LAS VEGAS — A touch that this season is perhaps completely different for Gonzaga’s basketball workforce got here early, when it was thumped by Tennessee in a scrimmage. There have been different periodic reminders: getting walloped by Texas and pounded by Purdue, and shedding at residence to Loyola Marymount, which ended the Zags’ 75-game residence profitable streak.
After which there was Tuesday night time, when Gonzaga ran out to face St. Mary’s within the West Coast Convention championship sport wearing its highway blues, signifying it was the decrease seed.
However simply because it nears one other N.C.A.A. males’s basketball event, the stage on which Gonzaga way back made its nationwide title, the Zags delivered a well timed reminder — to the event choice committee and others — that they need to by no means be discounted in March.
The message was despatched with a 77-51 pasting of St. Mary’s at Orleans Enviornment, a victory that sends Gonzaga off to event choice day with a 28-5 report. That will be a noteworthy accomplishment for many packages, however it’s the most losses for a Gonzaga workforce coming into the N.C.A.A. event since 2016. And for the primary time since 2018, the Zags is not going to enter the event as a No. 1 seed.
“I like it,” mentioned Gonzaga Coach Mark Few, whose workforce hadn’t worn their away uniforms within the postseason because the 2017 nationwide championship sport they misplaced to North Carolina.
Few, the ever fretful coach, appeared happy not solely to be spared the burden of expectations, but additionally within the information that his workforce has blossomed because the common season attracts to an in depth. The Zags didn’t simply beat St. Mary’s in Tuesday’s title sport: They jumped to an early lead and — not like within the groups’ two regular-season conferences, which they cut up — buried the Gaels (27-6).
The shoulders of the St. Mary’s gamers slumped with every shot that wouldn’t fall, and their expressions sagged every time Gonzaga sliced by means of their protection for an additional basket. The Zags led by 37-19 at halftime and spent the second half stretching the margin to as many as 37 factors.
“We had been terrible,” St. Mary’s Coach Randy Bennett mentioned.
Gonzaga did all this even with its star Drew Timme restricted to twenty minutes by foul hassle.
It was all that hampered him. Timme scored 18 factors, making 8 of 10 pictures, together with the basket that made him Gonzaga’s profession scoring chief — a mark that had belonged to not Adam Morrison, John Stockton or Dan Dickau however to Frank Burgess, who led the nation in scoring in 1961.
Greater than the factors, although, Timme, a senior ahead who has all however closed the door on returning for a fifth season, can be remembered for his report as a Zag: 118-12, and counting.
He has been a wingman for top draft picks like Chet Holmgren and Jalen Suggs as his modest skilled prospects have stored him in school. And generally his look — mustache, headband and on-court histrionics — obscures his extra delicate contributions.
“I knew it was anyone we needed in our program,” Few mentioned of Timme. “I knew he’d be a great participant right here and I knew he was an ideal match simply watching how he performed. That very same assured persona that he confirmed in these small gyms on the A.A.U. circuit is what he delivered to this program.”
“It provides us all that edge,” he added.
That edge is what Gonzaga has been trying to find all season. It wasn’t the losses, or the handful of slender convention victories that had been so bothersome to Few. It was how arduous the Zags performed, how powerful they had been and the way rapt their consideration to element was.
“There have been quite a few days after I was not enjoyable to be round, as a participant or as an assistant coach,” Few mentioned with amusing. “I in all probability owe everyone an apology for that. However I used to be simply making an attempt to carry these guys to the usual that every one the opposite groups have hit.”
Timme mentioned he had sensed an analogous malaise.
“I’ve gained a lot in my profession, it’s a shock to me to not win,” he mentioned, including. “How the season has gone made us recognize the little issues — the journey — extra. Typically it’s arduous to not fall into this mind-set of, We’ve simply obtained to get to March. You possibly can’t simply get up and go, ‘Oh, we’re a troublesome workforce.’ It’s one thing you need to get by means of the filth and the mud.”
Gonzaga’s offense has additionally been a piece in progress, though it has hummed alongside, as soon as once more, because the nation’s best workforce: That is the fourth time in 5 seasons they’ve been atop KenPom rankings in that class. (The Zags slumped to 3rd final season.)
Moderately than working at a breakneck tempo, Gonzaga is — for them — nearly deliberate.
“Yearly they play with this terrifying, torrid tempo,” Brigham Younger Coach Mark Pope mentioned. “It’s simply not their character thus far this yr. They simply have youthful guards who aren’t fairly what they’d. And Timme has at all times lent somewhat little bit of gravity to the sport. He’s like a secondary transition man. He’s not a deer on the market.”
As an alternative of working previous opponents, the Zags have merely carved up defenses within the half court docket this season with their myriad cuts and screens, utilizing Timme because the fulcrum from both the excessive or low publish. In Monday’s West Coast semifinals, San Francisco selected to go away Anton Watson, the senior ahead who’s a priceless defender, unguarded. Watson took benefit, scoring a career-high 20 factors.
And after taking greater than three minutes to attain their first level on Tuesday night time, the Zags had been simply as chic as ever. The victory was their eighth in a row. Wherever they’re seeded on Sunday, Timme mentioned, they are going to settle for the problem and go on the lookout for extra.
“It was good,” he mentioned, “to be an underdog for as soon as.”