Gonzaga Demolishes West Virginia 77-54

This is the Zag team I've been hoping to see all season. Sacre played like the man he is. Bell and Pangos weren't rattled by the very decided home court advantage West Virginia had. Edi was not only the most athletic player in the game but he played like it. Mike Hart scored 5 points on top of his usual intense defensive effort. Harris scored in double figures and was only needed for... 15 minutes of play! There is no better way to head into the match-up with 2 seed Ohio State than this.

The Zag bigs shut down the vaunted front court duo of Deniz Kilicli and all Big East first teamer Kevin Jones. All the talk before the game was how would Gonzaga, who is apparently perceived by the general public as soft, handle the rugged and rough interior play of this Big East squad. Well they held them to 4 rebounds each and kept both below their season average in points. Kevin Jones averaged over 20 points a game coming in to this one and accumulated only 13. Possibly the most telling example of the Zags' dominance in the paint is that freshman Ryan Spangler had 21 minutes off the bench, during which time he pulled down 8 boards and hit 2 of his 3 shots.

The attention paid to the bigs didn't result in the Mountaineers' guards lighting it up from outside though. Tough defense, especially from Gary Bell Jr., helped force West Virginia into a downright awful shooting performance. They shot 32% from the field and an almost unimaginable 3-17 from 3. Gonzaga made that many 3s in just the first 4 minutes, on their way to 9-17 from deep for the game.

Gonzaga trailed for all of 34 seconds in this game, the first 34, and was tied only once, at 2. The Zags absolutely dominated for the entire game. For once the whole team played with a killer instinct that had been lacking over much of the season. While this game was over by halftime, with the Zags up 40-22, the Zags would go out and score 37 more points in the second. They managed that with bench players racking up huge minutes during that time.

Sacre and Bell lead the Zags with 14 points a piece. Pangos chipped in 13 and Harris had 10. Edi rounded out the starting 5 with 6 points, 4 of which came off emphatic dunks. Surprisingly the most bench points came from Mike Hart with 5. Sam Dower had an off night with only 2 points on 1-3 shooting, he wasn't needed though which makes that disappointing but acceptable.

Next up for the Zags is 2 seed Ohio State on Saturday. The performance in this game bodes very, very, very well for that game. I'll expound on that in my preview which will come sometime after the Saint Mary's/Purdue game that is about to start.