I have a pretty good feeling Zags are healing up and have a good shot on the road tonight. Wish I could watch it.

Hawkstorian wrote:I have a pretty good feeling Zags are healing up and have a good shot on the road tonight. Wish I could watch it.

Sorry you'll miss it.

16 point lead with like 5 mins left turned into a 2 point lead with 1.8 seconds left. Free throw shooting was again extremely poor which allowed AZ to catch up. FINALLY Woolridge hit 2 at that point to end it.

I want North Carolina so badly.....but unfortunately Tillie turned an ankle so guessing he won't be 100%. Not surprisingly they aren't the same team when he's not on the floor.

Tillie and Anton injured again. Not sure this team will ever be fully healthy. Final score was misleading. Zags had some silly play down the stretch to make it a much closer score than it should have been. Free throw shooting is an achilles heel this year for sure.

Natethegreat wrote:Tillie and Anton injured again. Not sure this team will ever be fully healthy......

Agree. The sad thing is that Killien Tillie has the skillset to play the 3 in the NBA at 6'10" and be an all-star.


And their lead was at 15 with 2:12 left. Fracking free throw shooting man.

It's strange to me how they keep winning despite being less talented than last year, clearly flawed and hurt.

I mean ---- Joel Ayayi might be their best player right now.

They win because they play team offense, passing the ball for the best possible shot on most possessions, and because they work to play good D on every possession. Now about that defensive rebounding........They're a good shooting team as well and Ayayi has made a big difference, especially from behind the arc.

Cole Anthony out "indefinitely" for NC. Zags should win at home.

Zags have a chance in this wide open field. I don't see a "dominant" team in college hoops landscape. Hopefully its the zags. Cant wait to be in K2 vs NC.

Shanegotyou11 wrote:Zags have a chance in this wide open field. I don't see a "dominant" team in college hoops landscape. Hopefully its the zags. Cant wait to be in K2 vs NC.

It would be incredible. They will have to improve on their FT shooting to get further than the Sweet 16 imo.

hawksfansinceday1 wrote:

Shanegotyou11 wrote:Zags have a chance in this wide open field. I don't see a "dominant" team in college hoops landscape. Hopefully its the zags. Cant wait to be in K2 vs NC.

It would be incredible. They will have to improve on their FT shooting to get further than the Sweet 16 imo.

Yes i fully agree.

UNC is nothing more than name recognition. They are probably a fringe top 25 team with Anthony, and may not even be a tourney team without him. Zags are big favorites and or a reason.

It’s completely wide open. Could be Zags year, but that can be said for almost any team. They are definitely one of the best teams in the nation though.

Easy win over UNC. I was a little surprised it came that easy with how dinged up GU is. I realize that unc is as well but man their was a talent gap between them.

Joel Ayayi is a really talented player and a HUGE reason this team is playing so well. He brings great defense terrific outside shooting and gets a TON of rebounds. Really impressive player. Love watching him play.

hawksfansinceday1 wrote:Zags will be fortunate to go 1-2 in the upcoming stretch of at UW, at Arizona, home vs. North Carolina. 0-3 wold not surprise me.

Keep making predictions. It is working dandily.

trans wrote:

hawksfansinceday1 wrote:Zags will be fortunate to go 1-2 in the upcoming stretch of at UW, at Arizona, home vs. North Carolina. 0-3 wold not surprise me.

Keep making predictions. It is working dandily.

Could not be happier to be totally wrong. Would've been ecstatic with 2-1. Getting through at 3-0 is frosting.
I still say to get past the Sweet 16 level they'll need to stop allowing so many offensive rebounds and especially will need to improve their free throw shooting. Oh, and a healthy Killian Tillie would be a HUGE help too.

Natethegreat wrote:Easy win over UNC. I was a little surprised it came that easy with how dinged up GU is. I realize that unc is as well but man their was a talent gap between them.

Joel Ayayi is a really talented player and a HUGE reason this team is playing so well. He brings great defense terrific outside shooting and gets a TON of rebounds. Really impressive player. Love watching him play.

Yeah that 13 point margin is deceptive. It was 19 with a minute to go and NC hit two garbage time 3s in the last like 50 seconds while the Zags weren't even attempting to score.
Completely agree about Ayayi. He's made a huge difference in this team since early in the season when he wasn't getting the amount of minutes he is now.

The cool thing is --- all the flaws with this team are easily fixable or will be fixed by getting healthy.

That said --- once you get to the final 16, it's basically matchups and luck that determines who advances. Texas Tech was just on fire last March and not much Gonzaga could do about it.

As long as GU doesn't lose to EWU they most likely move to number 1. GU has a history of coming out dead on games just before Christmas with the students all gone though.
They have lost a few games they had no business to lose to in the past. Honestly I am shocked they are even sniffing number one rank. They lost almost every important player from last year.

Natethegreat wrote:As long as GU doesn't lose to EWU they most likely move to number 1. GU has a history of coming out dead on games just before Christmas with the students all gone though.
They have lost a few games they had no business to lose to in the past. Honestly I am shocked they are even sniffing number one rank. They lost almost every important player from last year.

It's kind of an odd feel to see them this successful after losing the guys they did. Speaks loudly to the kind of talent they recruit.
Guess we didn't need to worry about Eastern.

And since they don't play any more varsity games until March, they'll assuredly still be at #1

Tical21 wrote:And since they don't play any more varsity games until March, they'll assuredly still be at #1

Results would be the same if they played in the Pac. WCC is 9-11 against the pac this year by the way. Not sure you have much to squack about.

Tical21 wrote:And since they don't play any more varsity games until March, they'll assuredly still be at #1

And when will the Huskies actually beat Gonzaga again?

Tical21 wrote:How many years before Gonzaga beats UW again?

So let's see you posted this on May 2nd and Gonzaga beat them on December 8th so that's 7 months and 6 days by my calculations. So the answer to your question of how many years till Gonzaga beat the Huskies again would be zero. Okay I'll be nice, a half a year.

Just a reminder, Zags have beaten UW 6 in a row and 13 out of 14.



Scoreboard Tical.

WCC has some real crap teams... but St. Mary's (25 in KenPom) and BYU (38) are at least as good as the middle of the Pac12 (i.e. UW). San Francisco, Pacific and Santa Clara are all much improved.

I actually expect Zags to lose a game or 2 in conference unless somehow Killian Tillie can come back to full health. He's just a matchup nightmare that no team can deal with until late into March. Sadly, I'm not optimistic that will be the case as he's already on "load management".

Very poor week this week and without Tillie they go 0-2 instead of 2-0. Very discouraged by their play the last 2 games.

Hawkstorian wrote:WCC has some real crap teams... but St. Mary's (25 in KenPom) and BYU (38) are at least as good as the middle of the Pac12 (i.e. UW). San Francisco, Pacific and Santa Clara are all much improved.

I actually expect Zags to lose a game or 2 in conference unless somehow Killian Tillie can come back to full health. He's just a matchup nightmare that no team can deal with until late into March. Sadly, I'm not optimistic that will be the case as he's already on "load management".

Let’s not try to defend the WCC. It’s garbage outside of Gonzaga. The second best team every year is at Mary’s, and they are a bubble team every year. After that it is a bunch of teams that would be near the bottom of any power conference. I’m not trying to take anything away from Gonzaga, because I think they’d win or compete for the top spot in nearly any power conference. But the WCC is a joke, without Gonzaga they wouldn’t be much different than any of those other mid major conferences we know nothing about.

Hawk-Lock wrote:

Hawkstorian wrote:WCC has some real crap teams... but St. Mary's (25 in KenPom) and BYU (38) are at least as good as the middle of the Pac12 (i.e. UW). San Francisco, Pacific and Santa Clara are all much improved.

I actually expect Zags to lose a game or 2 in conference unless somehow Killian Tillie can come back to full health. He's just a matchup nightmare that no team can deal with until late into March. Sadly, I'm not optimistic that will be the case as he's already on "load management".

Let’s not try to defend the WCC. It’s garbage outside of Gonzaga. The second best team every year is at Mary’s, and they are a bubble team every year. After that it is a bunch of teams that would be near the bottom of any power conference. I’m not trying to take anything away from Gonzaga, because I think they’d win or compete for the top spot in nearly any power conference. But the WCC is a joke, without Gonzaga they wouldn’t be much different than any of those other mid major conferences we know nothing about.

And yet the WCC is 9-11 against the Pac this year. Last I checked GU is part of the WCC. Taking teams out to make arguments is really quite ridiculous. Lets take teams out of the Pac then too. SMC is a good team as is BYU. USF has been a good team recently and Santa Clara and Pacific are getting much better.
WCC will be a top ten league again this year and closely rated to the Pac again. Now admittedly WCC is nowhere close to as good as ACC, Big East, Big 12, and Big 10.
But those trying to push the Pac as a top tier Basketball conference are living in the past. Maybe they get back there some day but they haven't been for about 10 years + now.

Natethegreat wrote:

Hawk-Lock wrote:

Hawkstorian wrote:WCC has some real crap teams... but St. Mary's (25 in KenPom) and BYU (38) are at least as good as the middle of the Pac12 (i.e. UW). San Francisco, Pacific and Santa Clara are all much improved.

I actually expect Zags to lose a game or 2 in conference unless somehow Killian Tillie can come back to full health. He's just a matchup nightmare that no team can deal with until late into March. Sadly, I'm not optimistic that will be the case as he's already on "load management".

Let’s not try to defend the WCC. It’s garbage outside of Gonzaga. The second best team every year is at Mary’s, and they are a bubble team every year. After that it is a bunch of teams that would be near the bottom of any power conference. I’m not trying to take anything away from Gonzaga, because I think they’d win or compete for the top spot in nearly any power conference. But the WCC is a joke, without Gonzaga they wouldn’t be much different than any of those other mid major conferences we know nothing about.

And yet the WCC is 9-11 against the Pac this year. Last I checked GU is part of the WCC. Taking teams out to make arguments is really quite ridiculous. Lets take teams out of the Pac then too. SMC is a good team as is BYU. USF has been a good team recently and Santa Clara and Pacific are getting much better.
WCC will be a top ten league again this year and closely rated to the Pac again. Now admittedly WCC is nowhere close to as good as ACC, Big East, Big 12, and Big 10.
But those trying to push the Pac as a top tier Basketball conference are living in the past. Maybe they get back there some day but they haven't been for about 10 years + now.

The Pac is pretty garbage. I already stated that Gonzaga is elite, so if you take out the Zags 3-0 record vs the Pac, the WCC went 6-11 vs the Pac, and SMU went 2-0 against the Pac. So you take out the two respectable teams and they went 4-11 vs the weakest power conference.

I agree Gonzaga and SMU could play in any power conference. There is no debate about that. And BYU too. But after that, the conference is trash. Cal and Wazzu are embarrassments to the Pac-12, they probably finish in fourth or fifth of the WCC.

That's debatable --- i think WSU is more like 7 or 8 .... but at the end of the day this is about Gonzaga not the WCC. If Zags could find a way out of the WCC they would take it in a heartbeat but they have no place to go. Can't go to the PAC without football and the MWC was just a chip to leverage staying in the WCC with better terms. MWC really isn't much better than the WCC ... San Diego St. is good this year but Nevada has fallen off and the rest of the league is YIKES.

It will always be the same. Gonzaga will need to schedule a big pre-season schedule to make up for their lousy conference. They get it and get that they can't really change it. The rest of the world can crap on them for it but there's nothing that can be done really to fix it.

Yeah my bad if I got us off topic. Bottom line is Gonzaga can play in any conference and contend for a championship. I just don't know if they will ever reach their full potential playing three months in the WCC.

Personally I am stunned the Zags are ranked number one this year and have a really good shot at a 1 seed. This team lost so much from last year. The Recruits we got have potential but none of them are elite. The biggest player to step up in my mind is Ayiyi.
He has been pretty good and has really helped this team gell. We needed someone at the guard spot to do this and with Gilder and Woolridge the guard play is good enough for this team to compete.

Natethegreat wrote:Personally I am stunned the Zags are ranked number one this year and have a really good shot at a 1 seed. This team lost so much from last year. The Recruits we got have potential but none of them are elite. The biggest player to step up in my mind is Ayiyi.
He has been pretty good and has really helped this team gell. We needed someone at the guard spot to do this and with Gilder and Woolridge the guard play is good enough for this team to compete.

I think a lot of teams feel the same way...”I can’t believe we are ranked this high.” College basketball is really down this year. There is no Duke team with Zion and multiple lottery picks. If you go across college basketball, most teams would say the same thing, it’s their weakest team in a long time.

Definitely I feel the same way. I watch this team play and don't see near the talent as the 2017 or 2019 teams.

Looks like 2020 will be remembered as boring basketball in the NCAA, but wow, this is especially pronounced with the Zags after last season's fun-to-watch Brandon Clarke, Rui, Perkins, Norvell, and even Jones at times. Especially Clarke.

Hawkstorian wrote:That's debatable --- i think WSU is more like 7 or 8 .... but at the end of the day this is about Gonzaga not the WCC. If Zags could find a way out of the WCC they would take it in a heartbeat but they have no place to go. Can't go to the PAC without football and the MWC was just a chip to leverage staying in the WCC with better terms. MWC really isn't much better than the WCC ... San Diego St. is good this year but Nevada has fallen off and the rest of the league is YIKES.

It will always be the same. Gonzaga will need to schedule a big pre-season schedule to make up for their lousy conference. They get it and get that they can't really change it. The rest of the world can crap on them for it but there's nothing that can be done really to fix it.

Totally spot on.





Read an article online this week that said 2 of the biggest factors in a team going deep in the tournament are defense and free throw shooting, much more so than offense. Does not bode well for a deep run but as you guys mentioned, the whole of the country is pretty meh so that could help offset their obviously problematic areas.

Duke losing to Clemson will swing enough first place votes back to Baylor that Gonzaga will slip to #2 next week.

Hawkstorian wrote:Duke losing to Clemson will swing enough first place votes back to Baylor that Gonzaga will slip to #2 next week.

Maybe, GU has two good games this week against Santa Clara and BYU. If they win both its very possible they retain number 1.

Zags absolutely crushing SC right now. 58-22 at half pretty impressive.

Natethegreat wrote:Zags absolutely crushing SC right now. 58-22 at half pretty impressive.

Their most complete game of the year, helped by poor shooting from SC.

Anton Watson done for the year tho.

Sucks about Watson -- hopefully Arlauskas can chew up some minutes. He looks pretty skilled. After him there really isn't anything. Zacharov isn't ready to play and probably should have red-shirted this year if injuries hadn't shorted the roster so much.

The 7 - 8 man rotation is still pretty damn good just can't afford to lose anyone else.

Hawkstorian wrote:Sucks about Watson -- hopefully Arlauskas can chew up some minutes. He looks pretty skilled. After him there really isn't anything. Zacharov isn't ready to play and probably should have red-shirted this year if injuries hadn't shorted the roster so much.

From what I've read today, Watson was most valuable on the defensive end, one of the team's best. Hope this doesn't become something chronic and that surgery takes care of it. From everything I've read he's quality kid.

Petrusev sprains his ankle, misses nearly the entire game but Zags still win by 23. Depth on this team is fantastic.
Good news is he has a week to heal as they don't play again til Sat. night

Yeah sounds like the sprain isn't a long-term deal. Agreed having Thursday off is fortunate.

The thing about their depth though -- right now it's basically 7 starters and maybe one other guy. There's nothing after that. They can't just sit guys down and expect to keep rolling. If Petrusev is out for a few weeks someone is going to jump up and put an L on the Zags.

Tillie hurt again, left ankle. So bad he couldn't put any weight on it leaving the court. Sigh.

Not sure how far you get with a 6 man rotation. Arlauskas looks to me like he should be able to eat some minutes but so far Few hasn't let him play much.

St. Mary's in 8 days. Getting Tillie back is probably the difference between a W and L that day.

Hawkstorian wrote:Not sure how far you get with a 6 man rotation. Arlauskas looks to me like he should be able to eat some minutes but so far Few hasn't let him play much.

St. Mary's in 8 days. Getting Tillie back is probably the difference between a W and L that day.

Tend to agree.

Committee did their "bracket preview" before the season is over thing and Zags were the #3 seed overall behind Baylor and Kansas. #1 seed in the West.
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/287 ... et-preview

This team is very good. I’d probably pick them or Baylor to win it all if the dance started today. Gonzaga needs to take advantage of this down season in college basketball. Expectations are going to be extremely high going into March. Anything less than a final four is a bust. At some point Few needs to win a championship, pressure is starting to build.

Hawk-Lock wrote:This team is very good. I’d probably pick them or Baylor to win it all if the dance started today. Gonzaga needs to take advantage of this down season in college basketball. Expectations are going to be extremely high going into March. Anything less than a final four is a bust. At some point Few needs to win a championship, pressure is starting to build.

Disagree that pressure is starting to build. He's there with almost none as long as he wants imo. I felt last year was a bust not getting to the FF more than this year would be. Thought the same of Duke last year too. Do think they have a great shot at it this year though that free throw shooting could be the Achilles.

Hit 14 of their first 15 shots last night. That'll make for a coasting win.

hawksfansinceday1 wrote:

Hawk-Lock wrote:This team is very good. I’d probably pick them or Baylor to win it all if the dance started today. Gonzaga needs to take advantage of this down season in college basketball. Expectations are going to be extremely high going into March. Anything less than a final four is a bust. At some point Few needs to win a championship, pressure is starting to build.

Disagree that pressure is starting to build. He's there with almost none as long as he wants imo. I felt last year was a bust not getting to the FF more than this year would be. Thought the same of Duke last year too. Do think they have a great shot at it this year though that free throw shooting could be the Achilles.

Hit 14 of their first 15 shots last night. That'll make for a coasting win.

I meant pressure from the national media and fan base, not that he will lose his job. At some point hen needs to win a national championship. They are no longer a cinderella, Gonzaga is national powerhouse and should be treated the same as a UNC or Kentucky. Under Few they have been a 1 seed, three times, a 2 seed twice, and a 3 seed twice.

I honestly think Zags need to win a national championship soon. Fans probably feel the same. They are powerhouse, expectations for them are high. At some point they need to actually win one.

I live in Spokane and talk Zags with folks all the time.... I've never once heard anyone say that they need to win a championship. On the contrary, folks here legitimately appreciate what's happened the last 20 years. Sure -- getting to the top of the mountain would be amazing but in no way to I sense pressure from anyone.

There was some truth to the "never been to a final 4" gripe --- but after playing in the final game once and a couple of other elite 8 years that beef has quieted down.

Hawkstorian wrote:I live in Spokane and talk Zags with folks all the time.... I've never once heard anyone say that they need to win a championship. On the contrary, folks here legitimately appreciate what's happened the last 20 years. Sure -- getting to the top of the mountain would be amazing but in no way to I sense pressure from anyone.

There was some truth to the "never been to a final 4" gripe --- but after playing in the final game once and a couple of other elite 8 years that beef has quieted down.

My folks live there still and I grew up there and what you said is my impression of how things are from what I've read while over there and from likewise talking to area residents. I do think another Final Four would be fortuitous for continued national cache' and help in recruiting.