A Grip on Sports: This might have been the year to end the Pacific Northwest’s NCAA title drought

A GRIP ON SPORTS • This March was lining up to be an exceptional one for the Pacific Northwest. There were a couple men’s teams who seemed capable of winning an up-for-grabs NCAA Division I basketball title. And one women’s team that was, in many quarters, the favorite. It’s sad none ever received the chance.

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• A Pacific Northwest team won the NCAA’s first title. That would be Oregon back in 1939. Howard Hobson’s team defeated Ohio State in a very Tony Bennett-like score of 46-33.

Since then the closest the region has gotten to a championship are three second-place finishes: Washington State in 1941, Seattle U. in 1958 and Gonzaga in 2017.

On the women’s side, there never has been a Northwest team in the NCAA (or AIAW for that matter) championship game.

All of those streaks easily could have ended in 2020. We all know the men’s tournament was wide open. Any of a dozen teams were capable of winning it. The women’s side was not as deep but Oregon may have been the team to beat. And it there was a chance Gonzaga or Oregon State could have gotten hot and made their way to the title game. Once there, anything is possible.

So how possible was it for the region’s best teams? Let’s rank them by their chances to win the title:

1. Oregon women (31-2): The Ducks had the best player in the nation in point guard Sabrina Ionescu. They had two other All-Pac-12 players starting, the conference’s best defender and a deep bench. Kelly Graves has been coaching long enough that little would have surprised him. And Oregon made the Final Four last season, so that monkey was off its back. After watching the second-ranked Ducks, top-ranked South Carolina and third-ranked Baylor play often this season, it seemed to me Oregon was going to win it all.

2. Gonzaga men (31-2): Interesting the two best Northwest teams had the same record. But they got it done in decidedly different ways. While the Duck women featured a star, the Zags really didn’t. They had seven starters, in a sense, and that was it. No one stood above the others, other than maybe Killian Tillie, who, with a depth of crucial skills, was their most important player. But on any night any of their seven could lead them in scoring and lead them to victory. It would have been interesting to see GU’s draw. That might have determined if Mark Few would have made it back to the Final Four a second time. The lack of depth? It wouldn’t have been nearly as important in the tournament, what with the long commercial breaks and the tendency of most officials to “let them play.”

3. Oregon men (24-7): The Ducks were something of an enigma. They featured the Pac-12’s best player, point guard Peyton Pritchard, but after that the lineup was a series of interchangeable parts. That’s Dana Altman’s way. When Oregon was connected on defense and clicking on offense, the Ducks were really good. They also had the luxury of knowing who was going to be their go-to guy at the end of the shot clock and the game. But other teams knew it as well. In the NCAA Tournament, that can be curse.

4. Gonzaga women (28-3): I must admit, when Katie Campbell went down with a knee injury, I thought Lisa Fortier’s Zags were done. It wasn’t just the fact she was their best 3-point shooter, though that was important. She was also their best lockdown defender, using her length, footwork and anticipation to make life miserable for the opposition’s most-feared outside player. It took about a week, but the 13th-ranked Bulldogs adjusted. How? They bought into playing bulldog-tough defense. Losing Campbell’s ability to stretch a defense would have hurt in the tournament – as it did against a physical Portland team in Las Vegas – but Virginia showed on the men’s side in 2019 tough, tenacious defensive teams could still win titles. On the plus side, the Zags would have played their first two NCAA games at home.

5: Oregon State women (23-9): The Beavers were probably a player away from having a legitimate chance to win a title. And her name was Kennedy Brown. When the 6-foot-6 freshman went down with an ACL tear in early February, the 14th-ranked Beavers were 19-4, with their only loses coming to Oregon and Arizona State on the road and Oregon and Stanford at home. But they never figured out how to replace Brown’s presence on the boards – she averaged 10 rebounds a game in her last five before the injury – and scuffled to the finish.

• It’s quite possible the GU men and the Oregon women could have cut down the nets on back-to-back nights this season. That would have been something, especially considering Few and Graves coached together at Gonzaga for so many years – and lived within a few miles of each other. In fact, Kelly Graves’ son, Will, would have been headed up the ladder for a piece of the Bulldogs’ net, as a walk-on reserve. And dad would have had the last bit of the Ducks’ championship net in his office.

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Gonzaga: Jim Meehan joins the chorus of those looking back at the Zags’ season. Of course, Jim had a closer vantage point than almost everyone. So his review is better.

WSU: Around the Pac-12, let’s start in Arizona. The Wildcats could be really good next season. But there are so many variables, from Sean Miller’s availability to whether Nico Mannion will head to the NBA, it’s almost impossible to get a real handle on them. … Colorado’s season was really good until it wasn’t. … Most young teams have good stretches and bad ones. Utah was no different. One of its bigs, however, is in the transfer portal. …This is fun for me. My son was a huge Toby Bailey fan in 1995, when the Bruins won the national title here in the Northwest. UCLA has come close since but hasn’t gotten over the hump again. … There are a couple Los Angeles coaches atop everyone’s list of the conference football coaches’ hot seat. … Every athletic director is on a hot seat right now, though it’s not warm because they might get fired. It’s warm because there is so much to navigate.

EWU: We linked Ryan Collingwood’s story yesterday on next-year’s prospects for Eastern’s basketball team. It ran in this morning’s paper, however, so we will pass along the link once more.

Seahawks: If you are keeping a close eye on things, you are getting a bit more hopeful the Hawks will sign Jadeveon Clowney. Heck, some people think it is something they have to do.

Mariners: The season may be on hold, but roster moves most certainly aren’t.

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• We took a break today from peering into the past. Well, from peering into the distant past. We might get back to that tomorrow. Or we might take a day off. We haven’t decided yet. We’ll let you know via Twitter. It just sounds good to sleep in until, you know, 8 in the morning one day. Until later …