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Gonzaga Basketball

Zags wouldn’t mind taking Werner along

SEATTLE – Never mind shortening the shot clock or moving the charge circle out a foot. The next rule tweak in the NCAA tournament should be the barnstormers’ special, allowing the winners to pick up a player from the losing team for the rest of their run.

In fact, why not start now?

Give the Gonzaga Bulldogs one Dexter Werner, and take your next mortgage payment to put on the Zags in Vegas.

It’s worth a sigh and a smile now, the Bulldogs having escaped the spunk of North Dakota State in their tourney opener at KeyArena, 86-76 – not the 2-over-15-seed crushing deemed mandatory by both nervous loyalists and disdainful critics, but all the rules require.

But at the time, the Dexter Werner Experience was an amusement park ride with no lap bar.

He was, in fact, a flashback nightmare. He was Wichita State’s 3-point shooters, he was Arizona’s piranha guards, he was Jimmer and Steph and Rip and all those smooth Zag killers who’ve sent the Bulldogs back to Spokane short of their dreams for the past 17 years.

Except that in his next life, Dex is coming back as, oh, a dump truck.

But while the Bison sophomore was the least likely looking baller on the Key floor, he wound up bringing out the best in Gonzaga’s go-to flavors, Kyle Wiltjer and Kevin Pangos – and that’s why the Bulldogs have a date Sunday against Iowa for a spot in the Sweet 16.

Yes, the Zags survived.

Why is that such a dirty word, again?

“Any time you can get a win this time of year,” said coach Mark Few, “you need to celebrate it.”

Do they need to play better? Absolutely. A viewing of Iowa’s blowout of Davidson is evidence enough. If this is indeed the guarding-est team Few has put together, now would be the time to show it. Also, they need to find someone besides Nuke LaLoosh to handle the post entry passes.

They need to be the team that nearly had the Bison tipped over early in the second half, down by 18, unable to deal with Wiltjer on the wing or Przemek Karnowski in the post or Gary Bell Jr. just about anywhere. The team that was making NDSU looking very Summit League.

And not the team that turned Dexter Werner into a superstar.

“He played out of his mind tonight,” said Gonzaga guard Eric McClellan. “Out of his mind. This was his Super Bowl.

“But that’s this tournament, you know?”

Well, it looked more like noon at the Y, but you know what he’s saying.

Who is Dexter Werner? He’s a 6-foot-6, 240-pounder that someone on Twitter called the Bismarck Beast, and he was the Summit’s Sixth Man of the Year. And he averaged all of eight points a game, making his 22 this night … well, just call him peaked-against-the-Zags Dexter Werner.

He trundled off the bench for the second time about seven minutes before halftime and kept the Bison within a 10-spot with a couple of hey-how-about-that buckets. But he was a different animal in the second half when the Bison got desperate.

He was Tyrannosaurus Dex.

“Backhands, step-throughs, falling away, out of bounds – he made everything,” said Gonzaga assistant coach Brian Michaelson.

So did he catch the Zags by surprise?

“He was on our scouting report – he’s their best-scoring big, but I walked by him yesterday and he’s this much taller than me,” said Michaelson, holding a thumb and finger half-an-inch apart. “I talked to guys and they said, ‘Against 6-6 guys, he’s going to make 50 percent. Against 6-8 guys, he’s going to make 25 percent. When he runs into your guys, he’s going to make 10 percent.’

“If I’m driving into Shem, maybe I can have one night like that, but the other 10 – the ball’s going to break my face when he puts it back at me.”

He got the Bison as close as six, 68-62, but then fouled Pangos after a made 3-pointer and had to take a breather. For all purposes, that was NDSU’s last gasp.

“Honestly, it was just a little blurry,” he confessed. “I told Coach that’s how we practice it – I trip on a guy’s foot and fade away and bank it in.”

Lost in this blur was the run-stopping shooting of Wiltjer and Pangos, Bell hounding NDSU’s Lawrence Alexander into the toughest 19 points in his 1,700-point career, and the complete lockdown of A.J. Jacobson, the Bison’s No. 2 scorer.

But on a tournament day of one lonely upset and precious little sustained entertainment, Dex was the Rx. Even the survivors had to tip a cap.

“I would pick him up any day for my men’s league team,” said Wiltjer.

Men’s league? How about the Round of 32?