There are losses you can live with and losses that give you a week-long stomachache, and this was the second kind. The Gonzaga Bulldogs dropped an 81-80 heartbreaker to LSU on Saturday in a game that had just about everything you could hate about college basketball: bizarre officiating, a 13-point lead built on grit and good decisions that dissolved through equal parts bad luck and bad decisions, phantom foul calls that stripped the Zags of their most important players at the worst moments, and a buzzer-beating
step-back three from the last guy any Zag fan wanted to see have a moment in Spokane.
It’s November, and the season is young, and LSU is probably a better team than they’re currently getting credit for, but none of that makes this one easier to shake.
First Half
LSU’s plan from the outset was clear: spread the floor and get Gonzaga’s smaller guards in isolation to draw fouls. It worked brilliantly. Lee picked up two early fouls and sat, Javon Bennett came in and gave the Zags quality minutes before picking up two of his own in quick succession, and Nathan De Sousa fouled almost immediately after checking in to replace Bennett who was in to replace Lee. Lee checked back in with seven minutes remaining in the half and immediately picked up his third, heading right back to the bench and bringing Bennett back onto the floor. Donovan Dent cooked Gonzaga’s backcourt for the entire first half, and none of Gonzaga’s point guards could stay on the floor long enough to settle into any kind of rhythm against him.
Massamba Diop and Izan Almansa did an admirable job containing LSU’s frontcourt, but none of it was translating on offense. The team went 0-for-7 from three. Davis Fogle didn’t score until thirteen minutes in. Huff was keeping the Zags alive on the offensive glass, finishing the half with eight points and eight boards, four of them offensive, while Diop finished with exactly one rebound, which, once again, is baffling for a guy his size. The refs simply refused to call fouls on LSU in the paint while whistling everything on Gonzaga at the other end, and offensive rebounding was the only thing keeping the Zags in the game, because the whistles weren’t going to.
After going back and forth all night, Diop scored four points in the final minute to give the Zags an iota of breathing room, but Dent had the last word, hitting a ridiculous step-back three off the glass to send the Tigers into the locker room up two, then turning around to taunt the Spokane Arena crowd on his way to the tunnel. He had 16 points and 4 assists by halftime, and he was basically the only thing LSU had going, but he was sure going.
Second Half
Fortunately, the Bulldogs looked like a different team to open the second. By shifting Harwell onto Dent fulltime, the LSU offense stalled out. But the foul trouble that had defined the first half hadn’t gone away, Lee was already at three and playing careful, but for the first time all night the Zags seemed to have answers for everything LSU was running.
Huff was simply unguardable in the post, connecting from everywhere around the rim on his way to a team high 18 points. Following a couple huge outside shots from Harwell and a brief flurry of buckets from Fogle, the Zags were suddenly up 13. Dent, who had been a one-man wrecking crew in the first half, had been held to two points since the break. Bennett and Harwell connected on an alley-oop off an Almansa block at the other end, Fogle buried a corner three with two seconds on the shot clock off an inbound play, and the game felt over. The Zags had figured it out.
They hadn’t. The officiating, which had been tilted all night, got stranger and stranger, and as it did, the Gonzaga lead started to shrink. The point guard rotation that had been hanging by a thread since the first half was now completely exposed, and LSU, to their credit, never stopped making the Zags pay for every lapse in defensive focus, hitting the threes they needed, chasing down offensive rebounds on missed free throws, getting to the line and capitalizing when they needed to.
Twelve became ten became six became five, then one, with a minute to play. Xaivian Lee tripped over his own feet on an inbound play and handed the ball right back for free. The Zags got a stop, got the ball back and ran as much clock as they could before letting Fogle draw a foul inside. Fogle made the first of his free throws, but the second rimmed out and with a two-point deficit, LSU rebounded and pushed it up the floor. Dent ended up in an isolation set on the wing, defended somehow by Chauncey Wiggins and hit a step-back three to put the Tigers back in front by one. With 1.5 seconds left, the Zags attempt a half-court heave from Fogle, but it’s nowhere close and the Zags fall 81-80 to Donovan Dent and the LSU Tigers.
That sentence was no more fun for me to write than it was for you to read.
The Good, the Bad, the Box Score…
Braden Huff put up 18 points and 13 rebounds on 8-16 shooting and was the most dominant interior presence on the floor all night. The Zags outscored LSU 46-28 in the paint. They led the game for 29 of 40 minutes, including a 13-point advantage in the second half. The Zags committed just 7 turnovers to LSU’s 13, and they converted those 13 LSU miscues into 16 points while LSU managed only 8 off of Gonzaga’s 7 turnovers. They took care of the ball, they punished the other team’s carelessness, and they still lost.
Gonzaga was 0-for-7 from three in the first half and 5-17 on the night (29.4%). They shot 9-14 from the free throw line (64.3%) in a game they lost by one point. LSU’s bench outscored Gonzaga’s 34-17, powered by Abdi Bashir Jr.’s 15 points on 5-8 from three and Michael Ruzic’s 12 points and seven offensive rebounds.
Also, I shouldn’t know who Greg Nixon is. I can’t name another referee in college basketball, not one, but I have been watching Gonzaga for a long time, and somewhere in that time Greg Nixon’s face became more familiar to me than some of my own extended family members.
His fingerprints were all over this one. At the 7:41 mark of the second half, Gonzaga led by 13. Between then and the 6:02 mark, they were whistled for five fouls. From the 6:02 mark (when Gonzaga led by 11 points) to the final buzzer, LSU outscored Gonzaga 24-12. That 12-point swing turned an 11-point Gonzaga lead into a 1-point loss. In true Nixon fashion, it wasn’t ref-ball all night, but when it was ref-ball it was really ref-ball.
Final Thoughts
There were intensely thrilling moments and a lot of positives to take away from this one despite the anguish of the season’s first really stupid loss. Massamba Diop looked much better defensively, Isiah Harwell hit the big shots when Gonzaga needed them, Javon Bennett gave them quality offensive minutes off the bench, Huff was dominant inside throughout, and Fogle was relentless getting to the line — drawing eight fouls and keeping the Zags alive in key moments. But the officiating combined with the persistent mental errors from everyone on the floor in defensive spacing, rebounding awareness, and foul discipline were just too much for the Zags to overcome.
