Bud Withers' Blog

Do the Zags deserve a No. 1 seed?

2月

20日

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I think this is where I came in.

About three years ago, piecing together a work on Gonzaga hoops, “Glory Hounds,” I opened with an anecdote about how Kentucky fans in 2015 had their panties in a tangle about the Zags, owing to the notion that GU’s prospective seed could put the beloved Wildcats in the same region as a potent Wisconsin team.

Now, as Yogi was fond of saying, it’s déjà vu all over again.

One of the hot topics of Gonzaga’s week (since there’s nothing much to discuss as regards the West Coast Conference) suddenly concerns Kentucky, which trounced No. 1 Tennessee Saturday. That has bumped up the onrushing ‘Cats in the national narrative – deservedly so.

In fact, Seth Davis of CBS and The Athletic nudged Kentucky into his group of four No. 1 seeds. Jerry Palm of CBS Sports told Sirius radio Monday that he could see Kentucky nabbing that No. 1 seed over Gonzaga, even if the Zags win out.

Which would be novel. Remember, Gonzaga was a No. 1 seed – officially – in the NCAA basketball committee’s early-February read on where the top 16 teams lay at the moment. It would be quite the notion that an early-projected No. 1 could win nine straight games – that would be Gonzaga’s path from the Feb. 9 reveal through the WCC championship game – and drop in the seeding. And the Zags have been abusing WCC teams by record margins.

Having said that, let me say this: I don’t have a problem with either Seth Davis’ or Jerry Palm’s reckoning.

First, let’s back up. When Gonzaga lost at North Carolina Dec. 15, there was a lot of talk about how little chance existed for GU to claim a No. 1 seed, so bereft is the WCC of real, meaty chances to impress. My take then was that it was possible for the Zags at least to be in the discussion come March.

It was a surprise to me, then, that Gonzaga so quickly made up that ground. Essentially, by the end of January or thereabouts, the Zags had sprouted on the top line.

Bottom line, risking pitchforks and torches outside my house from Zag fans: I don’t think Gonzaga’s resume is necessarily deserving of a No. 1 seed, pending what may take place around it (from Kentucky, et al).

The Zags have a thundering resume victory-on-steroids with the win over Duke in Maui. It’s the loudest statement Gonzaga has ever made to the basketball committee with a single triumph. (Meanwhile, Kentucky was thrashed in November by Duke).

And there’s no quibble here with Gonzaga’s scheduling intent. You don’t have to apologize for taking on Arizona or playing Creighton in front of 17,000 on the road, or meeting a Power Five team in Illinois in Maui.

It’s just that: Illinois is 10-16 (even as it’s proven to be nobody’s stooge in the Big Ten, having beaten Minnesota, Maryland, Michigan State and Ohio State). Creighton is a disappointing 13-13, having lost nine of 12 in the new year. Its season went south with consecutive home losses, and blown leads, to Marquette and Villanova early in January.

And Arizona is a mess. A team that was good enough to beat Iowa State on the eve of the Gonzaga loss in Maui, good enough to be 13-4 and 4-0 once, has now lost seven straight. It hasn’t won in a month.

Texas A&M, another Gonzaga victim, is tied for 11th in the SEC – after a Sweet 16 appearance last spring.

Yeah, Gonzaga beat Washington, and the Huskies’ season helps the Zags. But Gonzaga won by two, and it was at home, and that’s the kind of result the committee expects if you’re going to be a high seed.

None of this is Gonzaga’s fault, it’s just the way it played out. Reminds me a little of 2002, when Gonzaga had a sort of coming-of-age experience with NCAA seeding, falling to a No. 6 seed when Mark Few had toyed with the idea his team could be a 3 or even a 2. Teams like Fresno State and Saint Joseph’s – Zag victims -- were projected to be Final Four threats and when they came up disappointments, Gonzaga paid the price. Then it really paid the price with a first-round NCAA loss to Wyoming.

I’m not going to try to weigh Kentucky’s 21-4 record and recent 10-game winning streak in the SEC against Gonzaga’s chops. There’s time enough for that later.

Besides, you can get plenty of that on a Kentucky message board, where the opinions occasionally touched charitable (“I’d prefer a rematch with Duke to playing GU in the Dance. They’re a nightmare”) to the delusional (“I have no idea how this Zags team beat Duke. It almost seems like K gave them the win just because he thinks they’re the next media favorite. Of the four games I’ve seen from Gonzaga in the WCC, there’s nothing to make me believe they’re anywhere near even the top 15 teams in the country”).

Thankfully for some, registration for a fan card carries no requirement for being of sound mind.

Like a lot of mid-season debates, this one may descend to a faint murmur by March. The Zags may well end up a No. 1 seed. If so, they won’t be thanking Arizona or Creighton.

Without Tillie, Zags will try to keep humming

2月

12日

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A lot of sympathy is due Killian Tillie for his latest injury at Gonzaga, and for all the constituencies that might feel aggrieved over it, his own well-being is the most important.

You name it, he seems to have had it in his three years at Gonzaga – sprained ankle and a month out during the Final Four year; serious hip injury that truncated the Zags’ run with the Sweet 16 in 2018, and likely caused Tillie to postpone his immediate NBA plans; stress fracture of the ankle and surgery last November; and now, a partially torn foot ligament that imperils the rest of his season, and possibly, his career at GU.

I’ve always believed Gonzaga has been fairly fortunate with injuries during its golden age (with exceptions such as Przemek Karnowski’s serious back ailment in 2015-16). But Tillie seems bent on upending that narrative all by himself.

So you feel badly for him, and in a sport where the opportunities tend to be transient, you also feel a pang for his team and its chances in March/April. In the month since his return from surgery, Tillie hadn’t yet been Tillie, but we know what he can do. His coach, Mark Few, long ago characterized him as as a guy who quickly understood things, who gets it, somebody whose instincts make the machine run more smoothly.

Which brings us to today’s question: How much more of a sweet purr could anybody bring to the Gonzaga apparatus right now? What the Zags did to poor Saint Mary’s the other night was almost criminal, hanging a 94-46 defeat on the Gaels. This is hardly a vintage SMC team, but, in the words of a football coach I covered once, it isn’t Squawhockey Canyon, either.

From the outset, the Zags were lofting Cirque du Soleil lob passes to crashing bigs and banging threes off behind-the-back feeds. It was something to see, a performance as much as it was a victory, and it’s lamentable to think that Tillie’s absence might chip away at the chance of watching such theater.

To me, it’s become obvious that the front line the Zags are unloading on the WCC is something the league has rarely, if ever, seen. Think of the good bigs that have come out of the WCC in the last 15-20 years (outside Gonzaga) – Omar Samhan, Jock Landale, Brandon Davies, John Bryant, Eric Mika, Stacy Davis, Brad Waldow. Almost always, they’ve been marginal NBA talents. Now, in Rui Hachimura and Brandon Clarke, the Zags are showing off two guys projected to be first-round draft picks.

The league is being overpowered by these guys, along with a cast that has Gonzaga, at 1.28 points per possession, far ahead of the field in KenPom’s offensive-efficiency rankings.

So far, in what was touted as a better WCC, it’s not a fair fight. According to Pomeroy, the Zags’ composite margin of 311 points through 10 league games – or a 31.1-point average victory – is tops through that period since 1998. Second on that list was the ’17 Zags with 280 points. The most impressive of the top five is No. 4, the 1998 Kansas team, playing in a far tougher league, with a 241-point margin of victory over 10 games.

Looking for a comp to judge the Zags’ dominance of the WCC, I hit upon Jerry Tarkanian’s UNLV teams that once laid waste to the Big West Conference. He had three clubs unbeaten in league play (1987, 1991, 1992), and the one that sticks out was the fearsome ’91 team, led by Larry Johnson (he averaged 22 points and 10 rebounds), Stacey Augmon, Greg Anthony and Anderson Hunt.

This was the team mentioned as among the best in history, coming off a 30-point thrashing of Duke in the 1990 championship game – and unbeaten until it met its end against the Blue Devils in the national semis in Indianapolis. The ’91 Rebels ran up a 316-point margin through 10 games, just a touch higher than the current Zags. The pace slowed slightly, however, and UNLV finished at 29.6. (The Rebels did it in style in nine of their 18 games, eclipsing the 100-point barrier.)

How does GU stack up against the best previous Gonzaga teams? That ’17 Final Four team that’s second on Ken Pomeroy’s list had a 28.1-point average margin through 17 WCC games, but the winning streak came to an end in the season finale against BYU.

The ’14-15 Elite Eight club had a more modest 16.1-point margin of victory before BYU also ended that streak on Senior Night at the Kennel.

Aside from the ’19 and ’17 GU teams, maybe the most comparable club – in terms of potential – was the 2013 squad that was upset by Wichita State in the NCAA second round. That team, which surely looked to have Final Four chops, ran the table over 16 WCC games, with an average margin of 19.4 points – more than 11 behind the current team’s pace.

Now the 2018-19 Zags have to try to fulfill their dreams without Tillie, at least for a while. For one night, at least, they seemed to be trying to say it's doable.