WCC champ Gonzaga set for unfamiliar NCAA Tournament experience

The Gonzaga Bulldogs are showered with confetti after winning a West Coast Conference males & #x 2019; s basketball champion game against the St. Mary's Gaels at Orleans Arena on Tuesday, March 7, 2023, in Las Vegas. Gonzaga Bulldogs guard Malachi Smith (13) celebrates after scoring a three-pointer throughout the second half of a West Coast Conference men & #x 2019; s basketball champion game against the St. Mary's Gaels at Orleans Arena on Tuesday, March 7, 2023, in Las Vegas. St. Mary's Gaels forward Kyle Bowen (14) shoots versus Gonzaga Bulldogs forward Ben Gregg (33) during the 2nd half of a West Coast Conference men & #x 2019; s basketball championship video game at Orleans Arena on Tuesday, March 7, 2023, in Las Vegas.
Gonzaga finished its yearly trip to Las Vegas to get the West Coast Conference tournament title with a 77-51 blowout triumph over Saint Mary's on Tuesday night at Orleans Arena.

The Bulldogs have become familiar with winning the occasion - - they enhanced to 20-6 in WCC championship games over 26 straight appearances in the finals - - but now they will tread into some unfamiliar waters.

No player on the present lineup has entered the NCAA Tournament with Gonzaga (28-5) as anything however a No. 1 seed carrying huge expectations. Nevertheless, the ninth-ranked Bulldogs are projected to be either a No. 2 or 3 seed when the bracket is unveiled Sunday, which would break a run of 3 straight competitions as a front runner, a streak that would have nearly assuredly been 4 had actually a tournament been contested in 2020.

" I enjoy it," coach Mark Few said of the capacity of not being noted on the top line come selection Sunday for the very first time because 2018.

His star player, Drew Timme, is prepared to embrace the difficulty.

" It's like a little lighter fluid on the fire," he stated. "But we're still Gonzaga. We've still got a target on our backs, and it's never easy to win no matter what seed you are because every group in that competition deserves to be there."

Timme stated how the Bulldogs carried out as a No. 2 seed in their own conference competition by virtue of losing a tiebreaker to No. 16 Saint Mary's (26-7) revealed this is a group that embraces such minutes.

" It's good to be an underdog," Timme stated, though the Bulldogs were a slight wagering favorite Tuesday. "We were the 2 seed today. We've never ever been that previously, where we needed to use the blue jerseys. We didn't know what that seems like in this competition."

He certainly played like he had a chip on his shoulder. Timme hit 8 of 10 shots from the field on his method to 18 points and six rebounds in simply 20 minutes to earn tournament MVP honors.

Timme, who does have another year of eligibility but is not anticipated to utilize it, ended up being the school's all-time leading scorer in the first half with a brief jumper off the glass. His 2,210 points go beyond the 2,196 scored by Frank Burgess from 1958-61.

The Bulldogs shot 58 percent from the field and went 8-for-14 on 3-pointers, however it was the protective end where they really locked down the success. Gonzaga restricted the Gaels to 28 percent shooting in the first half and 33.3 percent for the game, consisting of 25 percent on threes.

Las Vegas native Julian Strawther had eight points during a 14-4 run over 4 minutes early in the game that put the Bulldogs up double digits for great. The lead was 18 points at the half, and the game never got closer, with the margin growing to 37 with simply less than four minutes remaining.

It's the kind of effort Few has been trying to find from a group that lost three games in nonconference play and dropped an early WCC house game to Loyola Marymount. The program had actually lost just eight non-NCAA Tournament games in the last 4 seasons combined.

" I took winning for granted," Timme confessed. "I won a lot in my career that it was a shock to me not to win. Our losses early in the year made me value the little things it requires to win night in and night out.

" I think sometimes we simply assumed we would win every night since we're Gonzaga. You can't just wake up and state we're going to be a hard group.

Couple of, who has actually been to two NCAA national championship given that 2017, hopes that decision is what assists the program lastly win its first national title.

" It took awhile for us to figure out this season," he said. "But if we keep playing defense like that and running our offense as crisply as we did against one of the very best defenses in the country, against a group I believe will go far in the NCAA Tournament, it bodes really, really well for us in the competition."

Gonzaga has won nine directly and 12 of its last 13 video games, with the only loss can be found in overtime at Saint Mary's on Feb. 1. ESPN's Bracketology had the Bulldogs as a No. 3 seed and the Gaels as a 6 before Tuesday's video game.

" We work to do, and (gamers) one through 10, we didn't do that," stated guard Logan Johnson, who scored a game-high 20 points for Saint Mary's. "All we can do is get better and ideally when we get that next opportunity, we can show what we can."

Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on Twitter.