Time for a Reality Check

[BobZag]

Folks, there are junior college, NAIA and DII teams that are better than LMU. Corey Counts scored a career high, by about twice as much as ever before. This is a kid you'd see playing for Emporia State or Barton County College. The Zags, living up to their pathetic 3-point shooting defensive efforts, gave LMU trey after trey after trey, just like the Zags gave up trey after trey vs Georgia.

I really don't much care what coachspeak was said after the game. The Zags stunk. LMU offered very little resistance and GU still failed to put their foot on the Lions' throat, going through the lazy motions which kept LMU, a 3-14 crap team, within 5 points well into the 2nd-half. Sorry, that's just a joke.

Corey Counts. lol. Are you kidding me? A career high. Corey Counts? What a joke. 21 points. A DII guard that averaged 4ppg prior to playing Gonzaga. Corey Counts. If that wasn't so awful, I'd laugh. Corey freakin' Counts torches Gonzaga. Good grief.

The team and coaches can continue to pat everyone on the back but they should be kicking everyone in the ass. Good teams flat-out bury teams like LMU from tipoff to the final buzzer. Good teams relish the slaughter and humiliation of their foes, they don't play down to DII level caliber play.

Plain and simple, these Zags don't get up for lesser teams and every team is fired up for them. The Zags lack a consistent level of play no matter who they play, unlike great teams in any sport at any level. It doesn't matter how poor a team is... If you play at their level, all they have to do is throw that one lucky punch and there you are on your ass. Any team that these kids allow to think they belong in the game with has a chance to beat them.

Lastly, I believe the Zags are paying waaaayyyyy too much attention to how stylish they look rather than how good they play. Since when does Nike tell the team when to wear red jerseys and when to wear blue jerseys? Blue and White are Gonzaga's colors. Red is only meant as an outline color, a very recent idea. The true colors, the real Zag colors from Day One of Gonzaga University in the 1880's are BLUE AND WHITE. Gonzaga is not Stanford, is not Nebraska, is not Alabama, Wisconsin, Eastern Washington nor any other "red" team. How much does Nike pay GU, more than their overseas third world country's exploited Wal-Martish sweatshop workers' salaries of a dime a day?

It's blue and white. Red is not "cool," man. Not for Gonzaga. Where the Hell has the concept of Tradition gone?

Corey Counts and LMU. What a laugh. A 23 point win. Wow. Bakersfield whipped LMU by 37.

Go Zags. We're just awesome.

[jazzdelmar]

1,000%

agree 1,000% BZ....this team is about as overrated as any Zags team has been....Josh went thru the motion and the others barely touched their potential agst a team that wd have a hard time competing the LA, Seattle and NYC high school leagues...........just very disappointing...........Ehlo, that moron, makes it worse, mindlessly praising anything the Zags do well....Memphis will eat us alive and so will Randy's squad........

[75Zag]

But on the Bright Side

Bulldogs FINALLY covered the point spread last night after going 0 -5 in their last 5 games and 1 - 6 in their prior 7 games. On behalf of the loyal GU Bulldog (recreational purposes only) point spread community, I say thank you.

[BobZag]

All I'm doing is calling it the way I see it. It is my truth. If anyone thinks GU played good, so be it. That's what makes the world go 'round. But more than a couple red flags went up for me last night.

That said, I sincerely hope Gonzaga improves and plays harder Monday night and beyond. They'll need to.

[RenoZag]

Burn the red uniforms.

[MickMick]

I guess I am somewhere inbetween on this topic. I just don't see this team running the table in the WCC. I don't think they are as bad as this thread makes it seem either.

The Zags kicked the crap out of a cellar dweller. They didn't play their best game doing it. And for some reason it seems that other teams get unusually hot from the perimeter against the Zags. This has always been true.

The frustration is that some of us had much higher expectations. We expect the Zags to be ranked. We expect a marquee win. Now the season is shaping up like a dogfight just to get to the post season.

I came to terms with this awhile ago and accept the team for what it is. Thoughts of beating Memphis or going deep in the tournament are long gone. I just want to see this team continue the NCAA tournament streak. That is the Zag calling card. Our identity. We lose that tournament bid and the national perception of this program will reach a new low. Not a hiccup like losing on the home floor. But a genuine perception problem on a national scale. There is a reason the Zags are commonly seen on national TV. End the tourney string and the generous TV time is in jeopardy.

[BobZag]

"The Zags kicked the crap out of a cellar dweller."

Yes, Gonzaga and CS-Bakersfield whupped LMU, as have 12 other teams. GU has a long, long ways to go, longer than for the Irish have to go to Tipperary.

Hoping for a win and better play Monday night.

[gamagin]

when we play like we did against LMU,

imo, we send a signal to the rest of the league: we're vulnerable. And we are.

Every kid, like Counts, on every team, will work from last night on (if not before) to see if he can do what Counts did, launch his career. On our time and our dime.

It is an enabling kind of thing to let anyone, especially the developing players & teams, build their self esteem at our expense.

He should have been standing in the dark after his first open shot. The dark of a Zag player blocking any view of the basket. That would be our proper response.

He was the only weapon out there for several minutes and several shots. He energized LMU and he went unchallenged. He was allowed to relax, set up and wound up taking some nice shots. We let him.

His performance also encourages the really tough teams, the ones we hope to beat, to look at that same vulnerability and match it with better athletes, more confident players and teams and plans. We're teaching them how to beat us.

And that's what happens. The way it works. We open our kimonoes, they take advantage.

Vulnerability is not something we want to show in basketball, which every athlete knows is a tactical war. Ever.

We work against those things in practice and we execute during the game. Every game. If we don't, we get executed.

It's not enough to hope to call on those instincts when we need them and shut them off when we don't, like Sat. night.

They need to be there all the time and clearly, they are not.

We can relax after the game. On the way home. Not during the game.

[SunDevilGolfZag]

Our Elite 8 team was pretty marginal for the first half of the season before gelling and peaking at the right time. Here's to hoping this team toughens up and does the same. I'm keeping the faith.

[azzagfan]

And for some reason it seems that other teams get unusually hot from the perimeter against the Zags. This has always been true.

If a team gets hot for one game from the outside against us, it raises eyebrows. The second game it happens, it's a trend. When it happens for multiple seasons, coincidence has got to be ruled out. We do a poor job getting out and finding shooters until they've hit 4 threes on us, and then we decide to put Micah on them.

When you're a shooter on another team and you play the Zags, your coach is telling you to look for your shot. You're feeling confident in warmups, because you know you're going to get open looks. You get an open look in the first minute of the game that goes down, and another one in the third minute, and another one in the fifth minute... (This is all defining "some reason")

[ZagsGoZags]

two years ago, with Ammo and JP, ranked in the top 8, with a 25-3 record or something like that, we often won by less than 8 pts, against the

WCC teams that frequently got close to us, and we usually pulled it out, like last night

all of you athletes out there know that it is hard to be extremely intense and psychically 100% overpowering for every single game against a lesser opponent

the mark of great athletes is to rise to maximum, or play over your head in those tough situations where it really, really counts

the rest of the time you play your system with energy, and that is what I saw last night,

the stats show we executed well even when the game was close

Roger Federer wins a lot of sets 7-5, and 7-6

this is just to take a middle ground on the game last night, I don't mind that we didn't bury them

The problem is we have not won our crucial games, and that is what we need to rise to, in my opinion

[T-bonedazag]

You guys need to realize that the zags are a bunch of 19-21 year old KIDS. I played college athletics and sometimes you don't play your best game. They have a lot of things on their minds, girls, school, ect. and they are away from home staying in hotels. They are not pros who get paid to do this for 8 months out of the year. I understand that they could have played better but they still won. Sometimes I think we take this stuff too seriously.

[pbriz]

Folks, there are junior college, NAIA and DII teams that are better than LMU. Corey Counts scored a career high, by about twice as much as ever before. This is a kid you'd see playing for Emporia State or Barton County College. The Zags, living up to their pathetic 3-point shooting defensive efforts, gave LMU trey after trey after trey, just like the Zags gave up trey after trey vs Georgia.

I really don't much care what coachspeak was said after the game. The Zags stunk. LMU offered very little resistance and GU still failed to put their foot on the Lions' throat, going through the lazy motions which kept LMU, a 3-14 crap team, within 5 points well into the 2nd-half. Sorry, that's just a joke.

Corey Counts. lol. Are you kidding me? A career high. Corey Counts? What a joke. 21 points. A DII guard that averaged 4ppg prior to playing Gonzaga. Corey Counts. If that wasn't so awful, I'd laugh. Corey freakin' Counts torches Gonzaga. Good grief.

The team and coaches can continue to pat everyone on the back but they should be kicking everyone in the ass. Good teams flat-out bury teams like LMU from tipoff to the final buzzer. Good teams relish the slaughter and humiliation of their foes, they don't play down to DII level caliber play.

Plain and simple, these Zags don't get up for lesser teams and every team is fired up for them. The Zags lack a consistent level of play no matter who they play, unlike great teams in any sport at any level. It doesn't matter how poor a team is... If you play at their level, all they have to do is throw that one lucky punch and there you are on your ass. Any team that these kids allow to think they belong in the game with has a chance to beat them.

Lastly, I believe the Zags are paying waaaayyyyy too much attention to how stylish they look rather than how good they play. Since when does Nike tell the team when to wear red jerseys and when to wear blue jerseys? Blue and White are Gonzaga's colors. Red is only meant as an outline color, a very recent idea. The true colors, the real Zag colors from Day One of Gonzaga University in the 1880's are BLUE AND WHITE. Gonzaga is not Stanford, is not Nebraska, is not Alabama, Wisconsin, Eastern Washington nor any other "red" team. How much does Nike pay GU, more than their overseas third world country's exploited Wal-Martish sweatshop workers' salaries of a dime a day?

It's blue and white. Red is not "cool," man. Not for Gonzaga. Where the Hell has the concept of Tradition gone?

Corey Counts and LMU. What a laugh. A 23 point win. Wow. Bakersfield whipped LMU by 37.

Go Zags. We're just awesome.

I can understand your points and frustration but sometimes things just go our way and to use one or two games as an example of this team as a whole is unfair to what this team has done. There are games like this and games like the Northridge game (who is actually on the bubblewatch) where things do go our way. Who cares how much we win by? All that matters is that its a W in the win column.

And to say that the locker room did not have an effect on the team is ridiculous. I am sure they were dehydrated beyond belief. Kids step up for big games like Corey Counts did, good for him but you can look at any team when they play a crappy team and someone always emerges from the other team and it was just his day. Those threes he took were not easy-I dont know if there was a single one where he actually had his feet set.

[applezag]

To be honest, ZagsGoZags, that team with Ammo and JP didn't realize its potential either. They could have been significantly better and so can these Zags.

Big-time teams crush the LMUs of the world, and these Zags don't. In my perception, which may be skewed, they have the talent to be doing that and are falling well short of how well they could be performing.

[CDC84]

Re:

I felt Pargo's non-presence (really, even when he was on the floor - he was too hurt) caused Gonzaga's defense to go out of whack quite a bit....nonetheless......

How do you allow one of the worst teams in D-1 to shoot 60% in the 2nd half, and 43.4% in the game? And then allow them to nail 40% of their three pointers when they have no inside presence and the only way they can stay in the game is make threes?

The following teams beat LMU by more points than Gonzaga:

Arkansas-Little Rock = 31
New Mexico = 28
Long Beach St. = 25
Mississippi St. = 31
BYU = 29
CSU-Bakersfield = 34

The only thing that made the Texas Tech game the worst game of the year as opposed to the one last night was that LMU was a win, while TT was a loss. But TT is better than LMU....way better, and the TT loss was the 5th game of the year. GU was without Josh and Steven, etc.

I expect both SMC games to be a major challenge, and maybe the games at SCU and USD could be interesting, but other than that, Few and Co. need to understand that this team isn't going to improve if they lower themselves to the opponent. Gonzaga is competing against themselves in many of these games. They need to come out Monday with the assumption that they are down by 35 points, but have 40 minutes to make up that margin. That way they are working towards a challenging goal, but with the knowledge that there isn't a rush to do it all at once.