Men's Basketball John Crumpacker, #WCChoops Columnist

Crumpacker: What We Think - WCC Week Five

Zags at Cougars; Dons at Gaels highlight a bit week for the WCC on the hardwood

2018-19 #WCChoops Schedule | What We Learned 1/21/19  |  Crumpacker 2018-19 Archives

By John Crumpacker
#WCChoops Columnist

When West Coast Conference teams play Saturday afternoons at 1 p.m., they are playing in what is designated as the Game of the Week, even if it is not really the game of the week, the distinction being the capital letters.

This week, the Game of the Week is truly the game of the week in the WCC as San Francisco plays at Saint Mary’s in a battle of ancient (comparatively speaking) Bay Area rivals. The game can be seen on Spectrum SportsNet, NBC Sports California, ROOT Sports Northwest and TheW.tv. Whatever the channel, it will be a game worth watching.

There is much on the line for both teams as the conference season reaches its halfway point. The Dons are 17-4 overall and 5-2 in conference and are aching to claim the No. 2 spot in the WCC to bolster their chances of securing an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. The Gaels are 13-9 and 4-3 and do not lose often at McKeon Pavilion; they are 9-2 this season in their cozy confines.

If Gonzaga holds serve and wins Thursday at BYU and Saturday at home vs. San Diego to improve to 8-0 at the halfway point and if BYU defeats Loyola Marymount on Saturday in Provo, the Cougars could be alone in second place at 6-3 … if Saint Mary’s wins at home vs. USF. In that scenario, the Dons and Gaels would be tied for third at 5-3.

Of course, the Dons could be alone in second at 6-2 if they take care of Saint Mary’s and BYU falls to Gonzaga and LMU at home, with the latter scenario a little unlikely. That’s what makes the percolating developments below Gonzaga so interesting as the WCC schedule heads to the back nine, or eight, as the case may be.

Players worth watching in the WCC’s Game of the Week include Frankie Ferrari, Charles Minlend and Matt McCarthy of USF and Jordan Ford and Malik Fitts of Saint Mary’s. It’s also an interesting battle of coaches, with Saint Mary’s Randy Bennett a legend-in-the-making in Moraga and USF’s Kyle Smith building something impressive on the Hilltop. 

What We Think
  1. Not nearly enough attention has been paid to Gonzaga’s remarkable conference road win streak. Since a 70-67 loss at Saint Mary’s on Jan. 21, 2016, the Zags have posted 27 consecutive WCC victories away from home. That’s only the longest streak in NCAA Division I history. Not even the great UCLA teams of John Wooden won that many conference games in a row. The Bruins won 26 straight from 1967-70 and 24 from 1970-74. Jerry Tarkanian’s UNLV Runnin’ Rebels rattled off 20 in a row from 1990-93 and nearly a century ago, Kansas won 20 straight from 1921-24, a mere 75 years before something called ESPN entered the nation’s living rooms.
  2. Speaking of which, No. 4 Gonzaga will have a good road test on Thursday night at BYU in front of the largest home crowd in the WCC at the Marriott Center. The Cougars are tied for second in conference with San Francisco at 5-2, behind the 6-0 mark of the Zags. Coach Dave Rose’s team usually does a fine job of defending home court, as evinced by its 10-1 record this season. In a game seen on ESPN2, which, as earlier noted, did not exist 75 years ago, it will be a battle on the front line between two players in contention for WCC Player of the Year honors in BYU’s Yoeli Childs and Gonzaga’s Brandon Clarke.
  3. If Pepperdine can win two more games the rest of the way, it will have doubled its win total from 2017-18 when it was 6-26 overall and 2-16 in conference, due largely to a cascading amount of injuries. In the first year of coach Lorenzo Romar’s second stint in Malibu, the Waves are 10-11 and 3-4. A big reason for their resurgence is the play of sophomore guard Colbey Ross, who is averaging 19.1 points per game and leads all Div. 1 teams in free throws attempted (170) and free throws made (142).
WCC by the numbers
  • .690 – Field goal percentage of Gonzaga’s Brandon Clarke, No. 1 in the NCAA.
  • .524 – Team field goal percentage of Gonzaga, with a little help from Clarke, also No. 1 in the NCAA.
  • 397 – Number of free throws attempted by Pacific, 2nd in the NCAA.
  • 382 – Number of free throws attempted by BYU, 3rd nationally.
  • 49 – Straight weeks Gonzaga has ranked in the AP Top 25 poll.
  • 13 – Times a WCC team went through conference season undefeated, from San Francisco’s 12-0 in 1955 to Gonzaga’s 16-0 in 2013.
  • 12 – Number of double-doubles this season by BYU’s Childs.
Follow the three dots…
There’s no place like home: The top six teams in the WCC have an aggregate record of 62-6 at home. … Lucky No. 13 – that’s the number of players around the conference to have scored 30 or more points in a game, topped by the 37 of Portland’s Josh McSwiggan. … As mentioned before, Gonzaga’s Clark has a talent for blocking shots. He leads the WCC with 3.0 per game, well ahead of the next best mark of 1.6.