Gonzaga blasts USC, stays unbeaten
Can anybody stop these guys?
For the 30th straight time this season, Gonzaga answered that question with a resounding “No.”
The Bulldogs got on a roll and put on a show, cruising into the Final Four with an 85-66 beatdown of a Southern California team that was nowhere near ready for what it ran into Tuesday night.
Drew Timme had 23 points and five rebounds and, after one dunk, pretended to slick down his handlebar mustache for the few thousand fans in the stands.
“This is a really, really big deal,” coach Mark Few said of the program’s return to the Final Four after a fouryear hiatus. “And Zags know how to celebrate, OK?”
The top-seeded and topranked Bulldogs will be the third team to bring an undefeated record into the Final Four since the bracket expanded to 64 teams in 1985. The last team to go undefeated was Indiana in 1976. On Saturday in the national semifinals, the Zags will face the winner of a later Elite Eight matchup between UCLA and Michigan.
Timme did whatever he wanted against the nation’s fourth-ranked defense — a team that won its first three tournament games by an average of 21 points — as did pretty much everyone else in a white uniform.
Jared Suggs finished with 18 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists. All-american Corey Kispert had 18 points and eight boards on an “off ” night — only 6 for 19 from the floor. Gonzaga shot 44% in the second half and “only” 50% for the game. That was five under its nation-leading average, but it didn’t matter much.
“We just tried to stay moving,” Suggs said about attacking the USC zone, which had been shutting down teams all month in Indy. “We didn’t let the ball get too sticky. We kept moving, flashing into the high post. It was a lot for them to deal with — good cuts off the baseline, vertical cuts off the wings.”
Blowouts are supposed to be boring, but this had the feel of a Globetrotters game at times, filled with fancy bounce passes through traffic, reverse layups, a swooping power dunk from Joel Ayayi (nine points) and the occasional post-basket flex from the 6-foot-10 Timme.
Gonzaga led sixth-seeded USC 7-0 after two minutes, 25-8 after 8:30 and 36-15 after Kispert took a nifty dish from Timme for an easy layup with 6:03 left in the half.
“It was a little surprising,” USC coach Andy Enfield said, “because we’d been playing great basketball.”
The Zags have a way about doing that to people.
USC didn’t get closer than 16 in the second half, and though their intensity wandered at times, there was never any doubt the Zags would be going for perfection.