From Corey Belser to Omar Samhan, WCC had a host of villains ready to mix it up with Zags | West Coast Conclusion

Omar.

In compiling a Hall of Inflame from the annals of Gonzaga basketball, it is the first name among triggering baddies – and so identifiable that a last name isn’t really necessary.

(Which is Samhan, for those of you under 25, or for the nouveau fetiche who just scored their tickets in Gonzaga’s last price hike/seat swap.)

In fact, the Big O from Saint Mary’s thoroughly dwarfs any rival in this little broom closet of Zag lore – and not only because he stands 6-foot-11 and packed around some 265 pounds, proportions apt for a would-be first-round pick in the WWE heel draft.

And his special relationship with the Zags and their true-blues make him, even today, downright iconic.

Or bubonic. Take your pick.

And hold close those memories. Because as Gonzaga plays out its string in the West Coast Conference and prepares for its leap into the Pac-12 next season, the visiting villain is on life support – not only at McCarthey Athletic Center but throughout college basketball.

Oh, the Kennel Club will no doubt research players in the new league to receive their chants and cheap shots, and just one elbow with intention from an opponent will be all it takes for the rest of the patrons to turn on him. But there won’t be 47 years of WCC history to sharpen the barbs – and likely no future, either. Here in the transfer era, one winter’s scoundrel is the next spring’s portal escapee, the roster churn leaving nothing but once-heckled wonders.

This was the appeal of the Omar Experience, of course. He made villainy a Lifetime Aggrievement Award.

As he recalled on a visit to Spokane back in 2018, he came out “guns blazing from the start.” He introduced himself with 20 points off the bench in Moraga as a freshman in 2007, and added the insult of poking his head into the Zag huddle to bark at Gonzaga coach Mark Few.

“He was yelling at (Josh) Heytvelt, ‘You’re letting this nobody kill you!’ ” Samhan said. “In Mark’s defense, I was a nobody. But I got fired up and went back at him. Their fans wrote letters to (Gaels coach Randy) Bennett saying I needed to apologize.”

Omar never apologized, and never stopped coming back. It didn’t matter that the Gaels never won in Spokane during his tenure or that he scored more than 10 points here only once. He’d take taunting calls from Kennel Clubbers in his hotel room at 3 a.m., and joust with them on social media. “The Most Hated Man in Spokane,” blared a headline in a Bay Area paper – and it wasn’t a platonic hate.

“I still have it up in my house,” he crowed.

Despite the flourishing rivalry with Saint Mary’s, Samhan’s outsized disrepute rendered subsequent Gaels’ villains almost minor league by comparison. His teammate, Matthew Dellavedova, did rock an ugly mouth guard and an importunity of spasming his head and body in all directions in search of a gullible ref’s whistle.

“And when he got called for something,” said former Kennel Club president Jack Quigg, “it was always, ‘What did I do? I’m just a good old boy playing ball.’ ”

It should be noted that he was also a crackerjack player. Yet it hasn’t always been the best of the best hearing the hoots. Hank Gathers worked too hard to heckle. Steve Nash was downright admirable.

Better that the prospective heel should commit a cheapshot foul, showboat, have a mock-able physical feature or a run-in with the cops in his history.

So how about hopscotching through the Zag fan’s most-hated list? For the purposes of this last go-round, it’s WCC-centric – meaning Washington’s Spencer Hawes won’t make the cut for the riding the Kennel Club gave him over getting dumped (presumably) by his volleyball-playing girlfriend. And no tales from the Big Sky days, when students held “John Stroeder Look-Alike Night” for a Montana game, and mercilessly badgered the red-haired giant into a scoreless evening.

Daddy’s little gunner: Greg Goorjian was a shoot-first point guard who had averaged 43 points a game playing for his dad, Ed, in high school. When Ed landed a college job at Loyola Marymount, Greg made the transfer from UNLV – the second of his college career, in the very pre-portal days. These transactions paid off double for the Kennel Club.

First, they could chant “Daddy’s boy!” at the junior Goorjian all game. And second, they could dash onto the floor at a timeout and do their flying, diving body spell-out to form “T-O-U-P-E-E” in honor of Ed’s very obvious hairpiece. Trouble seemed to be brewing when dad made a beeline for the student section after the post-game handshake, but Goorjian senior’s message was simply, “I wish we had guys like you.”

Wave them goodbye: Pepperdine has had just four winning seasons in 22 years, but the Waves were Gonzaga’s main rival at the dawn of Zagmania – and the main source of assorted Snidely Whiplashes. Forward Glen McGowan had assaulted teammate Will Kimble outside the Pepperdine library, and so was hit with the chant of “Beat your teammate!” The next year, Jimmy Miggins assaulted Gonzaga’s Dan Dickau with a shove in the WCC title game and went on full villain alert. Even Jan van Breda Kolff, coach in 2000-01 and a chronic assailant of referee eardrums, got his own earful on one visit – from a former Spokesman-Review page designer who sat three rows behind the bench and savagely critiqued VBK on everything from an undistinguished NBA career to leaving an SEC job at Vanderbilt ahead of the posse to retrench to the WCC.

But the real vitriol was saved for Tommie Prince, a big-name high school recruit who had never made the academic cut at Arizona State. When the Waves knocked off GU on a late bucket in 1998, Prince shot finger pistols at the Kennel Club – with predictable results the next season.

“(Coach Lorenzo) Romar went over to the Kennel Club to ask them to cool it,” remembered Aaron Hill, co-author of the KC history “We Are G.U.”

Big targets: Santa Clara’s Ron Reis stands 7-2 and played at close to anywhere from 280 to 300 pounds – but shortish arms and legs fetched a lot of “T-Rex” barbs and GU students humming “Meet the Flintstones.” It was good training, though: Reis became a professional wrestler, often as a heel and most notably as “The Yeti.”

The McCarthey jackals got only one crack at San Diego’s Jason Keep, in 2003. Given his pockmarked life, he probably doesn’t remember the “Point oh-eight!” chant for a DUI or the zingers about his poorly spelled tattoo (“Big Dady” it read). The good news: after a pair of prison terms, he’s since earned his degree from USD – at age 46.

Sometimes it’s not the fans: USD’s Corey Belser spent a good portion of three seasons face-guarding Gonzaga star Adam Morrison, and the dust-ups were memorable. But it was one of Morrison’s own withering assessments during the WCC semifinals in 2006 that truly cut.

“You’re a role player,” Belser claimed Morrison told him. “Did your family come to watch you play your last game?”

BYU, as in boo: The Cougars lasted just 12 years in the WCC, but it seemed they claimed five spots on the All-Villain team every year. Bronson Kaufusi, Nate Austin and TJ Haws were not acquainted with the Marquis of Queensbury rules. Caleb Lohner, already a target for flowing blond locks, popped off to a reporter that, “Everybody hates Gonzaga, so it’s fun to go play them.” And Nate Emery’s saga – punching a Utah player, an ugly divorce and getting his team in NCAA jail for accepting extra benefits – was a gift from heckling heaven.

So it was quite the spectacle on Gonzaga Senior Night in 2019 when Geno Crandall shook the BYU guard with a behind-the-back dribble just behind the 3-point line, then did a between-the-legs crossover that sent Emery stumbling in the wrong direction and finished the layup.

“If anyone is wondering,” he posted under a video of the coup de grace on X, “my ankles are okay.”

Let’s play two: Kasey Flicker played basketball and baseball for Portland – and paid for his hoop indiscretions on the lay-away plan.

It was his junior year, 1995, when the 6-5 swingman got hot from 3-point range – making all four of his attempts, even as the Pilots lost by 16. But insisted on punctuating them with the hanging limp wrist, held aloft as he retreated down court. Among those who didn’t appreciate the gesture was then-Bulldogs baseball coach Steve Hertz.

“That’s like flipping your bat and watching the home run go out of the park,” he said.

Fast-forward a few months to when the Pilots came to old Pecarovich Field for a three-game series. Batting in the heart of the order, Flicker hits the deck when the first pitch buzzed above his head. Pitch two grazes his uniform. Three innings later, the Zags flip Flicker again and in the opposite dugout Pilots coach Terry Pollreisz – a good friend of Hertz – gives the palms-up, what’s-the-deal gesture.

“Are you throwing at Flicker?” Pollreisz asked later, and Hertz confessed the Zags were – and why. At which point, the Pilots coach said, “Well, he’s in the biggest slump you can imagine so we appreciate you putting him on first.”

And they both had the last laugh.

So here’s to the villains. Let’s hope they don’t go completely out of style.