Gonzaga shuts down Paulius Murauskas, wins boards in takedown of rival Saint Mary’s

Graham Ike took care of the offense with 30 points, but Gonzaga took care of Saint Mary’s 73-65 on Saturday night in large part by shutting down the Gaels’ Paulius Murauskas in the second half and winning the glass throughout.

The latter two tasks were not easy. Murauskas paces the West Coast Conference in scoring at 19.3 points, including 20.2 points in conference games.

He was easily on his way to surpassing those averages after a 13-point first half, but he stalled in the second half, making just 1 of 5 shot attempts while scoring two points in 17 minutes.

Gonzaga wing Jalen Warley had the most reps defending Murauskas. Emmanuel Innocenti and Tyon Grant-Foster also had stretches guarding the talented 6-foot-8 forward from Lithuania.

“Big shout-out to ‘E’ (Emmanuel),” Warley said. “He came up really big because when he wasn’t guarding Murauskas he was guarding (point guard Josh) Dent. He was really making life difficult for them.

“He (Murauskas) is a great player. I knew we weren’t going to shut him out, he was going to score. Trying to make his life difficult, not letting him get the shots he’s used to getting all year. We did a good job kind of knocking him off his normal spots and normal rhythm.”

Warley had his typical widespread impact on the outcome, finishing with 10 points, seven rebounds, two assists and one steal. In the plus-minus column, Warley was plus-25. Ike was the next highest Zag at plus-8.

“Jalen guarded him, Emmanuel had some good runs on him and Ty had several runs on him,” Zags coach Mark Few said. “If (Murauskas) did escape, Graham came over and put a body on him.”

Murauskas struggled in three games against GU last season, scoring just 19 points on 7 of 26 shooting.

“You have to play two halves,” Saint Mary’s coach Randy Bennett said. “You have to do a better job. Most importantly, he didn’t defend well.”

The Zags also shut down guard Mikey Lewis, limiting the sophomore to four points and 1 of 5 shooting on 3-pointers. Lewis hit nine 3s and scored 34 points in two regular-season wins over GU last season.

“Just have to guard your yard and again take away his 3s,” Few said.

Gonzaga also won the rebounding battle, not by a huge margin (39-34) but enough to contribute mightily to the victory. The Gaels lead the WCC and the nation in rebounding margin at plus-11 with GU not far behind at 10.5.

The Zags collected 11 offensive boards to Saint Mary’s seven, leading to a 17-5 advantage in second-chance points. Innocenti had three offensive rebounds and Warley and Adam Miller both had two.

“They’re an excellent rebounding team and those bigs’ (7-1 Harry Wessels, 7-3 Andrew McKeever and Murauskas) numbers are something on offensive rebounds,” Few said. “We did a great job on that. We ended up with 11 offensive rebounds. We needed every single one of them.”

Eight Zags finished with at least three boards, led by Warley and Grant-Foster with seven.

“It was huge,” Ike said. “We understood that coming in, the staff made a good point of that. Obviously, the returners know with the past couple years that’s what they do. So if we could just clear their big guys off the boards and have our guards come in and rebound – we did execute that. J-War with seven and a lot of guards with five-plus, three-plus.”

Grant-Foster’s final numbers (five points, seven rebounds, three assists, one block) were fairly modest, but he had a big hand in Gonzaga rallying from a six-point second-half deficit.

“He was all over the place,” Few said. “He had some monster rebounds on the defensive end and the offensive side, some tip-outs. He was another that was part of the defensive effort in that second half.”

Gonzaga outscored the Gaels 39-27 in the closing 20 minutes.