Why has Gonzaga’s defense been so effective? It’s all about the ‘kills’

Gonzaga forward Jalen Warley was explaining the concept of “kills,” symbolic of three straight defensive stops.

It was a relevant topic Sunday night after the seventh-ranked Zags stifled Loyola Marymount 82-47 at the McCarthey Athletic Center.

Asked if coaches mentioned how many kills GU registered against the Lions, Warley said, “No, but if we don’t get any kills, they’ll let us know about that,” drawing some chuckles from the media. Senior guard Adam Miller, seated nearby at the interview table, interjected, “I think at one point 13 stops in a row, something crazy like that. And another, like nine stops in a row. I remember hearing that.”

That tends to happen when the Lions endured nearly nine minutes without a point in the first half as Gonzaga climbed out of an early 10-point hole. LMU had a few more dry spells that lasted four-plus minutes.

“There’s a bunch of (kills) statistics across the country and teams that do that on a consistent basis usually wind up winning a lot of games and making deep runs in the tournament,” Warley said. “We pride ourselves on that since the summer. In those moments I think it just kind of feeds more energy – almost celebrate that like it’s an alley-oop dunk when we can stack stops in row.”

The Lions top four scorers – Myron Amey Jr., Rodney Brown Jr., Jan Vide and Jalen Shelley – average in double figures and combined generate nearly 57 points per game. They managed just 10 in the first half (on 4 of 25 shooting) and 23 points overall.

“We got back to, that’s who we are,” Zags coach Mark Few said. “If we’re doing that, that’s a really good sign. Great defense leads to us getting out on the break and we can be great on offense when we play like that.”

The LMU foursome made just 9 of 44 field-goal attempts, including 3 of 18 on 3-pointers, all three makes by Brown. All four are capable of creating off the dribble and Amey, Brown and Vide are strong 3-point shooters, though the 6-foot-6 Vide has a smaller sample size (7 of 13).

“That’s a good team,” Few said. “They took (Saint Mary’s) right down to the wire and it took a 3 from a guy who doesn’t shoot 3s at the buzzer for Saint Mary’s to get it done. They’re one of those (teams) kind of playing small ball, isolate us, dribble at us and I thought we really guarded our yard probably as best as we have all year.”

LMU’s 47 points was its season low by 14. Only Texas Southern (43) scored fewer points against Gonzaga this season.

The Lions made their last four shots and six of their last nine to finish at 30.2%.

“They do a lot of zero cuts where they kind of ghost screen when things are breaking down and you kind of have to guard your yard,” said Miller, who had three of GU’s nine steals. “I think I told (Mario Saint-Supery), ‘They were trying to go at you, just guard your yard.’

“We just had to be solid on defense. I told the guys if we can get them to shoot a lot of tough, fadeaway mid-range (shots), we’re going to win this game. We did that and after that, we just had to rebound.”

Gonzaga won the boards, 46-33.

“We have a lot of guys that can play defense. Let’s just start with that,” Few said. “A guy like Jalen, a guy like Emmanuel (Innocenti), when you have a big (Graham Ike) that’s become pretty darn dynamic, he was out on the perimeter guarding a pretty good player (Shelley) for long stretches, Ace (Miller) is flying around, you can put some guys out there that can really play defense.”