WCC Showdown: Saint Mary’s Gonzaga Review

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I’ve now watched Saint Mary’s play twice this year. Last night against Gonzaga and 2 weeks ago against BYU. Both times the Gaels had too much offense for the opposition to handle. BYU and Gonzaga are both good teams and Saint Mary’s ran both of them right off the court.

I saw a tweet last night from Jason Franchuk of CougarBlue.com (@HarkTheFranchuk) in which he said the following: “Just my early hunch: I don’t think BYU will defeat St. Mary’s in Provo by 18. Dellavedova, like Jimmer, keeps team out of scoring droughts.”

I’m not sure BYU can’t beat Saint Mary’s at home but they will have their hands full guarding Australian, Matthew Dellavedova. He had 18 points against BYU the first time they played. And he is a bit like Jimmer in that he can create offense any time and hit the 3 from deep range. When you’re down double digits and and you start clawing your way back to just a 7 or 8 point deficit, it’s a back breaker when a guy can hit from deep and immediately put you back down by 10 or 11 points. That type of thing happened a lot last night in Saint Mary’s win over Gonzaga.

The other impressive aspect of last night’s Saint Mary’s win was the Gaels other star player and leading scorer, Rob Jones, only scored 2 points. If you’re only getting 2 points from one of your top producers and still beating your conference rival and 23rd ranked team in the country by 20 points – you’ve got a pretty solid team!

Here’s a recap of the game from ESPN.com:

Saint Mary’s rout ends rival Gonzaga’s 8-game win streak