Glory Hounds

In a mention last week of Wednesday night’s Washington-Gonzaga basketball game in Spokane, one account – we won’t mention names; it’s the holiday season – referred to it as a “showdown.”

Showdown? Does it qualify for showdown status when one team has beaten the other by 27, 27, 16 and 20 in the past four meetings, and 11 of the last 12?

There are a lot of reasons why Gonzaga keeps tattooing Washington – better players, better coaching, better cohesiveness, etc., etc. The most obvious evidence of it is how defenseless the Huskies have been for a long time against the Zags.

I wrote about this a year ago, after Gonzaga’s 97-70 victory in Seattle: The Zags have now shot 50 percent or better in eight straight meetings against the Huskies. Which is stupefying.

So I’ve set out to put that number into some sort of perspective. How often does a team shoot 50 percent? And what are the odds it can do it eight straight times against one opponent?

Shooting 50 percent is nothing new for Gonzaga. Over the previous three seasons, the Zags did it no fewer than 60 times – 20 times last year, 23 in the Final Four season, and 17 in 2015-16. But if you sift out some of the chaff and assess how many times they did it against Power Five (plus the Big East) competition, the numbers drop severely. In 18 such games other than against the Huskies, they did it six times in 18 games in three years.

But let’s take it a step further. Arbitrarily, I went back through those same three seasons to see how Gonzaga shot against the three West Coast Conference teams with the worst composite league records over that period. There was a three-way tie for No. 3 (naturally), so the teams to be assessed were Portland (12-42 in league games), Pepperdine (17-37) and San Diego, Pacific and Loyola Marymount (all at 19-35).

Gonzaga hasn’t shot 50 percent in eight straight games against any of them.

The Zags do have a run of seven straight such games against LMU. But in eight-game segments AGAINST THE SUPPOSED DREGS OF THE LEAGUE, these are Gonzaga’s successes and shortfalls in hitting 50 percent: LMU 7-1, Portland 5-3, San Diego 5-3, Pepperdine 5-3 and Pacific 4-4. In 40 games, that’s a 26-14 success record, or 65 percent. Which makes the shooting numbers against Washington even more staggering.

Shooting, remember, is much more than just a blithe, well-they-hit-their-shots-tonight phenomenon. It’s essentially three things: Having a plan, executing the offense, and hitting the shot. Clearly, the Zags have been far superior to Washington in carrying the assignment out.

You try to envision how the Huskies might scissor the Gonzaga dominance of this millennium, and they will have one important component Wednesday night: A senior-led team that is no doubt tired of getting schooled every time it faces the Zags.

But this is a Gonzaga team that’s simply nasty offensively – averaging 98.4 points a game (second nationally) and shooting .542, tops in the country. It’s going to take a lot more defense than Washington has shown in the series to get it done.