Game Sixteen: In sleepy London town there’s just no place for a street fightin’ man.

Dear Readers (friendly and otherwise),

Consider this my retirement.  Thanks for reading.

Go Zags.

Game Fifteen: Kerry Keating killed it as Turd-Faced Lax Bro #3 in the Turd-Faced Lax Bro documentary. Way to go, Kerry!

Spokesman Review columnist John Blanchette tweeted this little blurb from Gonzaga AD Mike Roth last night:

“SCU coach Kerry Keating, hearing Richard Fox on a GU TV broadcast: ‘When did Tony Robbins become their color guy?’”

Before you freak out, remember that Kerry Keating is world-renowned Zag hater (and that that Tony Robbins crack doesn’t even make sense).  During his career as Santa Clara coach he has at least twice said to the papers that Saint Mary’s (and not Gonzaga) is the team to beat in the WCC.  (Both times, it should be noted, the Zags won both the conference regular season title and the conference tournament title.)  He’s got some kind of bone to pick or some kind of ax to grind or some other kind of metaphor in his bonnet.  Don’t know, but he hates Gonzaga.  He also looks like every smug douchebag you ever knew in your life ever.  So maybe that’s his problem.  Maybe he’s still bitter over the laxatives Owen Wilson put into his drink in Wedding Crashers.  Or maybe he’s just tired of being irrelevant.  Who knows.

But since we’re point out observations, Kerry, how about the following?

-Santa Clara jumped out to a ten-point lead (10-0, actually).
-The Zags won the rest of the game by 32 points.
-That 32-point victory is just a few points lower than GU’s average margin of victory over its first three conference games.

It’s a good thing Keating’s team is so below-average, because if not, it’d be really easy to hate him.

Go Zags.

Game Fourteen: With Gonzaga University, “televised games” continues to be relative

Like a lot of you, I didn’t watch the game last night.  Not that I didn’t want to, because I totally did.  A chance to watch the now on-fire Zags destroy take on a community college team conference foe was super enticing, but I had a work event and forgot to set my DVR.  Not like it would have mattered had I remembered, though, because the game was apparently blacked out on Root Sports in Seattle (or at least it was moved from regular Root channels to some kind of backwoods Root alternative channel hidden somewhere between Lifetime 2 and The Military Channel).  Seems like, though, that the Zags looked good.  Or at least they eventually looked good.  Or maybe Pepperdine just sucks a lot.  I’ve got no clue (though I was dismayed to see that my boy Guy Landry Edi scored one more point and grabbed one more rebound last night than I did), but a 456-point blowout (give or take) over a conference team in a game that a bunch of Zag fans didn’t see brings up two omnipresent La Rev issues:

Game Thirteen: World, Meet Joe Zag Fan

Editor’s Note: A prominent and awesome feature on the old blog was something I called Celebrity Correspondents.  Whenever someone was going to some game or another, I’d ask them to write about it so I could post it on the blog.  It was a hit but I had no real intention of bringing it back this time around…at least I didn’t until I opened my email the other day.  In it I found an email from the famed Joe Zag Fan.  For some of you, Joe needs no introduction.  His Twitter page (@JoeZagFan) is a mess of nonsense, misspellings, and hardcore Zag love, and if you haven’t checked it out already, you should.  You’ll quickly see that he is both no Zag fan and he is every Zag fan all at the same time.  He’s a mix of every crazy Zag fan who’s ever posted on either GUBoards or The Slipper Still Fits, including misplaced apostrophes.  So, when Joe told me he was going to the Xavier game and asked if he could write a guest post, I immediately agreed.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Joe Zag Fan. (Please consider the entire guest post [sic].)

Game Twelve: Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em

Dear Mark Few,

Hi.  How’s it going?  Good?  See, that’s the kind of shit that happens when you keep athletes on the court and let them do what they do.

Sincerely,
Some jerk on the Internet

PS- Athletes in space, athletes in space, athletes in space.

Go Zags.

Game Eleven: “He’s going intangibalistic, Mav!”

Editor’s note: I didn’t watch yesterday’s game, so what follows is merely a rumination.  And sadly, I suspect it can be cut-and-pasted to any post-game post from here till infinity.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I love Tim Tebow.  Like, a lot.  Totally unlikely, too, because I was the typical person who couldn’t stand him when he was at Florida.  But now, he’s at the head of my all-time favorite sports team (really my first love in life) as it makes an improbable run to the playoffs, and I’m hooked.  He’s helped make watching the Broncos fun again and I love him for it.  I yell at the meathead analysts who say he doesn’t do one thing particularly well or can’t do another thing all together.  “It doesn’t matter,” I say.  “He wins games and who gives a poop how?”  Because, really, who gives a poop how?  The whole point of the game is to win the thing, so what does it matter if Tebow wins it by throwing for 300 yards and five touchdowns, by only completing two passes, or by bouncing the ball on his head the whole way down the field for the winning score?  A win’s a win, and Tebow’s pretty awesome at being a quarterback on a winning team.  There’s just something about him, you might say.  Something about him that makes his team win even though it shouldn’t.  Something that inspires the rest of the guys to pull off the improbable, to clutch victory from the jaws of defeat, to be better than they really are.  Intangibles, some people call them.  Unmeasurables.  Things that don’t show up on a stat sheet, but things you know are there nonetheless.  Things like heart and guts and want-to and grit.  Yep; there’s just something about him that makes 52 of the most finely-tuned athletes in the world play way awesome, when they’d otherwise play way sucky (or at least way mediocre).  Yessir.  One guy’s got all that power.  Inspiring, really.  I mean, Champ Bailey’s probably in the top five of all people in world history who have ever worked his current job, and he needs to be inspired to play great.  Von Miller?  He’s your basic second coming of Derrick Thomas and he needs that same inspiration.  An offensive line that’s built specifically to run block fifty times a game?  A head coach who’s already coached one Super Bowl team?  Two wide recievers standing over six foot, three inches?  A Hall of Fame safety and a kicker with a 70-yard leg?  Same thing.  They need the crap out of that inspiration.

Game Ten: Beauty and Danger

Excuse me while I overwrite…

Three types of players currently get minutes for your Gonzaga Bulldogs.  Type One is the guy who works within the offense (and occaisionally, the defense), shoots when he’s open, gets his points when they come.  He’s generally consistent but doesn’t do much more than is taught in a Early Basketball for Dummies (now with less peach baskets!) book. He’s obviously very skilled at the game of basketball, but he’s also obviously unable to attack the basket, to play above the rim, to take a game over.  He plays completely within himself, but also without any of the athletic grace that separates basketball from the other spectator sports.  Of course, he makes up basically the entire roster and is thus the reason the Zags will win far more games than they will lose this season, but won’t do much more than that.  He’s vanilla, and that makes him the perfect player for a vanilla coach like Mark Few and a vanilla program like Gonzaga.

Game Nine: Roar! (I mean, Woof!)

Someone told me yesterday that I was “too negative.”  Not sure what that means, nor do I really know what it’s opposite is.  Maybe I needed to be like the people who held up the “Happy Holidays, Mark Few” sign.  Or maybe I should have cheered louder.  Or worn even more of a Gonzaga t-shirt.  Or maybe I should have celebrated post game with a bar filled with even more Zag fans.   I’m not sure.  Possibly, I could have given Guy Landry Edi an even bigger standing ovation (only one in my section to do so, by the way) when he checked in.  That would have made him feel good, I bet.  Perhaps I could have gone back home afterwords and watched even more of the game tape.

So, I’m not sure.  Maybe all those things I did yesterday (and last night) to enjoy myself while watching my alma mater and favorite basketball team play just a few miles from where I live weren’t enough.  And maybe I was too negative.  Or maybe “too negative” doesn’t exist and there is no monopoly on being a “good fan.”  That’s my vote.

Go Zags.

Game Eight: Meh.

Just watched the win over Oral Roberts.  Never really felt nervous.  Never really felt confident.  Meh.

These Zags aren’t great.  They aren’t really even all that good, or even that bad.  Meh.

Made some great plays.  Had some (or a lot of) silly turnovers.  Nailed some big threes.  Failed to grab at least a handful of gimme defensive rebounds.  Meh.

Overall, I’m not sure what to make of these guys.  I don’t particularly enjoy watching them (made that clear a few weeks ago), but I don’t altogether hate doing so, either.  I sort of just sit there, zoning out until Greg Heister’s insane gurgling brings me back to reality.  In a fantasy tournament against other Zag teams, they probably win a few games, but they most likely get killed in a few others. (2003-2004 would absolutely destroy them.  Ronny and Violette versus Rob Sacre and Sam Dower?  Yikes.)  Just kinda meh.  Meh all around.

Fittingly, Arizona brings in its own “Meh” team on Saturday.  The Cats are pretty young, pretty untested, pretty erratic (lost to Seattle Pacific the other week…um, what?), but also pretty damn talented. But I’d probably take to the bank the fact that Arizona’s meh is a lot better than Gonzaga’s meh, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the Zags could find themselves getting blown out.

Considering I’ll be at the game, such a blowout would be the opposite of meh.

Go Zags.

Game Seven: Almost Famous

I’ll be the first to admit that games like last night remind us just how far away the Gonzaga basketball program really is from competing for a National Title.  As fans we always want to think our team has a shot to win any game, especially any game at home, but last night, GU was totally outclassed.  6’7″ Draymond Green (and probably Derrick Nix) was a far better in-the-paint player than any Zag (even the seven-foot ones), Keith Appling (a sophomore just learning how to play point guard) was a far better point guard than any Zag (even the point guard ones), and Tom Izzo was a far better coach than anyone on the Zag bench (even the head coachy ones).  Michigan State shut down Elias Harris, neutralized Rob Sacre, turned Marquise Carter into your basic frightened freshman, and made a crowd full of students who had camped out for days just for a chance to watch the game a non factor.  Of course they did.  It’s Michigan State.  Two National Titles.  Magic.  Heathcote.  Steve Smith.  Mateen Cleaves.  Final Fours.  National Titles.  Relatively speaking, this isn’t even a great Michigan State team, but you could put the Spartans’ best player in a GU uniform and he’d instantly be one of the best player in program history.  How the hell are we supposed to respond to that?  I mean, our best player is a freshman who hadn’t even started a game until yesterday.  We’re bringing THAT against an all-time great coach and a team of All-Americans and future pros?  AND that team isn’t even ranked but still dominated the last half of the game to beat us pretty easily?  Kinda hard to be optimistic about any serious Tournament success in the future with all those things in mind.  Kinda hard not to think about how far the Zags are away from Michigan State’s level (let alone Carolina’s or Duke’s or Kentucky’s).

I wonder, though, if we get so focused on how far away the Zags are that we don’t realize just how far they’ve come.