If anyone has become the darling of this NCAA Tournament, it is Omar Samhan.

A big, goofy-looking, throwback post player, Samhan has feasted on the smaller post players he has faced when playing Villanova and Richmond. Baylor is not a small team in the front court. Josh Lomers is going to be able to match up Samham in size. Ekpe Udoh and Quincy Acy are as athletic as any big men Samhan has had to face this season.

Will he be able to score against them?

The Bears are not known for their defensive prowess. They give up too much penetration in their zone, and it results in kick outs for open threes. The Gaels have shooters – that much isn’t up for debate – but do they have guys that can get the ball into the paint and create?

Baylor, on the other hand, is also going to be a tough matchup for the Gaels defensively.

Tweety Carter and LaceDarius Dunn are two very capable backcourt players. Carter went from being almost an afterthought on Baylor’s last few teams to one of the best scorers and playmakers in the conference. If James Anderson of Oklahoma State was the best pure scorer in the Big XII this season, Dunn wasn’t far behind.

As good as Matthew Dellavedova and Mickey McConnell are offensively, they are not the best defenders for the No. 10 seed from Moraga, Calif. Baylor cannot afford to allow one, or both, of those guys to get it going on Friday night.

Another aspect of this game to keep an eye on is foul trouble. Samhan has a tendency to get into foul trouble. He has been in foul trouble in each of St. Mary’s first two tournament games, and neither Villanova or Richmond has the bigs that Baylor does. Udoh is really the only big on BU that is a threat to create his own shot, but Baylor will give him the opportunity. Udoh does get minutes as the center for this team, and it will be a tough matchup for Samhan.

Samhan also has a tendency to go for blocks. Given the athleticism of Baylor’s front line – especially guys like Udoh and Acy – he is going to have to avoid that and also avoid picking up useless fouls if St. Mary’s is to have a chance.

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer

The St. Mary’s Gaels fed Richmond a steady diet of 6-11 senior Omar Samhan to cruise to a surprisingly easy win over the Spiders.  Samhan scored 29 points on 11-of-16 shooting to lead a Gaels side that shot nearly 50 % for the game – this against a Richmond team that held opponents to 43 % shooting on the season. When you’re shooting layups and/or getting dunks like Samhan did today, it’s pretty easy to shoot such a high percentage.

The Big Picture: Due mostly to the relative obscurity conferred by their West Coast location (which puts them out of the East Coast’s viewfinder), Randy Bennett’s squad isn’t considered to be one of the more physical teams in college hoops.  As they showed today, the Gaels prefer to throw their weight around near the rim, and not just shoot threes.  St. Mary’s pulverized Richmond on the glass, outrebounding the Spiders, 37-15.  The Gaels had more offensive rebounds, 18, than the Spiders had total boards.  That, kids, is complete domination, and it’s why St. Mary’s had 21 second-chance points, as opposed to only 4 for Richmond.

As good as Samhan was today, point guard Mickey McConnell was superlative in a difficult match-up against Richmond’s outstanding backcourt.  All the junior guard did was drop 23 points on the Spiders, including five 3-point bombs, without so much as taking a breather (McConnell played all 40 minutes).  More importantly, McConnell committed only three turnovers and dished four dimes.

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The Good: What more can we say about Samhan?  Determined to make the most of his trip to the Big Dance after last season’s egregious snub, “Big Omar” played like a man possessed.  His massive fast-break dunk with 2:59 remaining in the second half, following a Ryan Butler triple that had cut the Gaels’ lead to 70-59, all but crushed the Spiders’ comeback hopes.

The Bad: Even though it was outsized, Richmond’s lack of fight on the glass was somewhat shocking given the way Richmond banged with physical Temple and Xavier squads in the Atlantic 10 tournament.  Teams just don’t get double-upped on the boards without something going horribly awry.  In the case of Richmond today, what went wrong was a wholesale failure to block out and scrap for loose balls.

The Ugly: Richmond’s unraveling in the second half was the stuff tournament nightmares are made of.  A 36-36 tie at the half became a 67-52 St. Mary’s lead with only 6:35 left to play.  That 31-16 spurt finished off the Spiders and rendered the final minutes meaningless.

What’s Next?

Omar Samhan, Mickey McConnell, and their teammates have earned a Big Dance encore.  A Saturday scrap with the South region’s 2nd-seeded Villanova Wildcats seems like a game the Gaels can win, especially if they give the Wildcats the Samhan-treatment, which we expect them to.

By: Tim Coyne
DFN Sports Guest Writer

In what was a very sloppy, yet high paced first half on Monday night where both teams shot just over 30% from the floor, St Mary’s if anything proved they could play with the No. 14 Bulldogs.  As the game progressed, they started looking like they were the team with the easy at large bid into this year’s tournament.

Without getting much production from their top scorer Omar Samhan in the first half, the Gaels had to look to other options.  Mickey McConnell decided that he would be one of them, dumping in 26 points going 10-17 from the field.  Ben Allen also got into the mix scoring a season high 20 points, shooting a robust 4-6 from three point land.

The Bulldogs seemed to have no answer for the Gaels one two punch, and when Samhan found his rhythm, it was all but over for Gonzaga.  They were outscored by 18 points in the second half, and failed to get any open looks from the floor.  The lone bright spot for the Bulldogs was Steven Gray, who finished with 16 points on 5-9 shooting.

This takes away the sour taste left from last season when St Mary’s was denied an NCAA tournament bid to the chagrin of both players and fans.  This year there is nothing that could keep St Mary’s out of the tournament, and after watching them blowout the cream of the WCC last night, I don’t think their will be too many people opposing that fact.

However, with every positive comes a negative.  With St Mary’s receiving an automatic bid, that leaves one less at large bid for one of the 15+ “Bubble Teams,” assuming St Mary’s would not have made it in without defeating Gonzaga last night. However, last night they not only proved they belong in the tournament, they showed that they might give some teams a run for their money come late March.

By: Eugene Brooks
DFN Sports Staff Writer

Just like last year, the Saint Mary’s Gaels faced a must-win game in the second semifinal of the West Coast Conference Tournament. Unlike last year, the men from Moraga, Calif., hope that after coming through against the Portland Pilots, they’ll be able to land an NCAA Tournament at-large bid.

Yes, coach Randy Bennett will want to dethrone Gonzaga in Monday night’s WCC final. Yes, Saint Mary’s would love to bump off its rival and nemesis to remove all doubt about its postseason destination. Yet, with those two things having been acknowledged, the most important task for the Gaels this weekend in Las Vegas was to advance to the championship game of this conference tournament. Without a victory over coach Eric Reveno’s Portland squad, Saint Mary’s would have had no ground to stand on as an at-large candidate.

SMC lost at home to Vanderbilt and then proceeded to get swept by Gonzaga during the West Coast Conference regular season. It’s not as though the Gaels accumulated bad losses – they didn’t – but an NCAA-worthy portfolio has to include some high-value scalps, and outside of a victory at Utah State, there just wasn’t much meat on the Gaels’ plate. A win over San Diego State is solid as well, but the Aztecs must win a few games in the Mountain West Conference Tournament before they can be considered an NCAA team. Saint Mary’s owned a schedule without a lot of heft, and that’s why this game against Portland mattered so much. If SMC absorbed a second loss to the Pilots in three tries, the Gaels would have been exposed just one week before Selection Sunday. Losing this game was not an option.

Reassuringly, then, for their fans and for the administrators in the WCC’s offices, the Gaels played with the urgency their situation demanded.

Bennett’s boys delivered a clinical dissection of a Portland team that hit 49 percent of its field goal attempts the last time these teams played. On Feb. 13 in the Pacific Northwest, the Pilots rode the stellar play of slashing guard T.J. Campbell to an 80-75 overtime win over Saint Mary’s. With Campbell hitting 9 of 16 shots in that game, Portland’s offense frequently outworked SMC’s defense and got to the rim with far too much regularity.

That changed on Sunday at Orleans Arena in Vegas.

If a purple-clad Portland ballhandler did approach the basket in this significant semifinal, a white-shirted Saint Mary’s defender was there to meet him and alter a shot. The second-seeded Gaels displayed terrific help defense, collapsing on drives and making timely rotations on kick-outs. The same T.J. Campbell who scored 24 points in the Feb. 13 thriller was limited to just seven points in this tilt on 2-of-12 field goal shooting. Portland hit just 29 percent of its shots as a team and experienced four separate scoring droughts that lasted at least three minutes and 24 seconds. The Pilots also endured a field goal drought of 10 minutes and 49 seconds in the second half; by the time the dry spell ended with 6:58 left in regulation, SMC owned a 61-43 stranglehold on the proceedings.

One more stat puts this romp into perspective: While Portland hit just 15 of its 52 shots, three Gaels – center Omar Samhan, guard Mickey McConnell, and backup guard Jorden Page – went 19 of 26 from the field. That’s right: SMC’s three most outstanding performers, by themselves, hit more field goals than the entire Pilot roster in exactly half the number of shot attempts.

Need anything more be said, NCAA Selection Committee? Even if Saint Mary’s loses this time around to Gonzaga (as was the case in last year’s WCC final), the Gaels have made a convincing case that they should be allowed to wear their Dancing shoes in 2010.

What’s Next

Gonzaga, of course. Saint Mary’s will face the rival Bulldogs for the second straight year in a Vegas-hosted WCC final. The Gaels have finished second in the West Coast Conference in each of the past three seasons, with the colossus from Spokane, Wash., always standing in their way. How will SMC be able to topple the king of the (West) Coast? The Zags throw waves of long, athletic bodies at opponents, so the Gaels need to have an “all hands on deck” mentality on Monday night. Omar Samhan can hold up his end of the bargain in the low post, but the key will be the play of the Gaels’ backcourt. Mickey McConnell and Matthew Dellavedova simply have to play their best games of the season. More specifically, they have to get to the rim on occasion and not rely solely on the 3-point shot. Gonzaga’s guards and wings are stronger and longer than anyone Saint Mary’s can put on the floor, so SMC will have to run very crisp sets and get great spacing in order to break down the Zags’ defense. At the other end, Dellavedova and McConnell – along with their teammates – have to turn Gonzaga into a jump-shooting team. If all these ingredients emerge on Monday, Saint Mary’s College will have a great chance for an upset… and an automatic bid that will take all the stress out of Selection Sunday.

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer

For 28 minutes, the Gonzaga Bulldogs received virtually no resistance from the Loyola Marymount Lions. Then, for a few minutes, a relentless underdog showed signs of pulling off a significant upset with NCAA Tournament implications across the entire nation.

Fortunately for the many residents of the NCAA bubble, the West Coast Conference’s supreme power managed to restore order before its situation became even more scary.

The night at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas seemed routine and relaxing for Gonzaga. Coach Mark Few’s formidable squad led Loyola Marymount by a 58-45 margin at the 10:27 mark of the second half. Coach Max Good’s Lions had already beaten the Bulldogs once this year – on Feb. 18 – so the idea that LMU could spring a second surprise was hard to seriously entertain. With this game being in Vegas, the odds were certainly stacked against the unheralded fifth seed from Los Angeles.

Yet, in a span of four amazing minutes, the calculus of this contest briefly shifted, causing a stir inside the arena and throughout the college hoops community.

Gonzaga is playing for itself, of course, but the West Coast Conference is a noteworthy national event because the Zags’ fate is connected to the fate of bubble teams throughout the United States. If Gonzaga wins the WCC Tournament, a bid will not get stolen from a bubble team. However, a loss by the Bulldogs at this event would surely allow the WCC to get two teams into the NCAAs, knocking one bubble team off a proverbial cliff. Many men in America had a reason to follow this game to the finish, and when Loyola Marymount began to decisively outplay Gonzaga, Bubble Nation stood at attention.

Many teams – when faced with a 13-point deficit against Gonzaga midway through the second half – generally fold like a cheap tent. Loyola Marymount didn’t. The Lions got stronger instead of weaker as the second half progressed, and by winning 50-50 balls while also taking charge on the boards, they sliced that 58-45 deficit to just six points, at 61-55, with 6:27 to go. Gonzaga scored very easily in the game’s first half, so when LMU began to apply bona-fide game pressure – especially after halftime – the Zags found themselves grossly deficient in terms of raw energy. Without a spark or a turning point, the sons of Spokane, Wash., needed a pick-me-up in order to avoid a high-stress conclusion to this Sunday in Sin City.

That pick-me-up emerged with just under six minutes left in regulation.

After a questionable foul call disqualified Gonzaga big man Robert Sacre, Loyola Marymount missed two free throws with 5:57 left. Just 13 seconds later, Gonzaga’s Bol Kong – an occasionally-used reserve – banged in a three to widen the lead back to 66-55 with 5:44 remaining. LMU never made another credible threat, and Gonzaga had marched into yet another WCC title game.

What’s Next

Gonzaga will try to win another West Coast title on Monday night in Las Vegas as the Bulldogs take on either Portland or Saint Mary’s. Few went deep into his bench in this game against Loyola Marymount, so the Zags should expect to have reasonably fresh legs for their conference finale. One of the reasons GU played well for most of the night was the ability of point guard Demetri Goodson to rush the ball up court, but while remaining under control. Goodson had a deceptively small total of just eight points, but his forays to the hoop opened up opportunities for his teammates. Moreover, Gonzaga’s fast pace prevented LMU and Max Good from establishing defensive positioning in the half court; Gonzaga beat the Lions down the floor and attacked before LMU could fully match up and then execute its defensive plan.

If the Zags – and especially Goodson – can continue this semifinal pattern in Monday’s final, they’ll be awfully hard to beat.

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer