‘Poorest’ defensive effort of season bites No. 6 Gonzaga in 87-80 upset loss at Portland | Analysis

PORTLAND – One-loss Gonzaga had big plans for the next two to three months.

On a Field of 68 podcast episode that aired Wednesday, senior forward Graham Ike said he and numerous Gonzaga teammates had April 6, the date of the national championship game, marked on their calendars. Not figuratively, either.

Only a handful of hours later, the sixth-ranked Zags were quickly recalculating expectations as they navigated their way off the court through a growing crowd of Portland students.

The first push notification landed from ESPN’s mobile app with 13 minutes remaining in the second half. Gonzaga was trailing Portland by nine points at the Chiles Center, enough to warrant an “upset alert” notice from the worldwide sports leader.

A top-10 ranking was on the line, an unbeaten run through the West Coast Conference was in jeopardy and a top-three seed at the NCAA Tournament was starting to look questionable at best.

The situation felt just as dire as the mobile update suggested. The final result? Probably as painful as any Gonzaga’s experienced in 27 years under coach Mark Few.

Freshman sensation Joel Foxwell led first- and second-half scoring barrages for Portland, Gonzaga’s impenetrable defense went through one of its weakest stretches of the season and the Pilots picked up their first top-10 win in school history, outlasting the Zags 87-80 on its home floor.

A fanbase inexperienced in court-storming procedures needed a minute or two to flood the hardwood, but Portland students quickly covered large sections of the playing surface and proceeded to mob the small circle of Portland players situated by the home bench.

Somewhere in the madness was Pilots coach Shantay Legans, who utilized a knee scooter to get around the floor after tearing his Achilles helping Portland’s shorthanded scout team. The former Eastern Washington coach didn’t spend more than a few minutes of Wednesday’s game sitting down and signaled in many of Portland’s plays hobbling on one leg.

“It worked out, we won the game,” Legans said. “I’ll take an Achilles’ for a couple wins.”

Before Wednesday’s contest, Gonzaga ranked No. 5 in the NCAA’s NET ranking and No. 11 at KenPom. Portland rated No. 230 and No. 213 in those same metrics and sat at No. 9 in the WCC standings. The Pilots were coming off a 30-point loss at Washington State just four days earlier and hadn’t beat the Zags since 2014, snapping a 20-game losing streak. Gonzaga had won 19 of the last 20 games against Portland by double figures, 15 straight games since November and entered Wednesday’s game favored by 21½ points, according to FanDuel Sportsbook.

The Zags couldn’t put a single finger on where it wrong, mainly because there were too many culprits.

Most of the errors came on the defensive end, where Gonzaga had held five straight WCC opponents under 70 points, with swarming perimeter play and solid rim protection. The Zags seemingly fixed some of their outside shooting issues with seven first-half makes, but still went to halftime trailing 39-33.

“It was just probably our poorest effort all year on the defensive end,” Few said. “Maybe Michigan or something like that, but Michigan’s a little different entity. Portland from the jump offensively, they were getting better shots on their offensive end and we couldn’t find a way to stop them.

“Obviously we knew coming in Foxwell was a special player, but they were posting us hard, they were kicking our rear end on the rebounds and they beat us in all facets.”

Ike scored 24 points and pulled down 10 rebounds in his second game back since returning from an ankle injury, but the senior forward couldn’t atone for the defensive and rebounding issues that haunted Gonzaga from the opening tipoff all the to the final buzzer.

The Pilots scored their 87 points on 32 of 54 (59%) shooting from the field, 7 of 16 (43%) from the 3-point line and 16 of 20 (80%) from the free throw line. Before Wednesday’s game, five straight WCC opponents had failed to eclipse 70 points against Gonzaga.

Gonzaga’s main issue was trying to keep track of Foxwell, who was outscoring the visitors by himself for more than six minutes to start the first half, accounting for 11 of Portland’s first 17 points. Foxwell led the game in scoring, but the WCC’s assists leader also tallied eight assists and four rebounds while strengthening his case for freshman of the year.

“In the scouting report, I obviously go through all the guys and see who would be matching up on me and I go through seeing how they guard,” Foxwell said. “At the end of the day it’s Gonzaga, they’re sixth in the country so I knew it was going to be tough, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy but I just kind of try and read the game as well as I can when I’m out there and just go from there. Just trust in my game.”

The Zags took their first lead of the game at the six-minute, 55-second mark of the first half on Mario Saint-Supery’s 3-pointer, but it didn’t last long. Gonzaga didn’t score for nearly three minutes to close the opening frame and Portland went into halftime with a 39-33 advantage, becoming just the fourth team to lead at the break while playing the Zags (Michigan, Seattle U, Saint Mary’s).

Not long after ESPN’s “upset alert” update flashed on phones across the country midway through the second half, Portland’s James O’Donnell made a layup that extended the lead to 11 points. Foxwell knocked down two more 3’s and Garrett Nuckolls made a mid-range jumper to build a 15-point Pilots lead with 7 minutes, 10 seconds remaining.

The Zags closed the deficit to single digits in the final minute on a 3-pointer from Saint-Supery and cut it to five points on a jumper from Braeden Smith, then four points on Davis Fogle’s layup.

But O’Donnell responded with a fastbreak dunk at the other end and Saint-Supery missed from distance to help Portland secure a signature win.

“We’ve been in a lot of games, we just had one of our worst weeks of basketball against Washington State and Pacific,” Legans said. “… I knew our guys would step up in this game, I thought they’d play hard. I knew if we could slow down Graham, we’d have a good shot at it, and we tried to take ourselves with our shooters. They’re probably the best team we’ve played all year long and everything has to happen right in a game like this.”

Saint-Supery and Fogle were the other GU players in double figures, scoring 12 and 10 points apiece. The Zags shot 26 of 65 (40%) from the field, 10 of 30 (33%) from the 3-point line and 18 of 26 (69%) from the free throw line.

Gonzaga (22-2, 10-1) resumes its two-game Oregon swing on Saturday in Corvallis against future Pac-12 opponent Oregon State (13-12, 6-6). The Beavers were 9-4 at Gill Coliseum before Wednesday’s late tipoff against Washington State and handed the Zags one of their four WCC losses last season, winning 97-89 in overtime.