season. Senior forward Sean Mallon (6.8 ppg) should also get a few more touches, and sophomore front-liner Josh Heytvelt will be asked to assume a much larger role than he did during his injury-plagued redshirt freshman year.

“He’s a huge key for us,” Few said of the 6-foot-11 Heytvelt. “It’s whether his game matures and whether he’s mentally ready to be in the prime time. If you watch him work out, his ability and skills are at the highest level. But now he’s got to put it together with the bright lights on and people counting on him, and that’s not always easy. We’ll see.”

Heytvelt and Mallon will anchor a thin and inexperienced front line. JC transfer Abdullahi Kuso, a 6-9, 220-pounder, won’t bring as much to the party as Batista, but Few said the Nigerian native has been a “pleasant surprise.”

Junior David Pendergraft, a bit undersized at 6-6, is scheduled to split time between the small and power forward spots, but beyond him there is nothing in the way of Division-I experience up front – at least until 6-11 sophomore David Burgess, who played sparingly at BYU before transferring to GU last December, becomes eligible.

Freshman Will Foster, a 7-4 center, might be pressed into action, with 6-9 Theo Davis, another rookie, looking at redshirting after undergoing shoulder surgery last month.

The backcourt is a different story, however, with Raivio heading a deep and talented group of guards – many of them interchangeable.

With Raivio expected to play more at the off-guard spot, sophomore Jeremy Pargo should get considerably more minutes at the point, where he showed flashes of brilliance last season. Few hopes the former Chicago prep star can make the same kind of strides Morrison, Mallon and Raivio made between their freshman and sophomore seasons.

“He deserves to have that kind of year,” Few said. “He really put in time from April until now, and I hope it rewards him. He’s worked hard on a lot of aspects of his game.”

Junior Pierre Marie Altidor-Cespedes and sophomore Larry Gurganious also return, and the Zags seem to have found another gem – and potential four-year starter along the lines of Stepp – in 6-5 freshman Matt Bouldin, a two-time Colorado 5A Player of the Year whom Few rates as “the best passer we’ve had, at this point in his career, since I’ve been here.”

Throw in Micah Downs, a 6-8 shooting guard and midseason transfer from Kansas, who – like Burgess – becomes eligible at the end of the first semester, and you have a backcourt that ranks among the deepest in the country.

“You have some guys who you hope have grown,” Few said of the many young players he will be counting on this winter. “They’ve been very, very successful in their roles, so far, at Gonzaga, and they’ve been on some great teams. But now their roles have to change.

“We’ve had some guys have great senior years back over the years … so, we hope some guys will step up and have some all-league type years.

“But that has yet to be determined.”