Gonzaga denies Dons

Eddie Sutton has won 799 games in his 37-year college coaching career, but he hasn’t had much luck against the Gonzaga Bulldogs.

The Bulldogs, who beat Sutton-coached Oklahoma State teams twice in the last three years, held off the Sutton-coached San Francisco Dons 72-64 on Monday night in front of another sellout crowd of 6,000 at the McCarthey Athletic Center, preventing the veteran coach from his milestone 800th win.

Gonzaga used a balanced attack to register its sixth straight win. The task gets considerably tougher for the Bulldogs (15-4, 4-0 WCC), who visit No. 1 Memphis (17-0) on Saturday.

“It’s a league win, that’s never bad,” Bulldogs coach Mark Few said. “We did what we had to do. It wasn’t perfect, but I thought we played some stretches of very good basketball.”

It doesn’t get any easier for Sutton, who took over as the Dons’ interim coach in late December. San Francisco (5-13, 1-2) entertains Saint Mary’s (No. 24 in the USA Today/ESPN poll) on Saturday.

“Gonzaga’s a really good basketball team,” he said, “and we were fortunate to get the score back where it was. They’ve got so many different ways they can hurt you offensively and they play very, very good defense. I’m happy our ballclub came back because they could have rolled over and played dead and got beat by 25 or 30.”

Freshman Steven Gray led GU in scoring for the first time with 16 points. Matt Bouldin and Austin Daye each had 10 points. Six other Zags scored at least four points.

“I thought Steven had another strong game and really made some plays to open it up, defensively and knocking down some shots,” Few said. “Jeremy (Pargo) had a good game at the point with six assists and just one turnover. That definitely helps. We roll when he does that.”

The Zags again lacked a knockout punch, leading by as many as 19 in the second half before seeing the Dons close within six with 30 seconds left. That followed a pattern similar to GU’s last three games (Utah, Georgia and San Diego) played in Spokane, where the Bulldogs built big second-half leads but couldn’t put the opponent away.

Gray hit two free throws with 20.4 seconds left to account for the final margin.

“I have to be a better leader at the end of these games, getting guys in the right spots and making better decisions, but we’ll clean things up,” Pargo said. “That’s the biggest step for this team – closing games out. We did a good job of that the first weekend of conference, but we’ve got to clean it up.”

Both teams came out misfiring from the field in the first half. At one point, the Bulldogs were 1 of 8 on field goals, 0 of 4 on 3-pointers and 0 of 2 at the free-throw line. Meanwhile, San Francisco missed its first five shots before Danny Cavic scored with 15:17 remaining.

Gonzaga finally got untracked with an 11-0 run – capped by 3-pointers by Daye and Micah Downs – to move in front 15-4.

The Dons put together nine unanswered points with Manny Quezada’s free throw tying the score at 18 with 6:26 left, but Gonzaga pulled away again. Gray’s layup off a nice feed from Abdullahi Kuso started a 13-4 spurt.

GU reserve forward Ira Brown energized the crowd with a couple of dunks late in the first half. The first was a follow jam of a Pargo miss. On the next trip down the floor, Brown hauled in Pargo’s lob pass from 40 feet and two-handed it home, giving the Zags a 35-25 lead.

Gonzaga settled for a 37-29 halftime advantage.

Gray’s 3-pointer and David Pendergraft’s layup hiked Gonzaga’s lead to 46-33. The Dons closed to 46-39 on Quezada’s reverse layup, but Kuso’s dunk, Bouldin’s 3-pointer and a pair of Downs free throws gave GU a 52-39 bulge.

Downs’ dunk gave the Bulldogs its biggest lead at 62-43 with 8:05 remaining. San Francisco’s Dior Lowhorn, who scored 17 of his 21 points in the second half, sparked a comeback that concluded with his putback drawing the Dons within 70-64.

GU 72, San Francisco 64

Percentages: FG .404. FT .850. 3-Point Goals: 5-13, .385 (Lowhorn 0-1, Strong 1-3, Hadley 0-1, Cavic 1-4, Quezada 2-3, Brooks 0-1). Team Rebounds: 2. Blocked Shots: 4 (Lowhorn, Taylro 3). Turnovers: 13 (Lowhorn 5, Taylor, Strong, Hadley 2, Caic 2, Quezada, Morgan) Steals: 3 (Lowhorn, Hadley, Quezada). Technical Fouls: None.

Percentages: FG .431. FT .667. 3-Point Goals: 6-17, .353 (Pendergraft 0-2, Heytvelt 0-1, Pargo 0-3, Bouldin 1-3, Gray 2-5, Daye 2-2, Downs 1-1) Team Rebounds: 4. Blocked Shots: 3 (Heytvelt 2, Daye). Turnovers: 12 (Heytvelt 2, Pargo, Bouldin 2, Gray, Daye 2, Downs, Kuso, Brown, Team) Steals: 12 (Pendergraft 3, Heyfelt, Gray 5, Daye, Downs, Kuso). Technical Fouls: None. Halftime–Gonzaga 37, San Francisco 29. A–6,000.