NASHVILLE—It was nine days of agony, sitting there stewing over what went wrong and how something like that could possibly happen. Mark Few’s team almost had to find itself after the 101-61 walloping it suffered in its Players’ Era finale against Michigan. What happened that night in Las Vegas was the antithesis of everything this Gonzaga team thought it knew about itself.
A game that appeared to be the best college basketball had to offer in November and a platform for Gonzaga to show off the benefits of its experience as well as its rare quality of returners resulted in Michigan handing Gonzaga the worst loss of Few’s tenure. It was the type of loss that had no choice but to teach Few’s team that they were far from invincible despite their 7-0 start–which included wins over Oklahoma, Creighton, Arizona State, Alabama and Maryland–that indicated that they might be. It was a punch in the face of sorts for a team that appeared to be beyond taking it.
Few always knew that his team was better than what it showed that day, but he and his players couldn’t do anything about it. All they could do was make sure that it didn’t happen again.
“It’s not fun for anyone,” Few said. “This week was really more about us just getting back to who we are.”
Turns out this Gonzaga team isn’t incapable of being routed like it was that night, but that its final outing in Vegas isn’t all that indicative of what it is. If narratives were crafted around this team and where its deficiencies lied, Few’s team brought a fire extinguisher to it as it got out to a 17-2 lead against Kentucky before it could blink on Friday night.
This Kentucky team has its issues–namely a lack of perimeter shooting, an ongoing search for a true point guard and the health of its potential best player–but not everyone has exposed them like Few’s team did in front of a blue-filled Bridgestone Arena on Friday night. Mark Pope’s team hasn’t been immune to disappointing losses, but none of their previous losses felt like this. None were complete embarrassments that resulted in the boo birds coming out, the program’s worst loss since 1990 and a mass exodus of fans at the under-four media timeout like Friday night’s was.
In the same way that Michigan dismantled Gonzaga 10 days ago, it took it to Kentucky in a way that likely forced it to question some things about itself. Few’s team led Kentucky by as much as 37, led by double digits for the entirety of the second half of Friday’s game and sent a not-so-gentle reminder that Gonzaga is still Gonzaga.
This is still the team that entered the day No. 3 in KenPom despite its metric-disaster outing against. It’s still the team with a rolodex of old guys that are in their last ride and make up the fourth-most experienced team in the country. Its performance on Friday–in which it picked up its second-biggest win over a ranked team in program history–appeared to be indicative of that.
“These guys are mature,” Few said. “They’ve won a ton of games, they’ve had a ton of success. They know what we do. They know that when we do we’re supposed to and what we're capable of, we can play with anybody in the country. When we deviate from that, not pleasant stuff happens.”
Perhaps the best example of Few’s theory was sitting directly to the left of him as he made his statement. Ike finished its loss to Michigan with just one point in 17 minutes, on Friday he finished with 28 points, 10 rebounds and just five less made field goals than Kentucky as well as more two-point field goals than Kentucky did.
Ike and Gonzaga big man Braden Huff combined for 48 points on 20-for-27 shooting on the night and contributed to Gonzaga out-rebounding Kentucky 43-31. If it wasn’t dominance, it sure was close. The rest of Gonzaga’s roster followed suit and finished the day with 57.1% shooting from the field as well as 50% shooting from 3-point range.
“Their bigs just torched us,” Pope said. “We were in and out of monster double teams and we did that relatively inconsistently, ineffectively."
Huff says that the stretch between Gonzaga’s loss to Michigan and Friday win over Kentucky was a reset for it and that it felt like a “long” time. Ike was the politically correct one of the two as he opened with the idea that the stretch was “standard” rather than anything special, but the Gonzaga big man has been around the block enough to know the magnitude of the resilience that he and his teammates needed to show in order to do what it did on Friday.
By the end of the night, Few walked through the Bridgestone Arena tunnel even-keeled as ever while his players shook hands and kissed babies alongside their families in the Arena’s stands. It’s a posture that’s become familiar for this program, but it’s one that it didn’t appear to take for granted. This group knew what it took to get there. As a result it didn’t appear to take its final moments in Nashville for granted.
“We definitely just wanted to dial in on our response,” Ike said. “That was a great opportunity to see what we’re made of and we responded well tonight. I’m proud of the guys for doing so tonight.”
In the days following Gonzaga’s loss to Michigan, Few compared the outing to some of his program’s most memorable lopsided losses and joked that he didn’t want to discuss it. As hes boards the plane back to Spokane, he’s now got one of the best regular season wins of his tenure to think back on and compare future wins to.
It would’ve been a night to remember for a long time had Gonzaga done it coming off of a win. It’s more memorable because of what it says about this group and its opportunity to do something moving forward, though. Time to remember not to count this Gonzaga team out of anything, regardless of what happened the night prior.
“To their credit, they didn’t hang their heads, they came out ready to work and they understood it,” Few said. “Think everybody got the frustrations out.”
