15 St. Mary's 12
12 Gonzaga 14

11:42 1H

St. Mary's playing terrible o far, yet still in it.

The Gaels are traditionally bad on the road. They haven't gotten to the Sweet 16 since 2010.

6 point game now

LOL, while I turned off the game for the UNM game, SMC cut it to 6. Soon as I turn back, Zags go on an 8-2 run to extend the lead back to 12.

Maybe I should stop watching again.

Dug too big a whole. Co champs it is. Saint Mary’s will still be the 1 seed in the WCC tourney.

Other than the OT loss to LMU, this was the most points allowed by Saint Mary’s this season. Gonzaga is the highest scoring offense in D1.

Honestly? Gonzaga is a sloppy team, but SMC gets the biggest case of the yips when they go to Spokane. It shouldn’t have been this close, and I know Gonzaga was usually up by double digits for a lot of it. That should have held, imo.

(02-26-2023 12:30 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote:  Gonzaga is the highest scoring offense in D1.

Honestly? Gonzaga is a sloppy team, but SMC gets the biggest case of the yips when they go to Spokane.

Gonzaga plays extremely fast. Not Paul Westhead "the System" fast like LMU in the 90s, but extremely fast.

They DO look sloppy because of it, but it's why they have an explosiveness to them, where you'll see a tight game at the start of the 2nd half, but then the other team's legs go and Gonzaga makes a huge run to win by 26.

I think it’s more on the defensive side of the ball. Gonzaga is the bigger and faster team. I’d exepct them to be more self-aware and a bit more aggressive. Easier said than done, though…nobody really plays old Big East-style (Brawl Ball!) style because of officiating nowadays, but, it kills me watching bigger and faster teams that do know each other enough still get jumbled around defensively. And at least not contest things a bit more aggressively offensively.

I would imagine someone really could put the screws into SMC and hang a 100 on them. Speed still forces the defender to actually have to be set rather than getting into the motions. Granted, the pros don’t call moving screens, so, maybe just going through the motions of defense is enough now?