6:00 PM PST
WCC Tournament Championship Game
#2 Saint Mary's Gaels vs. #1 Gonzaga Bulldogs
Orleans Arena, Las Vegas, Nevada.
Saint Mary's is 27-5 on the season, 14-2 in WCC regular season play and currently on a six game winning streak.
Gonzaga is 30-2 on the season, 16-0 in WCC regular season play and currently on a 13 game winning streak.
Gonzaga won the season series 2-0.
TV: ESPN.
Radio: KGA 1510 AM and KEYF 101.1 FM in Spokane, KTEL 1490 AM in Walla Walla, KALE 960 AM in the Tri-Cities, KKRT 900 AM in Wenatchee, KWIQ 1020 AM in Moses Lake and KMAS 1030 AM in the Puget Sound region.
Satellite Radio: Sirius 93, Sirius 110 and XM 193.
The Zags and Gaels have met in the past four WCC Tournament Finals and seven of the past ten. Gonzaga has reached the past 15 Finals and 17 of the past 18. You have to go all the way back to the 1993-94 season to find a WCC Tournament that did not end with either Saint Mary's or Gonzaga playing in the Final.
Over the past four WCC Tournament Finals Saint Mary's has won two (2012 and 2010) and Gonzaga has won two (2011 and 2009). Over the past ten games between the two Gonzaga has totaled 746 points to Saint Mary's 741. This is a rivalry
This isn't one of the longstanding and established rivalries in sports. It hasn't even been around for as long as the Zags' and Gaels' streak of finals appearances would lead one to believe. The past ten games between these two have been close but, the ten before that were far from it as Gonzaga won eight times. Saint Mary's two wins in that span were both at home, by four points and by five points.
It has become a very heated rivalry however, thanks to vocal players like Omar Samhan and Robert Sacre. Samhan would regularly get into arguments on Facebook with Gonzaga fans which laid the groundwork for Sacre to say, "Both teams and fans hate each other".
That sort of fire was great in the early days of this rivalry when Saint Mary's needed some kind of boost to go from second place in the WCC to contender and NCAA Tournament team.
Now though, these teams realize this rivalry means more than just hate.
"Hate's a really strong word" Gonzaga's Kelly Olynyk said in today's press conference, "We really respect them and that brings us to that rivalry because I think they respect our game as well".
He thought right.
"We obviously respect them" said Saint Mary's Matthew Dellavedova, "It's definitely a fierce rivalry because every time we play them there's a lot on the line."
He's also right.
Saint Mary's habitually weak scheduling means that Gonzaga is almost always going to be the best team the Gaels face before the NCAA Tournament. In the regular season these games are a chance for Saint Mary's to boost its resume. In the WCC Tournament it is a chance for the Gaels to assure a berth in the NCAA Tournament. That applies especially to this season because the Gaels failed to pick up a win against Gonzaga in the regular season on top of failing to do so against any other good team they scheduled in the non-conference. They beat Creighton but that game was gifted to them by ESPN BracketBusters.
It's more than just these games having something riding on them bigger than the outcome alone, it's that these games have effectively transformed the WCC.
First, in the early 2000s, Gonzaga transformed the conference from a middle-of-the-pack mid-major league into the mid-major league that Gonzaga is a part of. Having a team consistently scheduling televised games, earning top 25 rankings and making runs into the NCAA Tournament elevated the profile of the WCC. Conference teams could use their two games a year against the Zags as incentive when recruiting. Teams that once had to go out of conference for season defining wins now had two shots at them in conference play.
Then, in the mid-to-late 2000s Saint Mary's transformed it again. The Gaels' consistent NCAA and NIT berths gave the league a legitimate two team race at the top. They gave the Zags stout competition in the once competition devoid months of January and February (The Zags in WCC play went undefeated three times and had just one loss three times during the 2000s).
Now, I'm not privy to all the details and honestly I didn't pay attention to BYU before Jimmer and I still don't pay attention to college football but, I'm willing to wager that the Cougars wouldn't have joined the WCC without what Saint Mary's and Gonzaga had done to elevate the league profile. Why does that matter? The WCC isn't just a middle of the pack mid-major league anymore, it's not the mid-major league that Gonzaga is in anymore, it's not the mid-major league that Gonzaga and Saint Mary's run through anymore (well, it was this year).
It's a top ten league in the country. It's a league with three teams you wouldn't look at all silly predicting to make the NCAA Tournament well before the first game of the season. It's a league with a growing national profile. It's a league with a bunch of fantastic TV deals that assure that all games are broadcast, most televised regionally at the very least and many televised nationally.
All that is thanks in large part to the two teams that will be fighting for supremacy, once again, on Monday night. These teams have changed themselves and their surroundings drastically over the past decade. Despite all the changes tomorrow is going to feel amazingly familiar.
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