College hoops roundup: Gonzaga finishes season unbeaten, Huskies and Cougars struggle in desert

The Gonzaga Bulldogs broke more records, and the Washington Huskies and Washington State Cougars struggled mightily in the desert in the last week of Washington college hoops.

Gonzaga sweeps final home weekend to finish regular season unbeaten

The No. 1 Bulldogs (24-0, 15-0 WCC) powered through the two regular season games against Santa Clara and Loyola Marymount to finish the regular season undefeated in WCC play for the first time since the 2018-19 season.

If Gonzaga, the wire-to-wire No. 1 team in the land since the season started, runs the table in the WCC, they could become the first team since Kentucky in 2014-15 to accomplish the feat.

“It would be a heck of an accomplishment, quite frankly,” head coach Mark Few said. “It’s hard to be the frontrunner and lead the mile all four laps. Everybody’s gunning for you, especially in these environments where you have to get yourself and the group has to get each other going.”

In its first game, the Bulldogs came out of the gates slow, allowing Santa Clara to push the pace to their speed and out hustle the nation’s No. 1 team. At halftime, Gonzaga only led by two points, and let Santa Clara shoot over 40% from the field.

Then Gonzaga did what it does best. It locked down Santa Clara’s shooters and held them to 33% shooting in the second half and won by double-digits, 89-75.

“It was good for us to be in a tighter game,” Few said. “We weren’t quite as sharp on our end and they were welling up in the paint kind of daring us to take some shots and I think we tried to do a little too much trying to make something out of nothing.”

In Gonzaga’s second game, and it’s 15th consecutive conference game this season won by double-digits, they controlled the pace throughout in a 86-69 win over LMU.

Corey Kispert scored 24 points, in what was likely his last game in Spokane, and the Bulldogs shot almost 60% from the field in an offensive clinic.

“I thought it was a great win,” Few said. “They definitely had our full attention and you know you’re going to get an intense battle on both ends of the floor when you’re going against Eli Scott, he’s a ferocious competitor. I thought our guys did a good job on short prep getting ready for that.”

With just the WCC tournament in between Gonzaga and the NCAA tournament, the prep begins now for a big postseason run. Knowing they would be getting everyone’s best shot in the conference tourney, and knowing that either way they probably have a No. 1 seed locked up, the Bulldogs know everyone is dangerous.

But for the first time in its history, Gonzaga has had an undefeated regular season, and they’ll be looking for more.

“We’ve never done it here with this program,” Few said. “It’s getting harder and harder to find something that’s never been done in this program. There’s very few things left. For this group to be able to notch that is amazing.”

One of those things would be a national championship, which the Bulldogs are currently the favorites to win.

Huskies swept in the desert

Featuring an abysmal start, and two tight games afterward, the Huskies (5-20, 4-16 Pac-12) dropped three contests this weekend in Arizona.

The first was a makeup game against the Sun Devils last Tuesday, who needed to schedule a makeup after postponing a game due to COVID-19 earlier this season.

It did not go well for Washington.

The Huskies were punished from the jump, with the Sun Devils scoring a season-high 97 points against the Huskies defense and shooting 50.7% from the field in the 97-64 contest.

In the followup regularly-scheduled game on Thursday against the Devils, UW made some adjustments.

“After a lot of games where we’ve struggled, we’ve bounced back,” head coach Mike Hopkins said. “It’s a mindset, I thought the guys had a really good mindset today, they have a lot of pride.”

Calling it a “blessing” to play ASU in back-to-back games, the Huskies found themselves tied at 72 with two minutes to play against the same team they beat them by almost 30 two days before. But the Huskies couldn’t close it out, going scoreless over the final stretch and allowing the Devils to walk out victors on their home court twice in three days.

“We didn’t make the plays down the stretch,” Hopkins said. “We got the plays to get close, and then Remy [Martin] hits a big three, and we just didn’t make the plays you need to make to win on the road against a good team like Arizona State.”

Washington’s third game of the weekend, in Tucson against Arizona, was an instant classic.

Back-and-forth, and with teams trading leads in the final moments, it appeared Washington might walk away with a win after Quade Green made two free throws to take a 74-73 lead with a minute to go, and Jamal Bey came away with a clutch block.

Instead, the Huskies dropped their regular season closer, after Green turned the ball over and Arizona’s Azuolas Tubelis knocked down a jumper with six seconds to go to seal the 75-74 win.

“They made a play, we didn’t,” Hopkins said. “It’s unfortunate.”

The Huskies shot nearly 50% from the field and held Arizona to just 37% shooting, but let the Wildcats punish them on the boards for second chance buckets and opportunities. Hameir Wright led the way with 18 points in perhaps his final regular season game for the Huskies.

“I’m really proud of them,” Hopkins said. “It’s hard, it’s a hard season, not having the success that we wanted to. That was the eighth game in 17 days, so there’s not practice time … I was really proud of them. I thought tonight we fought.”

Next up for the Huskies is the Pac-12 tournament, where they would currently sit as the 10th seed. UW is 11th in the conference standings, but because of Arizona’s self-imposed postseason ban, they would move up to 10th for the Pac-12 tournament.

Cougars lose both in Arizona

With one game left to play against Arizona State as a makeup for an earlier postponement, the Cougars (14-12, 7-12 Pac-12) dropped both of its contests against the Arizona schools on Thursday and Saturday in tight contests.

In the first, the WSU was decimated on the boards and let Arizona shoot 50% from the field in a 69-53 loss.

“Tough one tonight for us,” head coach Kyle Smith said. “I thought we played hard, and very purposeful for the first 18 minutes of the game. We actually played pretty hard throughout, we just have to make some shots to win on the road.”

Washington State shot just 32% from the field, and had just one starter score in double figures in TJ Bamba.

“We played hard, we just didn’t play well,” Smith said.

The second game of the weekend, against Arizona State, came down to the wire, with the Sun Devils needing a buzzer-beating three-pointer from Martin to win the game in overtime, 77-74.

The Cougars made enough shots, shooting 41% from the field compared to ASU’s 42%, and had three starters in double figures, but didn’t come away with enough plays down the stretch to win.

“Seems like we’ve been in overtime a lot, came out on the short end tonight,” Smith said. “Had opportunities at the end of regulation to walk out of here with a win. Overtime is going to be tough without Noah [Williams], after he fouled out.”

Without Williams in the overtime period, it was hard sledding to score for the Cougs, but they did enough with a minute to go to tie the game and hopefully head for another overtime, until Martin ended things with a three-point dagger at the horn.

WSU will get another chance at the Sun Devils in a rescheduled contest set for this Monday in its regular season closer before the Pac-12 tournament.