‘Hungry’ Gonzaga ready to shake December doldrums in West Coast Conference opener at Pepperdine

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Dec. 29—MALIBU, Calif. — The month of December has brought more anguish than joy for Gonzaga in recent years. Three of the Zags’ four losses this season have come within the last four weeks and December games have also accounted for half of GU’s 12 losses the last two years.

Gonzaga won’t be able to flip the page on December before taking the court again, but Monday’s West Coast Conference opener will give the Bulldogs a chance to move on from their latest loss — a gut-wrenching defeat against UCLA on Saturday at Intuit Dome — and reset while facing a Pepperdine program that’s come up short in its last 31 attempts against Mark Few’s teams.

Heavy preseason favorites to win the WCC, the 14th-ranked Zags (9-4, 0-0) are one of three teams that didn’t begin conference play on Saturday, negotiating with the league’s schedule-makers to push their opener back a few days so they could squeeze in Saturday’s marquee nonleague game against UCLA.

Now under the direction of first-year coach Ed Schilling, the Waves (6-8, 0-1) got their first glimpse of the WCC on Saturday in a 90-81 loss at Santa Clara. Schilling, an assistant at Grand Canyon from 2020-24, was hired to replace Lorenzo Romar after Pepperdine won just eight games over the last three seasons.

Even with a new man at the helm, beating the Zags appears to be the same daunting challenge it’s always been, particularly after GU lost in dramatic fashion against UCLA to close its nonconference schedule.

“It was just good to play a good nonconference schedule,” point guard Ryan Nembhard said. “It gets us prepared for later in the season when we have those neutral-site games versus good teams. We’ll take all this and try to improve and get better on both ends of the floor and come back hungry and get these wins in these close games.”

Close games between Gonzaga and its next opponent haven’t been all that common, at least during the last 23 years of the Bulldogs’ WCC series with Pepperdine. The Zags won both meetings last year in…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/hungry-gonzaga-ready-shake-december-030100521.html

Author : The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

Publish date : 2024-12-30 03:01:00

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