By Jeff Faraudo
#WCChoops Columnist | ARCHIVES
 
Staying smart and healthy takes priority over any basketball game.
 
Coaches Mark Few and Scott Drew said as much after Saturday’s highly anticipated showdown between No. 1 Gonzaga and No. 2 Baylor at Indianapolis was canceled — or at least postponed — when one player and another member of the Bulldogs travel party tested positive for COVID-19.
 
College hoops fans everywhere lament the loss of what should have been another great game on Gonzaga’s early-season schedule. Already we’ve seen the Zags post impressive victories over Kansas and West Virginia, and this would have been another tantalizing matchup.
 
The Gonzaga-Baylor game was just one of six games involving West Coast Conference teams that were canceled on Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
 
It got us to thinking about other great matchups featuring WCC teams we have missed — games that either didn’t happen or could not have happened. But games any basketball enthusiast would pay to see.
 
Here are a few:
 
— Bill Russell’s USF Dons vs. Lew Alcindor’s UCLA Bruins: Russell led the Dons to back-to-back NCAA titles in 1955 and ’56, including a 29-0 record his senior season. His defensive skills and intellect changed the game. He developed into an artful shot-blocker while also averaging 20.7 points and 20.3 over three college seasons.
 
Alcindor, who later became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, powered the Bruins to three straight NCAA crowns and an overall record of 88-2. Armed with an unstoppable sky-hook, he averaged 26.4 points an 15.5 points in three varsity seasons.
 
Along with UCLA’s Bill Walton, Russell and Adbul-Jabbar are among the three greatest big men in college history.
 
Kareem is 5 inches taller, but Russell gave up almost as much height to Wilt Chamberlain and invariably prevailed in their many NBA duels.
 
— Pepperdine’s Bird Averitt vs. LSU’s Pete Maravich: Averitt averaged 33.9 points per game as a senior in 1972-73 while earning conference Player for the Year honors. He averaged 39.1 points in WCC play that season and scored 57 points in a game against Nevada — still a league record 47 years later.
 
But as prolific as the Bird was, Pistol Pete was college basketball’s most college basketball’s most unstoppable scorer ever. He totaled 3,667 points in a three-year varsity career that ended in 1969-70, averaging an NCAA record 44.2 for his career. He scored 69 points against Alabama as a senior, one of four times he topped 60. For his career, Maravich had the astonishing total of 28 games with at least 50 points.
 
Who would have won this game? Who cares!
 
This one would be just for fun, and we would have been treated to one of the great individual scoring duels anyone has seen.
 
— Loyola Marymount (with Hank Gathers) vs. UNLV: Coach Jerry Tarkanian’s squad, featuring Larry Johnson, Greg Anthony and Stacey Augmon, scored 100 points or more 16 times on the way to winning the 1990 NCAA title.
 
Few teams could keep pace with the Runnin’ Rebels.
 
But LMU, featuring the high-scoring duo of Philadelphia childhood friends Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble, topped 100 on 28 occasions, eclipsing 140 points seven times. With Kimble producing 35.5 points per game and Gathers averaging 29.0, the Lions led the nation in scoring.
 
Gathers tragically died on the court during the WCC tournament as a result of a heart condition, but the Lions forged ahead, playing in his honor and winning three times in the NCAA tournament. They scored 149 points in a rout of defending national champion Michigan.
 
The nation’s two fastest teams opened the season in Las Vegas with the home team winning 102-91. They played on a neutral court in Oakland four months later in the West Regional finals, and LMU finally ran out of gas, losing 131-101.
 
We’ll never know if the Lions, with Gathers in the lineup, could have beaten the Runnin’ Rebels in the rematch. But man, it would have been fascinating.
 
— 2019-20 Gonzaga team vs. the NCAA field: The Bulldogs were 31-2 last season with wins over Oregon, Arizona and North Carolina. They were ranked No. 2 nationally when the season was halted two days after they were crowned WCC tournament champs. 
 
So we never got the chance to see if this Gonzaga team could repeat the 2017 squad’s trek to the Final Four and perhaps win it all. The Zags would have embraced the opportunity and we wouldn’t have bet against them.
 
BULLDOGS’ SCHEDULING ZIG-ZAG: In the wake of canceling the Baylor game, Gonzaga put its schedule on pause until Dec. 15, meaning it will cancel games against Tarleton, Southern, Northern Arizona and Idaho in the meantime.
 
Gonzaga’s next game still on the schedule is Dec. 19 against No. 3 Iowa.
 
LAST WEEK’S BIG THING: Gonzaga and coach Mark Few apparently have a big fan in this guy who hails from Akron, Ohio. “They tough!!! Love the way they play,” LeBron James wrote on Twitter. “Amazing pace on makes or misses, ball movement, some dogs and guys that just know how to play the game! And of course they beyond well coached. He’s the truth!! The shiznit”
 
THIS WEEK’S BIG THING: BYU takes on historic in-state rival Utah at Provo on Saturday in their 261st matchup dating back to 1909. Utah won 102-95 a year ago. But the Cougars won the first meeting 32-9 way back in the final days of the Teddy Roosevelt presidency, and lead the series, 131-129. 
 
TWICE BY 25 ON THE ROAD: USF did something it hasn’t pulled off since the 1972-73 season by posting 25-point victories in back-to-back road games. The Dons’ 86-60 win at Nevada was the Wolf Pack’s second-worst loss ever at the Lawlor Events Center in Reno. Two days later, USF won 88-60 at Cal Poly.
 
MEET LEEMET: Only the most ardent Saint Mary’s fan is likely to be familiar with Leemet  Böckler, a 6-foot-6 freshman guard from the Estonian capital of Tallinn.  Böckler who grew up playing basketball with Gaels teammate Matthias Tass, had totaled just 13 points in the team’s first four games.
 
But on Thursday against Texas Southern,  Böckler introduced himself with a 20-point performance that including 6-for-7 accuracy from the 3-point arc.
 
The remarkable aspect of his performance is that he made four of his 3-pointers in a furious span of 79 seconds late in the first half. 
 
It seems unlikely that he could maintain that pace over 40 minutes, but we did the math just for fun and it would produce a 364-point game. We’ll do some more research but believe that might be a record.
 
THE 72 PERCENT SOLUTION: Böckler isn’t the WCC’s only European player  finding the range from deep. USF sophomore Ioanna Krimili, a native of Greece who missed much of last season with a broken foot, scored 27 points as the Dons gave No. 17 Oregon State a scare before losing 89-80.
 
Krimili, averaging 24.5 points through two games, is 13-for-18 on 3-pointers, a scorching 72 percent.
 
STAT OF THE WEEK: Saint Mary’s point guard Tommy Kuhse has 23 points, 23 assists and just two turnovers in the Gaels’ two most recent games against Nicholls State and Texas Southern.
 
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