Gonzaga Falls to Arkansas 76-72 in Preseason Matchup

There’s a lot we can ultimately pull about the status of this year’s Gonzaga Bulldogs from their 76-72 loss to the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday, but I think many fans would just as soon not think about that game much at all.

It was ugly. Instructive, maybe. But ugly, definitely.

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Surprisingly, Davis Fogle, who looked like a lottery pick at Kraziness in the Kennel, sat this one out with an unspecified leg injury. But besides him and the still-ineligible Chauncey Wiggins, just about everyone on the roster logged some minutes as the Zags spent 40 minutes trying to figure out how to make things work without their most versatile scoring threat. Unfortunately, due to his absence plus a ton of weird foul trouble, rotation minutes in this one are probably not a great predictor for what we can expect to see once the season kicks off against Purdue.

The lion’s share of this one’s minutes belonged to Braden Huff, Izan Almansa, Nathan De Sousa and Isiah Harwell, who each played 29+ while Massamba Diop, Xaivian Lee, Javon Bennett and Luca Foster accounted for another 16-19 each. Parker Jefferson and Juwan Ekanga-Ehawa each played 4.

Both teams kept it close through most of the first half. Gonzaga shot 15-of-37 from the field to Arkansas’ 12-of-33, and while the Zags went an abysmal 2-for-14 from three, they made up for it inside, outscoring the Razorbacks 24-10 in the paint and turning seven steals into a 10-8 edge in turnovers forced. Arkansas continued to answer relentlessly from the perimeter, hitting 5-of-10 from three and running out for 16 fast-break points to Gonzaga’s six.

With under three minutes left in the half, the wheels really started coming off. Diop and Arkansas’ Miikka Muurinen were both hit with technical fouls after a scuffle under the basket (and, let it be said, it was a scuffle initiated boneheadedly and cheaply by Diop [and, let it be further noted, it wasn’t the only time in the game he would do something boneheaded and cheap]), and although Gonzaga…

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Publish date : 2026-10-25 00:12:00

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