Gonzaga, an 11 seed in the Southeast Regional, wrecked shop on No. 6 St. John's 86-71 in the final game in Round of 64 action at the Pepsi Center. The cruise-control "W" contrasted with what lower-seeded brethren Morehead State and Richmond did earlier in the day; the Eagles and Spiders dramatically pulled out victories to make it to Saturday.
"I'm just tickled pink, I guess, or whatever the saying is," Bulldogs coach Mark Few said upon plopping down to the podium at the postgame presser.
It was Gonzaga's best game of the season. Easily. The best sign for this team and its fans: the second-best game, according to Steven Gray, was the WCC title game, which preceded this one. The Zags defeated St. Mary's 75-63 in that one. So ... here comes a Gonzaga tournament run? No one's going there yet. Some guy named Jimmer stands in the way. (More on him and that matchup in a few.)
Because of the team's makeup and size up front, Few sort of took fleeting offense at the seeding his team received. They prepped all week as the superior team.
"We didn't consider ourselves a lower seed. We just knew it was a number that some random group assigned us," Few said. "We went into this game thinking we should win. That was the mindset as soon as the matchup popped up."
They played like the better team Thursday night. Gonzaga took a 15-14 lead with 15:14 left in the first half, then never looked back. The Bulldogs shot a very impressive 62.5 "effective field-goal percentage" from the floor. Effective field-goal percentage (referred to as eFG%) is a stat that properly weighs 3-point shots in correlation with 2-point ones. The Zags hit 9 of their 15 attempts from deep, led by Gray's four, boosting their broad field-goal percentage up from 53.8 percent.
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