Gaels looking ahead, but not too far
The St. Mary’s basketball team may have returned from Spokane, Wash., without much fanfare, flying into Concord and busing to the Moraga campus as Thursday night approached Friday morning.
But everyone in the program is well aware of the importance of what had been accomplished just a handful of hours earlier.
“It’s huge,” St. Mary’s senior center Jock Landale said of the Gaels’ 74-71 victory at No. 13 Gonzaga. “They’re a really good team, and it’ll look good on our resume.”
With its first victory over a nationally ranked team since beating then-No. 24 Gonzaga in the WCC tournament in 2012, St. Mary’s extended its winning streak to 13 games.
The school record is 15 straight wins (2008-09). The Gaels will be favored to storm past that mark and be sitting on 19 in a row when they host Gonzaga in a rematch Feb. 10. But minutes after Thursday’s game, they were already talking about Saturday’s contest at Pacific.
That kind of experience and composure is what will likely lead St. Mary’s back into the national polls next week and back into the NCAA Tournament in March. Those attributes certainly led the Gaels to their victory Friday.
“Any team that’s going to do well in this league is going to be experienced,” head coach Randy Bennett said. “They are. We are. They’re playing third-, fourth-, fifth-year guys, and so are we. So is San Diego, and so is BYU. Pacific is, too. You have to have experienced guys, you have to have big guys and you have to have good players. There were some good players on that court. A lot of them.”
In a game that included 22 lead changes, St. Mary’s trailed by nine in the second half and was still down seven with about 8½ minutes to play. In every huddle, the Gaels encouraged each other to keep it close until the closing four minutes when — they believed — they’d find a way to win.
That’s exactly what they did. They consistently pounded the ball inside to the 6-foot-11 Landale, who had his 13th doubledouble (26 points and 12 rebounds), despite going against Jonathan Williams, the player Landale deemed the “toughest defender” he’s faced.
Landale scored 11 of St. Mary’s final 13 points. He scored on a putback for a 72-70 lead 1:08 remaining and a layup with 15 seconds left that put the Gaels ahead by three.
“He’s such a big presence, such a great player and such a great teammate,” St. Mary’s forward Tanner Krebs said. “He’s our leader and the head of the snake for our program. He stepped up big, and without him, I don’t think we get that win. …
“It’s pretty handy to have a guy like that who is able to score pretty much every time. You can just rely on him so much.”