Zags Insiders Podcast: Sizing up the Gonzaga, Saint Mary’s showdown
The two Gonzaga-Saint Mary’s regular-season games have largely decided the West Coast Conference title for the better part of two-plus decades.
It’s a similar story for conference tournament supremacy, save for BYU’s four championship-game losses to the Zags.
Volume 1 of the WCC game of the year arrives Saturday when the Gaels (19-3, 8-1 WCC) visit No. 6 Gonzaga (21-1, 9-0). The lone difference in their conference records: GU handled Santa Clara 89-77 in the Kennel, while Saint Mary’s fell to the Broncos 62-54 in Santa Clara.
Former Gonzaga center Richard Fox, now an analyst for GU telecasts on KHQ and SWX, and yours truly spent at least half of our near hour-long Zags Insiders Podcast on Monday breaking down the matchup – with or without Graham Ike (ankle) in Gonzaga’s lineup.
Here are a few of our thoughts, edited for space considerations. The entire podcast can be found at: https://www.spokesman.com/podcasts/zags-basketball-insiders/ or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqNqQY00Vzg.
Sizable task
Fox: If there’s no Ike, (GU is) just going to go really small. If it was me, I’d just go small out of the gate, really just try to spread Saint Mary’s out and make them adjust to us and our quickness. (Ismaila) Diagne is all of 7-1, plays physical, he’s long, but this is a different level. They’re going to move him around, force him to defend in the pick-and-roll a ton. Now, it’s harder to switch.
When Gonzaga goes small, they just switch everything and it neuters the effectiveness of the pick-and-roll. I think you saw that against San Francisco in a big way where all their pick-and-roll stuff just didn’t really work. If there’s no Ike, you want to be a completely different style of fighter. You’re at home. Can you make some shots from 3? Can you force Saint Mary’s to have to adjust to you?
If Ike is in there, it’s going to be very interesting because the game plan last year with (7-foot-1 Harry) Wessels and (the graduated Mitchell) Saxen, they went big and really affected doubling. The question I have is do they do that again, knowing that (Jalen) Warley and (Tyon) Grant-Foster are non-shooters, especially Warley, and still double big-to-big against Graham and really try to make his life difficult and force others to have to score.
If I remember correctly, they had some stretches where Saxen would go one-on-one. (7-3 Andrew) McKeever is just so big, I wonder if you say just make (Ike) shoot over you. There’s tape out there that Graham can struggle against that size.
The pace of play is going to be fascinating to watch. Gonzaga is going to play as fast as they can. Saint Mary’s is very, very selective in transition.
These two teams are basically top three in everything in the league. It’s a Quad 1 game for a reason. I know they lost to Santa Clara. I think that says more about Santa Clara than it does about Saint Mary’s. Not having your Twin Towers (Ike and Huff) is going to make it hard.
Meehan: Saint Mary’s is going to throw two 7-footers (in its rotation) and then you still have to deal with (Paulius) Murauskas, who is 6-8 and is a legit candidate for (conference) player of the year.
Both teams have a one-game week, so no advantage or disadvantage there. Maybe the only advantage is the Zags get to rest Ike a little bit more. They already know each other like an open book. This is a little different outfit for the Gaels. They score it a touch better (78.6 points per game, second highest in coach Randy Bennett’s 25 seasons). They give up a few more points (64.5, highest since 2020 season). Still, the fundamental thing is Bennett Ball, and they’re going to try to do that, especially on the road and control the tempo.
How do the Zags deal with the bigs and the boards? Those are always Saint Mary’s specialties, they’re usually Gonzaga’s specialties but with no (Braden) Huff and we’ll see with Ike, how do they deal with that size? Murauskas is the X-factor because he’s more of a true ‘4’. He’s not bombing 3s but he hits enough to make you step out and guard him. He does a lot of damage inside, gets to the line a ton and makes his (free) throws.
It’s just ironic that last year the turning point for the Zags’ season in a lot of ways was when they went big with Huff and Ike to match up with (the Gaels) size. Now they may be forced to do just the opposite, go small to try to beat them. It’s going to be a tall order.
Mark Few talks about it all the time: It’s hard to speed somebody up, somebody like Virginia or Saint Mary’s, teams that want to govern the speed. They’re good at it, they know how to do it. They collect defensive rebounds so you’re not getting second-chance points. They don’t burp up bad shots so you’re (not) getting out and running. They don’t turn the ball over.