TUCSON — It is now more than a battle for survival, more than a chance to keep alive dreams of winning the national championship.
Today’s second-round game between St. John’s and Gonzaga has gotten personal.
The Gonzaga players have given the Red Storm the fire that was missing in Thursday night’s 61-56 win over Northern Arizona. Gonzaga center Alex Dench’s assertion that the Bulldogs enjoy a favorable matchup against St. John’s spread through the team locker room in the McKale Center yesterday afternoon.
“So they’re talking trash, huh?” Bootsy Thornton told The Post after being told of Dench’s comments. “I’m glad they do feel that way. It’s good to have confidence and I guess they got confidence. I’ll just tell my teammates what you just told me and you’ll definitely see a better St. John’s team.”
If St. John’s (25-7) isn’t significantly better than it was against the Lumberjacks, its season will come to an end tonight. The Zags (25-8) are bigger, stronger and quicker than the Lumberjacks and their three-point shooting is just as good.
Add in the fact that Gonzaga feels it already has defeated an opponent similar in size and quickness to St. John’s in Louisville, and it’s no wonder the 10th-seeded Bulldogs are confident they can pull off their second straight upset in the West Region. Gonzaga beat Louisville, 77-66 on Thursday night and then stuck around to watch the Red Storm struggle to beat NAU.
“I think it’s a great matchup for us,” Dench said. “They’re a lot like Louisville last [Thursday] night. They’re undersized, they’re very athletic and they’re quick. But as long as we stick with our game plan, we should be able to shut down their offense with our defense. They’re almost a carbon copy of Louisville. We just have to crash the boards.”
Matt Santangelo, Gonzaga’s terrific point guard, tried to defuse Dench’s remarks with humor.
“You want to give them any other details on what we’re doing?” quipped Santangelo, who was a teammate of Erick Barkley this season on the U.S. World University Games team.
The Red Storm weren’t in a laughing mood.
“We’re not going to let what they say dominate our thoughts because that would take us out of game plan,” said super sub Chudney Gray. “I’ll just tell you that all year long we’ve heard how we’re undersized and we lack depth and we can’t win. And all year long we’ve been proving people wrong. We’ll let our play speak for itself.”
Make no mistake about it. The Zags do present matchup nightmares for St. John’s.
“I was pulling for Louisville,” said Barkley, “’cause I thought it would be a much easier game than playing Gonzaga.”
If the Red Storm stay in their 2-3 zone and keep the ball from Dench and power forward Casey Calvary, shooters Richie Frahm and Santangelo could bomb away from the outside. If the Red Storm play man, Lavor Postell will have the task of guarding Calvary, who Gonzaga coach Mark Few said will get the ball more than he did against Louisville, when he took just two shots. Reggie Jessie will check Frahm.
St. John’s and Gonzaga, schools from opposite coasts, are more similar than one would think. The Bulldogs play with a tenacity similar to St. John’s. This will be a battle of wills.
“I respect the fact that they respect themselves,” said St. John’s coach Mike Jarvis. “They go out and play and don’t worry about what other people think of them. They’re a lot like us.”
Few agrees. He’s heard all the talk about Gonzaga in the role of Cinderella and knows that his players aren’t about fairy tales. The rough and tough St. John’s kids who play the city game won’t intimidate his team.
“The one characteristic that we have on this team is that they’re extremely tough-minded,” said Few. “There’s a will to win and they’re going to find a way. They have throughout their careers found a way of digging things out through adversity. It might not look the same as what St. John’s does, but I think there’s an incredible willingness to win.”
