Zags alone in first

Matt Bouldin welcomed back his missing perimeter jump shot Saturday night.

His Gonzaga University teammates were quick to step in and do their part to help their rookie guard celebrate the much-anticipated reunion as the Bulldogs blew past short-handed West Coast Conference basketball rival San Francisco 72-56 in front of a sellout crowd of 6,000 in the McCarthey Athletic Center.

Bouldin, a 6-foot-5 freshman, came into the game having missed his last 16 attempts from beyond the 3-point line. But after misfiring badly on his first long-range jumper against the Dons, he knocked down his next seven shots – including four 3-pointers – and finished with 16 points as the Zags (14-7 overall, 5-1 in the WCC) raised the nation’s longest home-court winning streak to 48.

The Bulldogs, who also got 16 points and nine rebounds from Josh Heytvelt, 14 points from Derek Raivio, and an 11-point, 11-assist double-double from Jeremy Pargo, also kept their McCarthey Center record unblemished at 35-0 and moved into sole possession of first place in the conference standings after Saint Mary’s and Santa Clara both suffered unexpected losses at home.

San Francisco (7-14, 3-3), which played without leading scorer Antonio Kellogg, who is serving a three-game school-imposed layoff to shore up his academics, got 16 points each from Manny Quezada and Danny Cavic. But senior guard Armondo Surratt, the Dons’ second-leading scorer and last year’s WCC Newcomer of the Year, was held scoreless after spending part of his morning hooked up to an IV at a local hospital battling a virus.

Still, USF coach Jessie Evans made it clear the outcome was decided by what Gonzaga had rather than by what his Dons didn’t have.

“Give all the credit to the Zags,” Evans said of the Bulldogs, who shook off some early shooting and turnover woes to shoot 51 percent (26 for 51) from the field, while convincingly winning the rebounding battle 37-28. “They’re a big, physical team, and they’re tough to compete with on the boards.

“And then you get a guy like Bouldin, who’s shooting 20-something percent from 3, and he knocks down one and now all of a sudden that basket becomes a lot larger. We just weren’t prepared for him to knock down shots like that.”

Bouldin, who had not made a 3-pointer since GU’s 82-74 loss to Nevada in Seattle on Dec. 30, said several of his teammates had good-naturedly reminded him of his AWOL jump shot.

“It was nice to get out of the slump I was in,” he said. “Everybody kept telling me to shoot my way out of it, and tonight the guys got me some shots and it was good.”

GU’s solid play following intermission helped nullify a ratty first half that produced some puzzling numbers.

USF shot just 25.9 percent (7 for 27) from the floor and was outrebounded 24-15, yet the Dons were down by only 30-24 at intermission.

Gonzaga did what it could early to keeps things interesting by making only two of its first seven shots and suffering through a scoring drought that lasted almost 4 1/2 minutes and included turnovers on five straight possessions.

“We were really erratic at the beginning of the game, trying to force plays and turning the ball over,” admitted Pargo, who also did most of the heavy defensive lifting against USF’s Surratt, who came in averaging 14.9 points per game. “But we settled down, and things really came together for us.”

When asked about his approach to defending Surratt, who played 33 minutes but finished 0 for 6 from the field, Pargo added, “I came in knowing he was their go-to guy and knowing he would take big shots at the end of the (shot) clock and throughout the entire game.

“I just had the mentality of trying to stay with him and contest every shot he took, because he’s a great player.”

Surratt wasn’t the only USF player to shoot poorly. The Dons made just 17 of their 49 basket tries (34.7) percent and would have been the victims of an even bigger blowout had it not been for the late-game shooting of Cavic, who scored 13 of his points in the final 5 minutes to carve deeply into the comfortable 70-43 lead GU had built.

“I thought there were good, solid stretches on defense tonight where we had some real good rotation and our deflections were back,” Bulldogs coach Mark Few said. “And I liked our balance (on offense) once we settled down.”

Gonzaga 72, USF 56

Percentages: FG .347, FT .583. 3-Point Goals: 8-21, .381 (Cavic 3-6, Quezaga 3-7, Hernandez 1-1, Polakovic 1-2, Surratt 0-5). Team Rebounds: 3. Blocked Shots: 0. Turnovers: 15 (Quezada 6, Surratt 4, Polakovic 2, Wiggins Jr., Hernandez, Dukes). Steals: 9 (Surratt 2, Cavic 2, Polakovic 2, Wiggins Jr., Quezada, Dukes). Technical Fouls: None.

Percentages: FG .510, FT .667. 3-Point Goals: 12-26, .462 (Bouldin 4-5, Raivio 4-11, Heytvelt 2-3, Pargo 1-2, Downs 1-4, Altidor-Cespedes 0-1). Team Rebounds: 3. Blocked Shots: 5 (Heytvelt 3, Pendergraft, Kuso). Turnovers: 18 (Pargo 5, Raivio 5, Mallon 3, Bouldin 3, Kuso, TEAM). Steals: 7 (Pargo 3, Raivio 2, Heytvelt, Kuso). Technical Fouls: None.

Halftime–Gonzaga 30, San Francisco 24. A–6,000.