After short stint in Spokane, No. 11 Gonzaga back on the road seeking 35th straight win over USF
SAN FRANCISCO – Gonzaga was still running an up-tempo offense 30 minutes after the final buzzer sounded Saturday night at the Leavey Center.
Operating on a tight schedule to catch a charter flight home, the Zags held a short postgame chat in the locker room. They showered, changed, conducted media obligations and briefly visited with friends and family members before loading onto a bus that rushed them to nearby San Jose Airport.
The next two days probably went by in a blink, too.
The Zags had roughly 48 hours back home in Spokane to regroup, review film and repack. The seats on their charter plane may have still been warm by the time they returned Tuesday to take a similar flight down to Northern California for the next game on their West Coast Conference schedule.
“San Francisco’s always been a really, really tough game for us,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said on Saturday. “Expect nothing less on Wednesday. As you get late into February in league, all of them are tough so we need to just hustle home and get some rest and move on from there.”
Every game has become precious for a Gonzaga team that’s hoping to capture a WCC regular-season championship and lock up to the No. 1 seed at the conference tournament. The Zags (25-2, 13-1) aren’t looking past any opponent at this point of the season, least of all the Dons (15-13, 7-8) after escaping with a two-point win over Chris Gerlufsen’s team last month in Spokane.
Wednesday’s tipoff between Gonzaga and USF is slated for 8 p.m. (ESPN2) at the Chase Center, the home of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
The Zags may need to win out to claim an outright WCC regular-season championship, but they can secure the No. 1 seed at the conference tournament by beating the Dons on Wednesday and winning subsequent home games against fourth-place Pacific and eighth-place Portland.
The second matchup with San Francisco should look noticeably different than the first and not only because it’s taking place in a spacious 18,000-seat NBA venue rather than the more intimate McCarthey Athletic Center, which packs in 6,000 fans for home games.
Playing its third straight game without Graham Ike, Gonzaga survived in a 68-66 victory win over San Francisco on Jan. 24. Players, coaches and fans were all holding their breath when Barry Wang’s potential game-winning 3-pointer clanged off the backboard in the final seconds.
The Dons are preparing a game plan for Ike in the rematch – one of the toughest assignments in America at the moment, with the senior forward averaging 26.7 points over his last seven games – and could be shorthanded themselves. Sophomore wing Tyrone Riley IV, who averages 11.4 points and 5.2 rebounds, missed the last two games with a knee injury and the status of the reigning WCC All-Freshman member is uncertain entering Wednesday’s game.
“He’s kind of day to day and we’re certainly doing everything we can to get him back for Wednesday. Kind of remains to be seen what his availability will be,” Dons coach Chris Gerflusen told The Spokesman-Review on Monday. “I’m not going to put him out there if he’s not ready to go. Certainly he’d be a much-needed presence Wednesday. But yesterday it was good to also, we didn’t have him in the lineup and still found a way for other guys to step up. We would much prefer him to be available on Wednesday.”
Riley’s injury, USF’s recent slide and Gonzaga’s 34 straight victories in the series between the schools are likely all playing a factor in why the Zags are favored by 14½ points. The Dons had lost three straight games and dropped five of their last six before getting back on track Sunday with a 92-79 victory at San Diego.
“Had not been playing well and kind of hit a wall a little bit, to be honest with you,” Gerlufsen said. “So just to be able to kind of band together, go on the road and probably played one of our better offensive halves of the season yesterday. It made me feel a little better as a coach and got back to doing the things and being the team I know we can be. Because certainly there’s enough talent there to play with anybody and we’ve shown we can lose to anybody too. So that’s not the best feeling as a head coach.”
The Dons controlled the rebounding column in the last meeting against Gonzaga, winning that category 41-37. Gerlufsen acknowledged that will be significantly more challenging with Ike on the floor, but USF is also expecting forward David Fuchs to be a bigger factor after the Rhode Island transfer played just six minutes last month.
“In my time being here, I think we’re like 62-10 in games we outrebound our opponent,” USF’s coach said.
With or without Riley, the Dons will lean heavily on leading scorer Ryan Beasley, who had 14 points, six assists, five turnovers and four rebounds last month at the Kennel. Beasley’s averaging 13.8 ppg and scored 30 points on Feb. 4 against LMU, impressively going 21 of 24 from the free-throw line.
“When we first got him, he was probably a score first, score second kind of guy,” Gerlufsen said. “To see him settle into kind of adopting and being able to do kind of whatever the game presents from a point guard standpoint.”
The top priority for Gonzaga should be keeping USF off the 3-point line. The Dons made just eight 2-point shots but went 14 of 28 from the 3-point line in a narrow loss to the Zags.
