The Zags Feast Week Tournament is over and Gonzaga salvaged what they could from it all. After dropping to West Virginia in the opening round, Gonzaga easily handled both Indiana and Davidson to close out on a positive note.
Between Holiday travel and a baby who has decided to start waking up at 4:00 am, I didn’t watch these games as closely as usual, so take the following for what it is worth: not much.
- West Virginia might end up being better than advertised but my guess is as the season progresses they will be what many think they are: decidedly mediocre. That is what made that loss so frustrating. Gonzaga let a mediocre offense dictate the pace of play and then let a mediocre defense frustrate them to no ends. Gonzaga should have still escaped that opening round game with a win if not for that late-game execution collapse. Either way, we’ve seen the team hit the peak (opening win over Baylor) and shit the bed (loss to West Virginia). The real expectation for each night exists somewhere between.
- We saw a pretty major coaching decision by Mark Few in benching Graham Ike for Braden Huff in the loss to West Virginia. Ike was inefficient in that game, finishing with just 5 points on 1-of-5 shooting in 16 minutes. Huff, on the other hand, seemed to be the only Zag trying to win. He finished with 19 points, hitting 8-of-11 from two and 1-of-3 from three. If Ike’s “automatic” shots aren’t going in, his usefulness on the court plummets. Huff is a bit better at creatively making his own shot, and has the ability to stretch the floor for the occasional three.
- Ike can be his own worst enemy at times in regards to fouling, and we saw it happen once again this tournament. Although his second foul against Indiana was politely what someone might refer to as horseshit, the fourth foul was quite possibly the stupidest thing I have seen this year. Ike picked up his third foul 3:26 into the second half. Literally, immediately two seconds after, Oumar Ballo beat Ike on setting up in the post and Ike clobbered him for the most obvious fourth foul. If Ike wants to be the best player on this team, that sort of play just cannot happen from a senior player. Ike is a frustrating player because he seems to do a great job at playing with two fouls, and at the same time, inexplicably over and over will pick up consecutive fouls within minutes of each other as if it isn’t a big deal. It may not seem like a big deal since he is only averaging 2.5 fouls per game, but that extrapolates to 5.7 per 40 minutes. That is not good.
- It seems like it has taken Ben Gregg a few games to refigure out how he operates on the offensive end. Gregg had a total of 26 field goal attempts through the first six games of the season. He had 19 combined against Indiana and Davidson (along with his first made threes of the season). Gregg can cut with the best of the big men and is much better from outside than his 14 percent make rate suggests. We shouldn’t expect him to be dropping 15-20 points each night, that isn’t his role. But we’ve wanted a bit more out of Little Ben Gregg to start the season and this tournament we started to see it.
- Ryan Nembhard is going to absolutely destroy his own school record for assists and the rampage continued at the Battle 4 Atlantis. He set tournament records for both most assists in a game (14) and most assists total (39). He was a little sloppy with the ball against Indiana, but still finished with a tournament assist-to-turnover ratio of nearly 5:1. On the season, he is averaging 10.8 assists and just 1.8 turnover per game. His vision is such a key for the Zags’ offensive engine. Enjoy this season because we won’t see another one like it from a PG for quite some time.
- Michel Ajayi was great against Indiana, finishing with 15 points and nine rebounds. Much like Gregg, Ajayi hasn’t really figured out how to establish himself higher on the pecking order in this offense–and considering most of the time he has Ike, Huff, Khalif Battle, or Nolan Hickman around, he doesn’t necessarily need to score. However, he is too skilled on offense to take as much of a back seat as he does.
- Gonzaga was never going to go the season undefeated but the way in which the opened the season against Baylor really made you think it was possible. Perhaps that is why the West Virginia loss stung so much at the time. Good teams lose bad games all the time. The goal is that it doesn’t happen in March.
- For future seeding purposes–the next two games against Kentucky and UConn are critical. The Zags still picked up a quality win against Indiana in the Battle 4 Atlantis, but that win over Davidson will not age like fine win. The Zags’ resume currently looks completely fine with the Baylor thrashing and a road win over San Diego State. Wins over Kentucky and UConn will go a long way to helping solidify a two seed (or higher) come March.