I’m taking a leave of absence. For the next 48 hours I no longer can be bound by the sportswriter’s creed. I’m openly rooting for a team I’m covering.
Forgive me, Grantland, I’ve gone gonzo for Gonzaga.
That’s Gon-zag-a, as in Zagnut, as in Spokane, Wash., as in the weirdest college name this side of Slippery Rock, as in school colors of red, white and blue, as in only in America and the NCAA tournament, as in the latest Bulldogs hero, Casey Calvary.
How can you not root for a kid named Calvary from the school named for a 16th Century Jesuit priest known as the Patron Saint of Youth?
Thursday night at a gonzo America West Arena, Calvary provided us with one more near-religious reason we can’t take our eyes off this tournament. His team was about to finish one of the sloppiest, tight-throated games it has played all season. His team was getting bullied inside and pressed like a cheap shirt by Florida’s Gators.
Calvary’s Bulldogs really didn’t deserve to win this round-of-16 game.
Under Gonzaga’s basket, Florida’s Brent Wright had the ball and the game in his hands with about 18 seconds left. Florida led 72-71. Gonzaga coach Don Monson screamed for someone to foul Wright. Fatefully, none of the Bulldogs heard him.
But as Wright searched in vain for a teammate to pass to, he dragged his pivot foot. Walking. Kids do the darndest things.
America West–about nine-tenths of which was raising the roof for Gonzo–went nuts.
Yet for the Bulldogs, it seemed a small victory just to inbound the ball against Florida’s bumping, grinding pressure. Getting a decent shot was out of the question. With about 6 seconds left, little Quentin Hall drove and forced up an off-balance shot that clanged off the glass and rim . . .
. . . And somehow fell to the 6-foot-8-inch Calvary in the middle of the lane. What happened next proved that Cinderella is alive and well and living in Spokane.
As Calvary rose and got both hands on the ball, he also got hacked by any one of two or three Gator strongarms. Florida probably would have been better off if a foul had been called. Yet before coming back to Earth, Calvary half-shot, half-tipped the ball toward the rim, where its backspin deadened it on the back iron and it fell back through the basket.
As the Gonzo student section chanted in sing-song cadence at the Gators, “You are lug-gage.”
Yes, poor Florida was heading home while the Zags, as they’re known in Spokane, were headed for headlines across America. Gonzaga? To many casual fans, the name probably sounds like the latest potency pill. Watching this team will definitely start your engine.
No misprint: Gonzaga is about two hours from next week’s Final Four in St. Petersburg, Fla.
How can you not root for a team with guys named Axel Dench, Mike Leasure, Matt Santangelo and Richie Cunningham?
Sorry, Richie Frahm, the 6-5 junior from Battle Ground, Wash. Frahm saved the game by trading feet-on-the-floor three-point shots with Florida’s 6-9 Greg Stolt. This was a game featuring lots of guys who would have required maximum sunblock on a hot desert day.
But this game did not feature the best of the Zags, Santangelo, who is often compared with the only famed Gonzaga product, Utah’s John Stockton. Santangelo wasn’t blessed with Stockton’s passing wizardry–who has been?–yet Santangelo is usually a more natural shooter and scorer than his hero Stockton.
Not this time. Santangelo went 3 for 13 from the field and wound up with 11 points. No way Gonzaga wins with Santangelo going cold from three-point range and throwing up some of the worst one-on-three shots this side of the “Y.” No way the Zags survive getting outrebounded and often outfoxed by Florida’s tough little rooster of a coach, Billy Donovan.
Gonzaga, 73-72.
Actually, Gonzaga began the evening as one of three only-in-NCAAs stories at the Cinderalla convention that was the West Regional. In the Bulldogs, Gators and Dr. Tom Davis’ Iowa Hawkeyes, you had some of the best human-interest stories this side of a Bob Greene column.
It doesn’t get much more heart-warming than Dr. Tom, the coach who has already been fired and has already cleaned out his office.
But of the three, Gonzaga quietly had the best team. Proving once more I don’t have much of a life, I’ve become addicted to the Zags over the last couple of months when they’ve played the late game from the West Coast on ESPN.
If you caught your first glimpse of this team Thursday night, you didn’t see the real Gonzo, a deep, uptempo team that runs a machine-like offense that pops open six or seven no-conscience three-point specialists. The Zags took it to Pac-10 champ Stanford as if Gonzaga were simply the better team.
Now it will be fascinating to see if the Zags can relax and play Saturday’s regional final the way they played Stanford.
The Patron Saint of Youth will be up there watching. I’ll be rooting.
