It looked good on paper
When first scheduled, Saturday’s Ronald McDonald House of Charities Classic between Memphis and Gonzaga at the Spokane Arena seemed like a perfect NCAA tournament tune-up for both teams.
While this intriguing non-conference matchup might still prove to be exactly that for No. 8-ranked Memphis (22-3), a 69-52 winner over Tulsa on Wednesday night, it has taken on an NCAA play-in-game aura for GU (18-9), which is in desperate need of another “statement” win to pad its at-large NCAA tournament resume.
Memphis coach John Calipari said earlier this week that scheduling a late-season non-conference game against a high-level opponent has always been part of his coaching strategy, noting that during his previous tenure at Massachusetts he once played Louisville on the road in early March.
The reason, he said, is to attempt to bolster your NCAA tournament seed and prepare for the kind of unfamiliar opponents you ultimately face in postseason play.
“We always try to do things in January and February outside our league, just to challenge us,” said Calipari, whose Tigers remain unbeaten and unchallenged as the dominant team in Conference USA. “In the league, we all know each other. I mean, there are no secrets.
“But when you go outside league, it’s like an NCAA tournament game, because you don’t know as much about each other, and your players don’t, either. They don’t know the other personnel, and it’s nice to see how they respond to those things.”
Most years, GU coach Mark Few, who has agreed to play the Tigers again next season in Memphis as part of a four-year deal that will bring Memphis back to Spokane in 2009, would but into Calipari’s take on Saturday’s showdown.
He admitted that even this year’s matchup originally had just such an appeal, “when we set it up.”
But that was well over a year, several unseemly losses and a Josh Heytvelt-suspension ago.
Which leaves Few wondering whether such a daunting challenge is best, at this point, for his undermanned Bulldogs, who are limping in after Monday night’s 84-73 loss to Santa Clara, which not only snapped the Zags’ 50-game home-court winning steak but also cost them their share of first place with the Broncos in the West Coast Conference standings.
Still, Few insists Saturday’s game was good for his team when it was scheduled, and he is not about to second-guess his decision to make it.
“It’s on the schedule and we’ve got to play it,” he said prior to practice Wednesday. “I’m glad we set it up. It’s always been a good game for us to play, and I think it’ll always be a good game for them to play. It’ll help both of us when we look back on it.”
Memphis, which was ranked No. 4 at the time, handed GU an 83-72 road loss in late December 2005.
It was a game designed to give both nationally recognized teams, which play in relatively unpublicized conferences, a chance to test themselves against a tournament-caliber opponent.
“It was one of the things we set up – to be able to play outside of our conferences,” Few said. “And for us, we just don’t see this level of athleticism and level of talent – nor does anyone.
“This is more talent than anyone on the West Coast has, not just the WCC. This is as high a level as you can get.”
The timing, Few added, is much better than it was back in late January, when the Bulldogs played Pacific-10 Conference power Stanford as part of a three-games-in-six-days California road swing that culminated with an upset loss to WCC opponent Loyola Marymount.
“This was more just a case of where you can fit it in and where it can have less of an impact on your league race,” Few said of Saturday’s showdown. “Obviously, playing that Stanford game made it a really, really tough week for us with three straight games on the road.
“With this one, we’re at least playing our travel partner (Portland, on Monday), so we only have one other game. Ideally, this is where you want to slide it in.”
It would help if Heytvelt, a 6-11 sophomore center who was suspended indefinitely last Saturday after being arrested on charges of drug possession were available – which he won’t be. Heytvelt was averaging 15.5 points and a team-high 7.7 rebounds.