WCC Basketball Fans

Gonzaga 85, Santa Clara 76

What the heck is this – the Horizon League? Just when you thought the longtime kingpin of a mid-major conference was dead and buried, it has risen to life and can still gain a share of the regular season championship when all was said and done. Much as the Butler Bulldogs are still in the thick of the Horizon race in the Heartland, the Gonzaga Bulldogs can still legitimately hope for a piece of hardware in the 2011 West Coast Conference race.

Gonzaga defeated the Santa Clara Broncos in a West Coast collision at the McCarthy Athletic Center in Spokane, Washington, on Thursday evening. The win, along with San Francisco’s victory over Portland, means that both Gonzaga and San Francisco remain deadlocked at 8-3 in the conference, a game and a half behind league-leading Saint Mary’s. The loss dropped Santa Clara to 6-5.
It’s all rather startling to absorb: A few weeks ago, Gonzaga was reeling. A rudderless team lost three straight WCC games, an absolutely unheard-of occurrence ever since the Zags became the mid-major team that transcended the mid-major label. As long as Gonzaga has established its newfound identity as a powerful national program with Final Four aspirations, the WCC has succumbed to the Zags on an annual basis. The notion of a three-game losing streak in the conference shook the team to its foundations, while Saint Mary’s took complete control of the league. A changing of the guard was taking place in the Pacific time zone, and even one week ago, no one thought that SMC was about to hand back the crown to GU.

Then, a funny thing happened. On Wednesday night, basement-dwelling San Diego stunned Saint Mary’s to bring the leader of the West Coast down a peg. Gonzaga’s win here over Santa Clara has enabled the Bulldogs to pull within one game of the Gaels in the loss column. Yes, GU has to play at Saint Mary’s next week, but the mere chance to tie SMC for a share of the WCC title is a prospect the Zags are thrilled to contemplate at this point. Their win over Santa Clara has allowed them to dream big once again, much as Butler can still harbor hopes of a Horizon title in another corner of the country.

Gonzaga jumped out to a 14-point first-half lead before Santa Clara answered to trim the Bulldogs’ halftime edge to just two points. The Broncos took a brief one-point lead at 44-43 with under a minute gone in the second half. Gonzaga answered with a 12-0 run of its own to run the Bulldogs’ lead to double digits once again. Santa Clara again steered the contest to a two-point margin with just under eight minutes remaining, but the Broncos – having outworked the Zags for considerable portions of this passion play in Eastern Washington – could not sustain that level of effort for the duration of the night.

Marquise Carter posted 20 points and handed out five assists to lead head coach Mark Few’s Bulldogs. Steven Gray added 14 points and Elias Harris chipped in 10 points plus seven rebounds in a winning effort for GU. Kevin Foster poured in a game-high 27 points for the Broncos. Head coach Kerry Keating’s Santa Clara kids, who had looked as if they might challenge in the WCC just four games ago, have lost three out of four, including losses to league leaders Saint Mary’s, San Francisco, and now Gonzaga.

Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer