Crazy what a couple of days make. In a night of multiple upsets throughout the country, West Coast mid-major hoops saw, without a doubt, the most stunning as the 6th-ranked Gonzaga Bulldogs fell to a 14-loss Portland team on the road Wednesday night. The loss comes less than a week after what was considered their conference season-defining game against Saint Mary’s, where they dominated the Gaels on the defensive end and looked every bit the part of a team that could go wire-to-wire to win the league.

Instead, we now have a fair amount of intrigue in conference play in the final month of regular-season action. Santa Clara is half a game in first place and hosts the Bulldogs the Saturday after next. Saint Mary’s can even the score with Gonzaga if they win all the way through to their senior night game against the Bulldogs in Moraga. What was looking like a final victory lap for a team headed to the Pac-12 now looks far from guaranteed.

Meanwhile, the room for error in the Mountain West continues to shrink as quality win opportunities shrink. New Mexico and San Diego State remain two teams on polar sides of the bubble as it’s currently viewed by Basket Under Review bracketologist Lukas Harkins. Both have multiple major opportunities left to validate their ticket to the dance.

Gonzaga takes a step forward, then two steps back

After an 8-point, come-from-behind win against their biggest conference adversary, Gonzaga proceeded to step on a rake and suffer one of the worst losses in recent program history on the road against 230 NET-ranked Portland on Wednesday night. After the loss of Braden Huff, the Zags turned their defense–even without Graham Ike for three games–into the second-best defense in the country.

The Bulldogs held their last five opponents to 0.8 points per possession and 37.4% shooting from the field. They bordered on a 20% turnover rate on the defensive end and snuffed out half-court possessions to the point that opponents were averaging 0.74 points per possession.

But that was before Gonzaga’s disastrous, uncharacteristic second-half performance that was somehow worse than the 6-point deficit that they allowed in the first half against the Pilots. The Zags gave up 1.18 points per possession to Portland and 59.3% shooting from the field. The Pilots made 8 consecutive shots in the second half that really put the game out of reach, a notable result considering the Pilots rank 9th in the conference in effective field goal percentage.

More dangerous for the Bulldogs is that this game showed just how pedestrian the offense looks with only one primary weapon in Graham Ike. The All-American candidate forward was 9 for 16 from the field and scored 24 points in the game, but could not get unleashed in the first half and the deficit in the second precluded his traditional usage. The Zags lost the paint battle 40 points to 26 points on the night.

Without Huff, there isn’t a consistent and logical second offensive option next to Ike. Freshman Mario Saint-Supery is the only other player to attempt double-digit field goals, but three of those attempts came in the final minute of the game as the Bulldogs chucked attempts to try and sneak out a win. After Jalen Warley’s 33-minute game, where he scored 10 points and recorded 2 assists, he played just 20 minutes and recorded 3 points with 3 assists and 2 turnovers.

Tyon Grant-Foster has shot 50% from the field just once in his last 7 games and is now in a scenario where he’s second in usage and needing to fit within an offense he previously was only tasked with supporting and providing his own splashes of creation and scoring within.

Perhaps most concerning is that there has been no “takeover” from the 9 players in the rotation next to Ike, who warranted anyone recording more than 25 minutes in the game (Ike played 35 minutes). The coaching staff has been touch-and-go with Saint-Supery for the last 10 weeks, trying to get him to turn a corner and take the reins of the point guard position, but that moment hasn’t materialized. But after yet another game with near-50/50 splits across three positions, does a re-evaluation of how you get your best players to take a step up need to happen? 

The Bulldogs were a lock for a 2 or 3 seed if they closed out and won the games they were supposed to. Now, a blemish this big could drop them outside of protected seeding atop of decisive wins, preventing this season’s life raft from taking on any more water.

Santa Clara is playing their best basketball 

While the top of the league took a drastic stumble, the Broncos have pieced together a rather decisive 7-game winning streak following their loss to Gonzaga in Spokane. They’ve held a 18.4 point margin of victory in that span, which includes an 8-point win over Saint Mary’s and a decisive 15-point victory over their Bay Area neighbors, San Francisco.

What makes the Broncos a real tournament-worthy team isn’t the fact that they lead the WCC in offensive efficiency, effective field goal percentage, while being second in the league in turnover rate. It’s that their defense has completely overcome their inconsistencies from the nonconference and has held the 21st-best defensive efficiency in the country according to Bart Torvik over their last 7 games.

Heading into their game against Pacific, Santa Clara has held a top-5 turnover rate on defense in the country since January 10th, including a 26.5% turnover rate against Pacific on Wednesday night. Santa Clara leads the conference in both opponent turnovers per game and fast break points per game in league play.

And while the defense ramps up, the offense continues to hum. The Broncos have four of the eight qualifying players in WCC league play with an effective field goal percentage of 55% or more and a usage rate over 20%. Sash Gavalyugov, Allen Graves, Elijah Mahi and Christian Hammond are all averaging 9.5 points or more in league action.

Can San Diego State survive their injuries?

As of now, the aforementioned bubble-watcher and ball knower, Lukas Harkins, has the Aztecs as one of the last four teams out of the tournament. The Aztecs have a 4-5 record in Quad 1 and 2 games and couldn’t notch a win on the road in Logan to stay ahead of Utah State in the MWC standings. The Aztecs lost by just two possessions while missing defensive centerpiece Magoon Gwath and freshman Elzie Harrington due to injury.

Brian Dutcher’s team plays one of the largest rotations in the country, ranking 14th in Division I in bench minutes per game. But as we reach the part of the season when minute allotments tighten and you lean on your best players, Gwath and Harrington are noticeable and key absences, despite the heroics of the upperclassmen throughout the team.

The absence of Gwath’s paint protection is rather obvious visually, but the numbers bare it out as well. San Diego State’s defense goes from giving up 0.98 points per possession with Gwath on the floor to 1.01 without him (17th to 35th in the country). The Aztecs’ replacement bigs also foul more than Gwatch, increasing the free throw rate of their opponents from 32.3% to 39%. Shots at the rim also increase, with a 10% increase in assisted makes on rim attempts by opponents. But most noticeably, opponents went from shooting 51.7% at the rim with him on the floor to 56% with him sidelined.

But Harrington’s absence is actually stunting the heights this Aztecs team could reach on both ends of the floor as they fight to get on the right side of the bubble. The 6-5 guard has become a true two-way player, able to create offense for himself and be trusted as a secondary initiator and connector for his teammates.

With Harrington on the floor San Diego State has held a defensive point per possession of 0.969 and a turnover rate of 21.6%. On offense, he was proving to be a knockdown piece, averaging a 65.6% effective field goal in catch-and-shoot opportunities according to Synergy.

Gwath has missed the last five games and Harrington the last three. After Saturday’s game against Air Force, the Aztecs play six straight games against Quad 1 and 2 teams.

Games to Watch

• Santa Clara at Washington State, 3 pm PT/6 pm ET, ESPN+
• Gonzaga at Oregon State, 3pm PT/6 pm ET, ESPN+
• Boise State at New Mexico, Saturday, 7 pm PT/10 pm ET, CBS Sports Network
• San Francisco at Saint Mary’s, Saturday, 8:30 pm PT/11:30 pm ET, ESPN2
• New Mexico at Grand Canonuon, Wednesday, 7 pm PT/10 pm ET, FS1