NCAA TOURNAMENT: What under-Bulldog? Gonzaga knocks off Kansas

SALT LAKE CITY And to think, some folks said they might not make it to March Madness.

The Gonzaga Bulldogs laughed that off as easily as they swatted away an exhausted Kansas team Saturday, rolling past the Jayhawks 89-68 to return to the Sweet 16 for the nation-leading ninth straight time.

Led by Anton Watson’s 21 points, fifth-seeded Gonzaga was nearly as good over the second half of this game as it has been over the second half of the season. The Zags scored 15 straight points early in the half to turn this one into a runaway on an afternoon when basically everyone in a navy jersey was a star.

They improved to 16-2 since Jan. 18, with the only two losses coming to Saint Mary’s, the team that beat Gonzaga for the West Coast Conference title but was dismissed from the tournament Friday night.

“Late December, it was looking like maybe it wasn’t going to happen,” said Mark Few, his hair still damp from the dousing he received in the postgame locker room. “But I’ll give credit. These guys stayed coachable. We figured it out.”

Once Few dries off, he and the Zags, who are in their 25th straight NCAA Tournament, will load up for their routine trip to the second weekend to play the winner of Sunday’s game between Purdue and Utah State.

The Zags (27-7) made their first five 3-pointers of the second half, not missing from long range until 1:30 remained and the game had long entered extended garbage time. They shot 60% from the floor and 53% from 3. Ben Gregg still managed to stand out — he went 6 for 6 and finished with 15 points and nine rebounds.

Big man Graham Ike also had 15 and nine, going toe to toe with KU’s Hunter Dickinson, who finished with a quiet 15 points.

Making all the Bulldogs look good was Ryan Nembhard, who blew off a rough shooting night (1 for 6) and finished with 12 assists to become the program’s career leader in that category.

“Ryan’s been at the highest level for the last eight weeks,” Few said. “He’s just got our throttle all the way down and he’s making great decisions.”

Kansas was gassed, facing an early start after an emotional, close victory over Samford late Thursday night. Coach Bill Self said he knew he was in trouble when he turned to his bench partway through the game, looking to make a substitution.

“There’s not many times where you take a guy out, he’s sitting through a three-minute timeout, I say, ‘Can you go back in?’ and he says ‘I need more time,’” Self said.

The tired legs played into a painfully familiar scene for fans of the fourth-seeded Jayhawks (23-11). They have struggled with depth, shooting, consistency and injuries; leading scorer Kevin McCullar Jr. (knee) was out for the tournament. During Gonzaga’s 15-0 run, the Jayhawks missed 10 straight shots.

Gonzaga eventually extended the run to 32-4; Kansas shot 2 for 23 during that stretch.

“It’s a formula for disaster when you can’t make shots and you can’t stop them,” said Kansas forward KJ Adams Jr., who finished with 10 points.

A few of those misses looked strangely ugly, including when Dickinson, who missed the Big 12 Tournament with a dislocated shoulder, grabbed a rebound under the bucket and looked poised for an easy bucket but could barely get the ball to the rim.

“Hunt gave us everything he had,” Self said. “But that was one tired dude out there today.”

For 22 minutes, at least, this game lived up to its billing — a rare showdown between much-adored power programs. There were eight lead changes. At one point late in the first half, the teams combined to make nine straight shots from the field, trading leads almost every time down.

Gonzaga kept it going. Kansas simply couldn’t.

The Zags won both their games in Salt Lake City by 21. The opener against McNeese might have been expected. That the second one was such a breeze, even against a flawed KU team, was a surprise. Nothing else about this team playing deep into March should be that shocking.

“We’ve just always impressed upon them, if we get in this thing, we know how to win in this thing,” Few said. “This is not a new thing for our program.”

On the sideline

Lamar Simpson, the official who called the phantom foul that helped KU lock up its opening-night win over Samford, watched both games from press row as the alternate official.

Zags in Motown

The Zags improved to 10-3 lifetime in tournament games in Salt Lake City. Their next stop is Detroit, where they have never played a tournament game.

Iowa State 67, Washington St. 56

OMAHA, Neb. — Iowa State coach T.J. Otzelberger challenged his players at halftime of their NCAA Tournament game against Washington State on Saturday night to remember who they are, along with what had gotten them to the brink of the Sweet 16.

It was a simple speech. And it set in before the Cyclones stepped back on the court.

Immediately cranking up its intensity, Iowa State began to fluster the seventh-seeded Cougars with its in-your-face defense, and that created offense at the other end. Tamin Lipsey proceeded to score 15 points, Curtis Jones had 14 and the Cyclones went on to a 67-56 victory that sent them into the second weekend for the second time in three years.

“I think our guys are a very together and poised group,” Otzelberger said. “We know we’re going to have adversity, and credit Washington State for doing a great job putting us on our heels. But credit to our guys for not panicking, not getting too low or emotional, and staying the course, waiting for it to come back around to us.”

Now, the Cyclones will face No. 3 seed Illinois or No. 11 seed Duquesne in the East Region semifinals Thursday night in Boston.

“We knew it would take our very best today,” Otzelberger said, “and we were fortunate in the second half we had that.”

Jaylen Wells scored 20 points and Myles Rice had 13 for the Cougars (25-10), who romped past South Dakota State in the first round but were banished back to the Palouse still searching for their first Sweet 16 appearance since 2008.

“So proud of the way our guys competed,” Washington State coach Kyle Smith said. “We knew we were going against the Big 12 champs, a top-five team, and we were unintimidated. We’ve played teams like that. We just didn’t play well enough to win.”

They did in the first half.

Iowa State spent most of the early going in shambles thanks to what Smith calls “the shawmbles,” a suffocating style of defense named for associate head coach and defensive whiz Jim Shaw. The Cougars aggressively jumped into passing lanes, harried the Cyclones’ shooters on the perimeter and crashed the boards with abandon.

While Iowa State was busy missing 14 of its first 17 shots, Wells was going 7 of 12 in the first half for 16 points, proving the March Madness stage was not too big for a kid playing Division II ball at Sonoma State a year ago.

“We did a good job of handling the pressure, playing really unselfish,” Wells said. “I think that’s what it was in the first half.”

The Cyclones finally got going by going downhill. Lipsey and Gilbert attacked the rim, getting layups or drawing fouls, and slowly they crawled back into the game. By the time Hason Ward scored on an alley-oop lay-in in the closing seconds of the half, the Big 12 tourney champs had forged a 27-all tie with the regular-season Pac-12 runner-ups.

“Staying aggressive is the thing that me and Keshon do so well,” Lipsey said, “and that was a big factor as the game got going.”

So were the turnovers. The Cyclones forced five in the first half and eight in the second. More importantly, they turned those 13 turnovers into 21 points, while Washington State only had four off turnovers.

“It was more of what we did, upping our aggressiveness on the defensive end. In the first half, we were a little too tentative,” the Cyclones’ Tre King said. “We talked about how we only forced five turnovers, and that was unacceptable to us.”

Still, Iowa State only led 51-46 with 7 1/2 minutes left when Lipsey drilled a contested 3-pointer. Isaac Jones turned it over at the other end for Washington State, and King added a basket to make it a 10-point game. A few minutes later, Rice sent another pass skipping into the backcourt, and a bucket by Curtis Jones pushed the Cyclones’ lead to 59-48 with 3 1/2 minutes to go.

By that point, desperation had set in for the Cougars. They were on their way home and Iowa State on its way to the Sweet 16.

“We’re thankful every day. And today is no different,” Smith said. “We started five years ago trying to build this into something, and two NITs and now an NCAA Tournament — an NCAA Tournament win. I was unaware, but people said we didn’t belong. So we proved that we belonged, to say the least.”