Texas denies Gonzaga, Graham Ike their March Madness moment | Dave Boling

PORTLAND – Of the many hundred dunks Graham Ike has slammed in his career, this one seemed special.

Exclamatory. Defiant. And extraordinarily timely.

Maybe even career-defining.

Forty seconds remained in the NCAA second-round game Saturday night, and Graham Ike and the Gonzaga Bulldogs trailed Texas by three points.

But this dunk hit like a thunderbolt from Zeus – if Zeus were a lefty who could drive the lane and elevate. And even if the dunk wasn’t full-on mythological, it would surely make the difference.

Forty seconds remained to get a stop and come down to score the game-winner.

Forty seconds to survive and advance to the Sweet 16.

Texas brought the ball up and called timeout at 0:32.

The pro-Zag crowd at ModaCenter was still shrieking from Ike’s dunk.

As Ike walked toward the GU huddle, his injured teammate, Braden Huff, walked halfway onto the court to hug Ike, and congratulate him for bringing the win into sight.

“This is March Madness, the moments you dream about as a kid,” Huff said. “I just told him to embrace it all.”

But maybe not quite yet, though.

In this 31-win season, Ike and the Zags had fought through more adversity than any GU team coach Mark Few could remember – he said as much in his post-game media session.

That adversity included the dislocated kneecap that sidelined Huff in the middle of a season in which he would have surely been considered for post-season honors. That Ike lost his frontcourt sidekick only caused the pressure to fall more heavily on himself.

And, as he had throughout this All-American season, Ike shouldered the team as the surprising No. 11-seed Texas battled the Zags evenly. The dunk brought Ike’s scoring total to 25 points.

But when the Zags came back onto the court, the Longhorns had substituted forward Camden Heide. Heide had started and played a brief 13 minutes, but had missed his only shot to that point and had not scored a point.

This Gonzaga squad had evolved into one of the best on the defensive end that the Zags have ever had. And Heide could not have been among the Zags’ top defensive concerns.

But once the ball got kicked out to Heide on the right wing, he rather calmly netted a 3-pointer that the Zags couldn’t counter.

So, a guy who hadn’t made a shot all game plunks the fatal 3 with 14 seconds on the clock?

This was the Texas team that had struggled through the Southeastern Conference with a 10-10 record and had to be fatigued having to win three games in five days, including flying across the country after winning a play-in Tuesday?

This was also the Texas team that got big minutes and points from their bench, outscoring the GU bench 20-13 and outshooting the Zags 52% to 45%.

The Zags had scraped out 31 wins this season by relying on Ike and his varied helpers, depending on the needs of the game. In their two wins in their final West Coast Conference tournament, they appeared finely tuned for the NCAAs.

Their nine-point win over Kennesaw State on Thursday, though, was not entirely convincing.

Texas played somewhat inspired, and the Zags played with admirable effort but did not come up with the plays in the clutch – surely related to Texas’ athleticism and game plan.

As he has so many times in his three seasons at GU, Ike was able to expand his feelings far beyond the simple meaning of the game.

“Just super proud of this team for the adversity that we pushed through,” said Ike, who has been included on several All-America teams and is a finalist for the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award as the nation’s best center. “We were built for adversity, no doubt about it. We faced so much of it. That built us to be better men, in life, absolutely. It’s not just this game, but this season built us to be better men.”

He called his time in Spokane: “(A) special three years that will forever be ingrained in my heart and my mind. … I grew as a man. Coach (Few) built us. My teammates helped me grow.”

Huff had spent these two tournament games consigned to the far end of the GU bench. He cheered and offered support. He completed the full range of his duties of hand-slapping during every huddle and welcoming every teammate returning to the bench.

It was sad to see him relegated to the perimeter of the huddles, reduced to cheerleading.

It wasn’t known if Huff could have returned if the Zags had survived and advanced. It doesn’t matter now. Sad that the injury cost him so much of his junior season.

Asked if he expected to return to GU as a senior, given the nature of college sports these days, Huff nodded, “Oh, yeah.”

He had missed so many of these games alongside Ike, though, and all are left to wonder how far the Zags could have gone with both Ike and Huff healthy.

At the time Huff made his comments, Ike had gone off to meet his media obligations. The two had only a moment to connect.

“He’s the ultimate competitor and professional,” Huff said of Ike. “That makes it hard when something like this happens. I just gave him a hug, told him I loved him.”

At that point, it was all he could do. The game was lost.

As Ike said, they had been built for adversity, and now they may come away better men because of it.