The Gonzaga Bulldogs don’t have too long of a ride home to lick the wounds following their loss to the Washington Huskies on Saturday night.
On paper, Gonzaga should not have lost this game. The Huskies turned the ball over 19 (!!!) times, although to their credit, rather than them being steals, many of those turnovers were just hurling the ball into the crowd like a t-shirt cannon.
With Gonzaga holding a comfortable lead at halftime, what should have been the Zags closing it out instead went the way of Purdue, which is to say the offense completely disappeared for too long of a stretch, and that is game.
This time around, however, it was even more severe than the Purdue drop-off. Ryan Nembhard, Nolan Hickman, and Dusty Stromer combined for 55 minutes of play (Nembhard and Hickman at the full 20), and contributed four points off 1-of-12 shooting (0-for-6 from long range) and six turnovers. That is approximately 0.21 points per possession, and that is a guaranteed recipe for loss.
Of course, the issue, which cannot be solved at all, and therefore is the issue the Zags will have to work through all season, is that the roster construction does not allow for anything else. If Nembhard goes ice-cold, you have Hickman. If Hickman goes ice-cold, you have Nembhard. If both go ice-cold, you have a loss.
Part of that came around in different fashions. Hickman had a couple of clean looks that just didn’t go down, that will happen. Nembhard, for his part, didn’t have too many clean looks, and his three-point attempt at the 3:19 mark with the Zags down two points was a bench-worthy decision.
Unfortunately, you cannot bench Nembhard. There is no one else. You cannot really bench Hickman. To a certain extent, you can try and slide Stromer over if Jun Seok Yeo is in the game, but last night, it would not have mattered. Stromer, who has played like a veteran for much of this early season, was clearly a freshman.
The Steele Venters injury hurt because they lost a three-point shooter but more so because a thin roster can only take so many hits.
This loss should leave a bad taste in your mouth because there is no reason Gonzaga should have lost this game. They did, due to mental miscues by virtually everyone on the team and a complete inability to capitalize on any sort of mistake UW produced, and there were a lot of them.
Here is the rest of vomit I’m cleaning out of my mouth as of this morning:
- Nolan Hickman should be glad Ryan Nembhard takes home boneheaded decision of the night, because he fouled three-pointer shooters twice–the second time it was Savhir Wheeler, a career 28 percent shooter from long range.
- The Huskies turned the ball over nine times in the second half. Gonzaga mustered just four points off those turnovers.
- The Huskies went 21-25 from the line. Gonzaga’s opponents are now shooting 78.1 percent from the free-throw line, the 352nd worst mark in the nation.
- The Huskies had one absolute circusass shot that had no business go in combined with one of the friendliest bounces I have ever seen a three-pointer take to go in. Sometimes, that is just how the cookie crumbles.