Grip on Sports: As Gonzaga wins again, Saint Mary’s seems to wilt under the pressure
A GRIP ON SPORTS • Where were we? Oh ya, looking back into the past to find some semblance of comparison to the present. It’s what we do, especially when it comes to Gonzaga basketball. Read on.
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• After Gonzaga dealt with Saint Mary’s 74-56 to win another West Coast Conference basketball tournament last night, we kept the TV on just in case.
The “just in case” this time was Saint Mary’s coach Randy Bennett making an donkey of himself. Again.
How did Bennett do it this time? Simple. He acted like a pouty child in the handshake line after the game. Instead of showing some class, Bennett bolted past Gonzaga coach Mark Few with a handshake that could only generously be termed perfunctory.
He may have been the only Gael to get past a Gonzaga defender all night.
But can you blame him?
His Saint Mary’s team has lost four games all season. Four. And three of them have come against Gonzaga. Three. That’s 75 percent by my math.
With 28 wins, it’s hard to image 2016-17 can’t be considered a good season in Moraga. But if the goal is to win the WCC, then I guess it is easy to understand why Bennett would be sulking.
That isn’t an easy task with Gonzaga in the league. After all, the Gaels won 29 games last year. They returned their top seven players. In Spokane, the Bulldogs were losing 80 percent of their starting lineup. Of the eight players Few was going to count on, only two played significant minutes last season.
And yet Saint Mary’s lost to the Zags by 23, 10 and, last night, 18 points, in its three chances.
This might be the best team Bennett has had – other than that one night at home against UT Arlington – and yet his team never played the Zags in single digits.
He’s becoming the Bob Boyd of the WCC.
And who, you may ask if you are under the age of 40, was Bob Boyd?
Boyd was USC’s coach from 1967 to 1979. If you don’t recall, that was when UCLA was winning just about every NCAA title, let alone Pac-8 crowns.
Boyd was 216-131 at USC but was considered, wrongfully, a failure.
In fact, he may have coached the second-best team in the nation in 1971, though, due to the NCAA tournament being so limited in scope, few will remember it as such.
The Trojans, led by an unmatched pair of guards in Dennis Layton and Paul Westphal as well as athletic forward Ron Riley, were 24-2 that season. They played a grueling non-conference schedule, including road games against Utah, USF, UTEP, Illinois and Loyola of Chicago while also facing Florida State, Michigan State, Houston, LSU, ASU and Alabama.
They won their first 16 games and were ranked No. 1 in the nation by the coaches.
UCLA, ranked second, came into the Sports Arena and won 64-60. It was a heartbreaking defeat.
But still USC kept winning, rolling to eight more wins. Then came the night in Pauley Pavilion that may have crushed Boyd’s heart. The year before the Trojans had won in Pauley, snapping a long UCLA home winning streak. But this year, needing a win to earn a share of the Pac-8 title, the Trojans came up short against the top-ranked Bruins. Again.
The 73-62 UCLA win meant USC would finish the season 24-2 and not play in the postseason.
The NCAA tournament that year had 25 teams. Yes, 25. The Pac-8 sent UCLA. That was it. The Trojans, quite possibly the second-best team in the nation, stayed home.
Yes, Boyd would coach eight more years at USC. He would have good teams, even an NCAA-bound team. But he would never have a team as good as the 1970-71 group.
And it seemed to gnaw on him. He resigned in January of 1979, two months before USC would earn an NCAA at-large berth, and became an associate athletic director. He told the L.A. Times, “I just felt that after 13 years, who needs it.”
Maybe Bennett is feeling the same way. He certainly did about last night’s postgame handshake.
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Gonzaga: The win last night wasn’t as easy as the final score indicated. It was easy in the first half, it was easy at the end, but for about a 10-minute stretch in the second half, it was pretty tough. Jim Meehan has the game story, he has a piece that looks at the WCC tournament as a whole, another on the veterans, the all-tournament team and he has the keys to the win. … John Blanchette examines the NCAA bracket-seeding question. … Whitney Ogden writes about the guard play. … I did my thing on the TV broadcast. … Colin Mulvany and Dan Pelle have the photo report. … From the Bay Area, the Gaels weren’t happy with the way they started, or finished. … The women had a similar game, rolling over Saint Mary’s early, then weathering a second-half storm. Whitney has the game story from the 86-75 win while Jim adds a sidebar and Dan and Colin a photo report. … The win gave the women an NCAA berth, something to be celebrated. And Saint Mary’s will have to look to next year. … Back to the men, Mark Few picked up national coaching awards yesterday – Dick Vitale also gave him his blessing during the broadcast last night – and the Zags moved up in one ranking. … Will the Zags end up in Salt Lake City as the No. 1 seed in the West? … BYU just wants to be playing somewhere.
WSU: The Cougars head into tonight’s game with Colorado trying to win their first Pac-12 tournament game in eight years. Jacob Thorpe has the advance of the Las Vegas-based tournament. … There is a debate going on in Seattle concerning the Huskies. OK, two debates. They open Pac-12 tournament play tonight against a USC team that has to win to keep its NCAA hopes alive. … By the way, who is going to win this tournament? There are three favorites. … There are also a lot of also-rans, including California, Oregon State and Arizona State. … In football, California has put its offense in great hands with former Eastern head coach Beau Baldwin as offensive coordinator. … Sam Darnold is looking forward to USC’s spring practice. … Good pay if you can get it.
EWU: The Eagles begin the Big Sky tournament Thursday with a game against Sacramento State. The Hornets got past Idaho State 91-76 last night in Reno. … Jim Allen has the news Aaron Best has replaced himself as Eastern’s offensive line coach with another alum. … Around the Big Sky, not only did Sacramento State win last night, so did Portland State, 80-67, over Northern Arizona, and Southern Utah, which won its first tournament game ever, 109-105 in triple overtime against Montana State. … Montana feels it is in a good spot as it prepares for the tournament.
Idaho: The Vandals signed a wide receiver to a letter of intent.
Chiefs: Spokane lost for the sixth time in seven games last night, falling at Seattle 5-2. Making the playoffs isn’t looking good.
Mariners: In game news, the M’s won 9-0 over the Rangers yesterday. … There is competition for a few spots in camp. … In prospect news, we offer Boog Powell.
Seahawks: There seems to be some mutual interest between the Hawks and Adrian Peterson. … Seattle also has some interest in some free agent offensive linemen, which is good. … There are a couple defenders who won’t get contracts. … Earl Thomas is running.
Sounders: Last week wasn’t good. This week is another chance to win on the road.
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• Thanks for being patient with me. I’m glad you’re back and even gladder I’m back. You just never know. Until later …