Gonzaga defends 3-point line, home court in avenging last season’s loss to Santa Clara

Several stats tell the tale of Gonzaga’s 89-77 victory over Santa Clara late Thursday night, including Graham Ike’s 34 points, GU’s 57.6% shooting from the field and a decisive 17-0 spurt midway through the second half.

Not to be overlooked: Santa Clara’s 7 of 26 showing from behind the 3-point arc (26.9%).

The Broncos put on a shooting clinic a year ago, draining 18 3-pointers, seven by Tyeree Bryan, to pull off a 103-99 upset at the McCarthey Athletic Center. Santa Clara went on to break the West Coast Conference single-season record with 368 made 3s last season.

The Broncos pace the WCC again this season in made 3s per game (9.7) and attempts (29.6). They’ve been even better in their first four conference games, knocking down 11.8 triples per game, but those numbers will drop after struggling against the eighth-ranked Zags.

“I thought it (3-point defense) was good,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said. “We missed a couple coverages and guys had some wide-open looks. They’re also a really good two-point shooting team. I thought we really contested those bigger guards – if you remember last year their big guards really hurt us in the paint.”

Christian Hammond, a 6-foot-4 guard who shoots 41.4% from 3 and averages 17 points per game, misfired on both of his 3-point attempts and finished with 14 points. Second-leading scorer Elijah Mahi (14.9 points, 36.5% on 3s) finished with eight points and was 0 of 2 from distance.

All nine Broncos that logged at least 10 minutes attempted at least one 3-ball.

“It’s always a challenge we look forward to,” Ike said of defending bigs who put up 3s. “Coach (Few) has trust in us to guard out there but we knew they’d get it up from 3-point range, especially after last year what happened in this building.

“We definitely wanted to defend homecourt better than last year and I thought we did a better job with that and taking away some of their strengths from the 3-point line.”

The Zags were economical on 3s, hitting 6 of 16, to supplement 50 paint points.

SCU had a tough shooting night all around, finishing at 43.1%. Backup guard Sash Gavalyugov was the lone Bronco with multiple made 3s, finishing at 2 of 6.

“You know, we had shots that we could make that we just didn’t,” Santa Clara coach Herb Sendek said. “But that’s going to be true of any game. I’m sure they could say the same thing, right?”