WCC Basketball Fans

San Francisco 81, Portland 74

For the last three seasons, the prevailing wisdom on the West Coast has been that the Portland Pilots are the one team that can potentially disrupt the Gonzaga-Saint Mary’s axis of power in the West Coast Conference.
Perhaps that line of thought should be shelved until something changes. For now, Portland is much more a part of the crowd than an upper-tier contender in this conference filled with religiously-affiliated schools.
Michael Williams had 18 points and Cody Doolin added 14, leading head coach Rex Walters and San Francisco to an 81-74 win over Portland at the War Memorial Gymnasium in San Francisco. The Dons picked up their third straight win, and their fifth in the last six games, to move into a tie for second place in the WCC with Gonzaga, a team that was blown out at Santa Clara earlier on a Thursday night in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Portland, representing a Catholic university, came into the game looking to prove that it should be thrown into the conversation with St. Mary’s and Gonzaga in the WCC, but instead struggled to get things going against San Francisco, a Jesuit institution. Jared Stohl had 19 points and Luke Sikma had 18 for Portland, but those numbers rang hollow on a night when the Pilots struggled to get things going from the field, shooting only 38 percent.

Coming into the game, a look at the records would’ve given one the thought that Portland was the better team. Moreover, Portland – who briefly reached the top 25 last season (in November of 2009 after a strong showing at the 76 Classic early-season tournament in Anaheim, California) – has shown on occasion the ability to war with big-name programs. Coach Eric Reveno’s team played as such on Thursday in a few respects – the Pilots hit 91 percent of their attempts from the foul line and won the rebounding edge by 14, including a 14-2 advantage on the offensive glass. However, the Dons erased rebounding and made it irrelevant as a game factor because they simply didn’t miss very often. It’s a timeless part of basketball analysis that if you hit most of your shots, there won’t be many rebounds available for the opposition. San Francisco hit 57 percent from the field and managed to win yet again because it applied game pressure to Portland and not the other way around.

The Dons had four players hit double-digits, and seven players with at least 7 points, to lead the balanced attack that proved very hard for Portland to counter. Teams dream of having three primary scorers, so USF’s offense-by-committee approach proved to be that much more lethal. It’s one thing, though, for Portland to play such limp defense against the likes of Gonzaga or Saint Mary’s – two teams with legitimately loaded offenses. It’s quite another matter for Reveno’s roster to get shredded like this by a middle-of-the-road WCC foe. This performance has to be a source of utter bewilderment for the Portland coaching staff. While the Pilots’ offensive attack worked against the Dons, their lack of defense did them in, and they will have to fix that as they prepare for another road game (at Santa Clara) to end the week.

Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer