Gonzaga was big and very physical. Their inside game was definitely impressive. I thought the officiating was pretty lopsided and at some points downright awful. Did anyone else see Mansell get knocked out of bounds by a Gonzaga player with the result being Gonzaga got the ball? Or when Turiaf was draped over Easley's back while tipping in a missed shot? Bleh.. I don't think the officiating cost the Griz the game or anything, it probably just added to some of the frustration. It really hurt the Griz that Davis & Seyfert got into foul trouble early, and fouled out early in the 2nd half.
The Griz didn't shoot very well from outside the arc, going 5-19 from 3 point range, two of those being Pedersons 3's towards the end of the game. Pederson did play well, as did Dlouhy, but that was towards the end of the game when many of Gonzaga's starters were no longer playing. Dlouhy does have a very nice looking shot, and we've seen that Pederson can shoot well too. I wouldn't change the starting lineup around based off of one game though.
The Griz turned the ball over 16 times this game, which is below their average. I can think of at least 3 turnovers which in my opinion shouldn't have been turnovers but instead fouls on Gonzaga (Mansell being knocked out of bounce, Horne being grabbed while he's dribbling causing him to lose it out of bounce, and Venters being grabbed when going for a pass).
The Griz overall shot a higher FG% (45.5%, which is the 3rd highest against Gonzaga this year), but got killed on the boards 44 to 23. According to the stats I'm looking at, Mansell & Lynch were our leading rebounders with 3 a piece. Gonzaga shot 42.1% from the field, their 2nd lowest FG% this season, the lowest coming in a loss to St. Joseph when they shot 36% from the field. Gonzaga had 16 offensive rebounds and the Griz only had 4. Gonzaga also got to the foul line 43 times whereas the Griz only shot 18 free throws. Overall I think the Griz did a pretty good job against a very talented Gonzaga team. Gonzaga had a few pretty impressive runs on the Griz, and the Griz put a few runs on Gonzaga in the first half. I think this is a Gonzaga team that deserves to be ranked higher than they are. They are ranked around #5 or #6 based on their RPI.
I wouldn't say that none of our big guys can do much. Davis in only 15 minutes of action (foul trouble) scored 13 points and I think he's going to be putting up some big numbers in conference for the Griz. One thing you probably noticed is when Davis gets the ball inside teams typically double team or even some times triple team him, that I think is largely because of the fact that the Griz are in kind of a shooting slump from outside, so the other team can focus more on stopping Davis & Seyfert using a double team on them, or playing more zone since they don't have to worry as much about the 3's flying in. These guys have played a very grueling schedule and I'm glad the slump came in the Non-Conference instead of during conference play. I'm sure they'll come out of the slump soon here and the Griz will be knocking down the 3s again to keep the other team from clogging up the middle with a zone or double team on our big guys.
