‘Special’ Joel Foxwell rose to the occasion while helping Portland stun No. 6 Gonzaga | Rewind
PORTLAND – Ten seconds before Portland grabbed its biggest lead of Wednesday’s game against No. 6 Gonzaga, guard Sam Noland went to the scorers table to check in for the Pilots.
Noland, a native of nearby Tualatin, Ore., played at NCAA Division III Pacific Lutheran University in the Tacoma area before joining Portland’s coaching staff as a graduate assistant. With injuries and illnesses decimating the Pilots’ backcourt, Noland, who still had eligibility remaining, was elevated to a roster spot, giving Portland nine healthy bodies for a Jan. 24 game against Saint Mary’s.
It’s just one glimpse into what the past few weeks and months have looked like for the Portland team that pulled off one of the largest upsets of the college basketball season Wednesday, defeating one-loss Gonzaga 87-80.
Noland subbed into the game for freshman point guard Joel Foxwell, who was still fighting a cough but didn’t show it while torching the Zags for a game-high 27 points. Starting guard Mikah Ballew reportedly lost 15 pounds while dealing with flu symptoms, but still gave Portland six minutes on Wednesday. Matus Hronsky also returned from illness to play against the Zags.
The Pilots were already navigating WCC play without two starters, Timo George and Riley Parker, who’ve been ruled out with season-ending injuries. Earlier this week, the adversity trickled down the coaching staff.
Fifth-year coach Shantay Legans, who was previously at Eastern Washington, had to join Portland’s undermanned scout team earlier but popped his Achilles while going through a zone defense drill.
“It means a lot, you’re coaching against one of the best coaches to ever coach college basketball and one of the best programs over the last 20 years in college basketball,” Legans said. “You’re really happy for your program, you’re happy for the university, but you’re really happy for the players that put all the work in. It means a lot to me because it’s another game, it’s a game a lot of other teams won’t get. We got a get-back game for all the games we shouldn’t have lost.”
Gonzaga, meanwhile, has to respond from the type of loss it’s experienced only a handful of times in 27 seasons under Mark Few. The longtime coach kept coming back to defense while describing where things went sideways for the Zags, who had trouble guarding just about everyone in a Portland uniform Wednesday, but particularly the one donning the No. 23.
That’s where we’ll start in our day-after rewind.
Foxwell’s flurry
Foxwell was still working through a long list of unread text messages when he emerged from Portland’s locker room to speak with a reporter Wednesday evening. A handful of those came from family members and friends watching and following back home in Melbourne, Australia.
“There’s a few, there’s different people that are just congratulating me,” Foxwell said. “It’s a little surreal right now. Still trying to get my head around it.”
Gonzaga defenders spent the better part of 40 minutes trying to get a handle on Foxwell, but ultimately failed, allowing the freshman point guard to score 27 points on 11 of 18 shooting, 3 of 8 from the 3-point line and 2 of 4 from the free throw line.
Foxwell was in a groove early, making his first five shots from the field to score 11 points inside the game’s first four minutes. Effortlessly transitioning between scorer and facilitator, the guard began to get teammates involved, swinging the ball around and adding four assists during a nine-minute stretch to close the first half.
“We got clearly outplayed at the point, but (Foxwell) is a special player,” Few said. “They do a lot and they give him a lot of freedom and he does a great job with that for them.”
Foxwell got to his spots on Wednesday night, but there wasn’t a bad shot for the five-time WCC Freshman of the Week. He knocked down 3s, converted from the midrange and drove into the lane for a first-half layup that grazed the top of the glass before falling through the net. Later in the period, Foxwell got Tyon Grant-Foster to jump on a pump fake at the 3-point line before knocking down a step-through runner from 20 feet.
“I think it’s just the belief in the group,” Foxwell said. “The belief has been there since day one. We’ve been able to play really well against a lot of good teams and be close against a lot of good teams. We just haven’t been able to pull it out, so when they went on their run it was just staying composed, knowing we’ve been in this situation, knowing we haven’t executed in this situation.”
New low
By just about every metric, Gonzaga had its worst defensive outing of the season, especially when considering the quality and caliber of opponent.
Michigan shot 60% from the field while hitting triple digits in a 40-point win over Gonzaga in late November, but the Wolverines rate 200 spots higher than the Pilots in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency statistic.
The Pilots made 59.3% of their field goal attempts and registered 21 assists. Both were the second-highest total of the season allowed by Gonzaga this season, after Michigan.
Gonzaga players missed defensive coverages and assignments, were slow on closeouts and didn’t play with the physicality that allowed the Zags to hold three of the last four WCC opponents under 40% from the field.
“It’s all of the above, man,” Few said. “When you give up almost 60% from the field, it’s all of the above. Just outplayed us, outexecuted us, outshot us. When they got open shots, they made them and we didn’t. Literally every phase of the game.”
Portland made six straight early in the first half and built its biggest lead of the game during a stretch where the Pilots connected on 13 of 16 shots from the field.
“When you have a program like ours and have a season like we’re having, yeah, you always feel like you’ve got to respond, but then you have to respond,” Few said. “You can’t be talking about it. You’ve got to bear down and get stops on defense, basically. We pride ourselves on getting three stops in a row and we didn’t have that one time tonight.”
Damage control
The Zags will have an opportunity to mitigate damage to their AP ranking if they can handle Oregon State on Saturday in Corvallis (3 p.m., KHQ/ESPN+), but GU’s NET ranking is more important at this juncture of the season, with approximately six weeks until Selection Sunday.
It was mostly bad news on that front when the Zags woke up Thursday morning to see they’d dropped four spots from No. 5 to 9 after dropping their first Quad 3 game of the season.
There was one silver lining, though.
Gonzaga’s 3-1 record in Quad 1 games improved to 5-1 overnight, thanks to results elsewhere in the WCC and around the country. The Zags gained one Q1 win after Saint Mary’s throttled San Diego, bumping the Gaels to No. 29 in the rankings. Saint Mary’s needs to stay inside the top 30 for GU’s 73-65 home win over the Gaels last week to remain in Q1 territory.
Gonzaga also got help from a nonconference opponent. The Zags’ 77-65 win at Arizona State on Nov. 14 was just a Quad 2 result at the time, but it’s now a Quad 1 victory after the Sun Devils beat Utah 71-63 in Salt Lake City.
Gonzaga has three other Q1 victories, against Alabama, Kentucky and UCLA, and potentially three more opportunities in the top quadrant before Selection Sunday. Road games against Santa Clara (Feb. 14) and Saint Mary’s (Feb. 28) should both provide Q1 opportunities. Provided the Broncos and Gaels both stay inside the top 50, the Zags could have one more Q1 game at the WCC tournament.