Zags confront rocky road
Could this be the night it all ends?
Certainly, considering the caliber of the opponent and everything the Gonzaga University men’s basketball team has been forced to deal with the past two days.
But the Bulldogs, to a man, seem determined to put all of the recent distractions behind them and get on with the business of defending their nation’s longest 50-game home-court winning streak and taking another big step toward winning a seventh-consecutive West Coast Conference regular-season championship.
To do that, the Zags (18-8 overall, 8-2 in the WCC) will have to find a way past conference co-leader Santa Clara (18-7, 8-2) when the Broncos invade the McCarthey Athletic Center tonight at 9 for a much-anticipated showdown that will determine sole possession of first place in the WCC standings with just three league games remaining.
And they will have to do it without sophomore forward Josh Heytvelt, who, along with freshman forward Theo Davis, who is redshirting, were suspended indefinitely on Saturday after being arrested in Cheney for possession of drugs late Friday evening.
The Bulldogs did a nice job of playing through the distractions and absence of Heytvelt on Saturday, beating Saint Mary’s 60-49 behind their best defensive effort of the year. But Santa Clara, which starts a pair of 6-foot-11 wide-bodies in senior Sean Denison and sophomore John Bryant, presents a much different challenge – especially on the low blocks where the 6-11 Heytvelt has operated effectively at times this year.
“They’ve having a great year,” GU coach Mark Few said of the Broncos, who will be making their last stop in Spokane under longtime coach Dick Davey, who will retire at season’s end. “They’ve got a lot of seniors, they’ve got a lot of experience and they’ve got guys who have played a lot of minutes in their system.
“And they are, by far, the biggest team in the league.”
Along with the 305-pound Bryant and 245-pound Denison, who have combined to average 20.5 points and 13.3 rebounds, SCU boasts another massive front-liner in junior backup center Josh Higgins, a 7-foot, 275-pound transfer from Western Kentucky.
“We’re not going to a play a bigger team than those guys,” said GU’s fifth-year senior forward Sean Mallon. “But I think last time we did a good job of matching up with their 7-footers, and we have to play it to our advantage again.
“They might be big bodies and tough to deal with, but if we can get them to chase us around on the perimeter, that’s a big advantage for us.”
The Bulldogs, who have won the last 13 games in the series, beat the Broncos 77-69 on the road earlier this year in a game in which Heytvelt came off the bench to score 12 points and pull down seven rebounds in only 21 minutes.
With the former Clarkston High School star unavailable at least through the weekend, Few has asked Micah Downs, a slender 6-8, 180-pound shooting guard, to play the four, or power forward, position. Downs responded with five points, two rebounds and two steals in only 16 minutes on Saturday.
Along with being Davey’s last trip to Spokane as SCU’s coach, tonight’s game will mark a final homecoming, of sorts, for Broncos senior point guard Danny Pariseau, a former prep standout at Shadle Park High School, who spent three seasons at Eastern Washington University before transferring.
Pariseau had 11 points and five rebounds in the first meeting between the two teams.