Saint Mary’s and Colorado State met a year ago, so Rams’ star Isaiah Stevens was able to provide some context after the Gaels left Fort Collins with a 64-61 victory over a Rams team that was 9-0 and ranked No. 13 in the country.
“If you just look at the guys they put on the floor, they’re as physical as all get-out. They’re extremely sound, disciplined, just tough,” Stevens said. “We knew what it was going be coming in. It wasn’t going to be a super pretty game, necessarily.”
“It looked great to me,” Saint Mary’s head coach Randy Bennett said.
From a historical point of view, Saturday's game stands alone in program history, the Gaels’ first-ever non-conference victory over a Top-25 opponent in a true road game. “Wow,” Bennett said.
But in the here and now, Saint Mary’s badly needed this victory. Picked by the West Coast Conference head coaches to win the league title, the Gaels began the season 3-5 and not looking themselves.
The schedule was tough — top-20 in the nation, according to kenpom.com — and the Gaels were not quite ready, Bennett acknowledged.
They lost five times in a span of six games and after going 32-2 at home the past two years, the Gaels lost twice on their home floor.
Aidan Mahaney, a first-team All-WCC pick as a freshman last year, gets greater defensive attention. Senior Alex Ducas has been up-and-down while coming back from injury. Joshua Jefferson and Augustas Marciulionis are adjusting to new roles as starters.
Being picked to win the WCC can sometimes get inside a player’s head, Bennett said, especially when things don’t just fall into place.
“It doesn’t mean anything but it does mean something,” he said of the preseason expectations. “You’re walking around as a player and you’re thinking, `This is what’s supposed to happen.’ And you just don’t know any better. It doesn’t mean that’s going to happen. You have to make it happen. Honestly, we weren’t ready for this strength of schedule early in the season.”
A 70-57 win over Cleveland State last Tuesday provided some encouraging signs, especially on defense. Then the Gaels delivered their best performance of the season at CSU.
The Rams entered the game shooting nearly 54 percent from the field — third-best in the country — and just under 39 percent on 3-pointers. They were scoring nearly 86 points per game, and just once had been held under 80.
Saint Mary’s clamped down defensively, limiting Colorado State to 37 percent from the field and just five 3-pointers at 28 percent, numbers that pleased Bennett.
“If you’re going to be a good team, it 100 percent starts there,” he said. “That’s where we’ve had to get to — we might have some struggles offensively for a while, guys figuring out new roles. We don’t have a ton of shooters. But if we can be good at the defensive end and tough, we can get better.”
And while returnees Mahaney, Ducas and big man Mitchell Saxen combined for just 22 points, Marciulionis scored a career-high 18 points on 8-for-11 shooting and Jefferson punctuated a 16-point, 13-rebound performance with the biggest shot of the game.
The Gaels were up, 58-57, with under a minute left, inbounding the ball with only two seconds left on the shot clock. “We guarded it exactly the way we wanted it,” Colorado State head coach Niko Medved said.
In other words, the Rams were willing to let Jefferson — who entered the day shooting 2-for-26 on 3’s — take the big shot. He made it, stretching the Gaels’ lead to 62-57 with 52 seconds left.
“How big was that?” Bennett marveled. “I think it helped he didn’t have to think about it. He just had to shoot it.”
The outcome dropped CSU from No. 7 in the NCAA’s NET computer rankings to No. 22. The Gaels, who were mired at 147, climbed 62 spots to No. 85.
The Gaels return to action Saturday in Phoenix against UNLV, and Bennett is curious to see how his team responds. A year ago, against a schedule not quite as tough as this year, his team lost four times in non-conference play and went on to share the WCC title with Gonzaga.
Saturday’s win should be a confidence builder for a team back to .500, Bennett said. What it means for the big picture? “It all depends on what we do with it,” he said.
ZAGS’ STREAK VS. PAC-12 ENDS: The No. 7 Gonzaga men’s basketball team had won 16 consecutive games against Pac-12 opponents spanning eight years before Saturday night. The streak stopped in Seattle, where Washington rallied from 11 points down in the second half to win, 78-73.
Graham Ike scored 18 points for the Zags (7-2), Nolan Hickman had 17 and Anton Watson put up 13 points, 13 rebounds and five steals. But the Zags made just one of their final 12 shots from the field while falling to the Huskies for the first time since 2005.
“It’s a tough loss,” Watson said, “but we have to keep our heads up because we got a big game coming up this weekend (see below).”
TOREROS’ STREAK VS. PAC-12 BEGINS: The San Diego men’s basketball team had dropped its previous six games against Pac-12 schools before delivering an 89-84 triumph over Arizona State on Saturday night that was powered by a stunning second half.
Deuce Turner and PJ Hayes scored 20 and 19 points, respectively, after halftime, each burying four 3-point baskets as USD (7-4) scored 61 points over the final 20 minutes — averaging an impressive 1.65 points per possession — to erase an eight-point halftime deficit. Turner and Hayes wound up each with 23 points and five 3’s.
"It definitely will be one of the most significant, meaningful, memorable wins in my career — because of what we're building,” said USD second-year head coach Steve Lavin, who guided UCLA and St. John’s teams to eight NCAA Tournament bids. ”To see the team and the joy in that locker room is really what led to me returning to coaching."
LAST WEEK’S BIG THING: Portland’s Vukasin Masic, a redshirt sophomore guard from Serbia, set a career-high with 32 points in the Pilots’ 83-72 win over North Dakota in Grand Forks, ND. Masic, who played one season each at Maine and Hofstra before arriving at Portland last year, matched Gonzaga’s Anton Watson for the most points scored in a game by a WCC player this season.
THIS WEEK’S BIG THING: The Gonzaga men (7-2) return to Seattle on Friday night to face reigning national champion and No. 5 UConn (9-1) in a rematch of last year’s Elite 8 clash, won, 84-52, by the Huskies. UConn already owns wins over Texas and North Carolina. The game will be played at the Climate Pledge Arena — home of the NHL’s Seattle Kraken — tipping off at 7 p.m. on ESPN2.
ZAG WOMEN KEEP IT GOING: On the heels of a 96-78 win over then-No. 3 Stanford in Spokane, the 23rd-ranked Gonzaga women’s basketball team took to the road for a pair of games this past week. The Zags jumped on Rice with a 15-0 run over the first three minutes on the way to an 80-72 win Saturday, but the Zags faced a serious challenge from Cal on Thursday before escaping with a 78-70 overtime victory.
Kayleigh Truong got Gonzaga to OT by hitting a game-tying jump shot with 31 seconds left and the Zags took charge in the extra period. Truong finished with 14 point and six assists and her twin sister, Kaylynne, had 12 assists.
Yvonne Ejim, who scored 21 points, leads the WCC with a 19.0 scoring average, is second in rebounding (8.7) and first in field-goal accuracy (64.4 percent).
Gonzaga is converting nearly 82 percent from the foul line through 12 games, thanks mainly to its starters. Those five are a combined 128-for-138, a sparkling 92.8 percent. Brynna Maxwell continues to be perfect at the line, 27-for-27, a year after she made 74 of 78 tries.
DONS VICTORIOUS IN SEC COUNTRY: The San Francisco men’s basketball team, who beat Minnesota a week earlier for their first win over a Big Ten opponent in 20 years, traveled to Nashville, Tenn. last Wednesday to pocket a victory over a Southeastern Conference team for the first time since 1981.
USF (6-3) beat Vanderbilt, 73-60, fueled by 18 points from Marcus Williams, a career-high 17 from Ndewedo Newbury and an unusual stat line from Jonathan Mogbo, who was held to just four points, but grabbed 14 rebounds and dished a career-best 10 assists.
A 6-8 junior forward who played season at Missouri State, Mogbo has 58 rebounds in his past four games and leads the WCC at 10.3 per game. He has converted 59 of 81 shots from the field for 72.8 percent, fourth-best in the country.