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Erick Doxey photo
Malachi Smith's best game as a Zags led to another 100+ point performance versus Portland.
KEEPING IT 100
Offense has almost always come easy at Gonzaga, and this season the points are pouring in once again.
Last Saturday against Portland the Zags put up 115 points. The Bulldogs' 61 points in the first half was a season high, besting the 58 they dropped on NAIA Eastern Oregon in late December. That makes three straight 100-plus point performances by Gonzaga against the Pilots.
It also marks the sixth time this season the Zags have surpassed the century mark. The program’s single-season record for 100-plus point games is seven, set not long ago in 2019. That team took 32 games to set the record. Gonzaga’s currently played just 19, and will have at minimum 14 more shots to tie or ultimately break it.
Favorable conditions lie ahead. The West Coast Conference is loaded with teams that, like Gonzaga, get out and run, and so far teams have been willing to try to run with the Zags.
Only Saint Mary’s plays fewer possessions per game than the national average, though the Gaels are almost as slow as it gets. Loyola Marymount comes in at 130th most up-tempo in the country, and everybody else ranks in the top-100. The Zags aren’t even the most up-tempo team in the league. That honor goes to Pepperdine... and guess how many points the Zags dropped on them in their first meeting? (
111.)
WHO WILL IT BE TONIGHT?
Drew Timme is the face, heart and soul of this team. Most nights, he’s the best player, too. Recently, though, fans have seen other players emerge to give Timme a hand if not outright take over for him on the offensive end.
Against San Francisco it was senior Rasir Bolton, who led the team in scoring and was absolutely clutch down the stretch to key the comeback.
Timme returned to form against Santa Clara, but it was Nolan Hickman who stole the show. Hickman and Timme matched with 20 points a piece, but Hickman outshone Timme by hitting big shots and playing his most efficient offensive game of the season.
In Provo last week against BYU, Timme put up volume but Anton Watson provided volume and efficiency. Just one point shy of Timme on the night, Watson was named KenPom.com's MVP of the game.
Back at home over the weekend, game MVP honors went to Malachi Smith. The Chattanooga transfer led the game with 27 points off the bench, his most in a Gonzaga uniform, on an efficient 9-of-13 shooting and an even more impressive 7-of-10 from behind the arc.
Gonzaga’s not just Drew Timme. Does that mean fans don’t have to worry about another Memphis or Michigan State game, in which Timme is counted on to put the Zags on his back and will them to a win? We’ll see. What we do know is that there are a bunch of other guys, all over the roster, who have proven capable of putting the team on their own backs as well.
K POP-A-SHOT
Late Monday afternoon, Gonzaga announced the somewhat surprising addition of a new player to the roster. Jun Seok Yeo, a 6-foot-8-inch forward from South Korea, will practice with the team for the remainder of this season, but he won’t play until next season.
Yeo has experience representing his native South Korea at both the youth and senior national levels.
At the 2021 FIBA Under-19 World Cup, Yeo averaged a tournament-best 25.6 points and ranked second with 10.6 rebounds per game.
Those numbers are all the more impressive when you consider the other players in that U-19 tourney: once-in-a-generation French prospect Victor Wembanyama (who will almost assuredly go No. 1 in this year's NBA Draft), Purdue's Jaden Ivey (No. 5 pick in the 2022 NBA Draft), Arizona's Bennedict Mathurin (No. 6 pick in the 2022 NBA Draft), Kentucky's Dyson Daniels (No. 8 pick in 2022), Nikola Jovic (No. 27 pick in 2022), Purdue's current National Player of the Year favorite Zach Edey, Creighton's Ryan Nembhard (Andrew's brother), former Zag and current Arizona star Oumar Ballo, and none other than former Zags star Chet Holmgren.
During that event,
Yeo went up against a United States squad led by Holmgren. Yeo put up a solid 21 points in that outing. At the senior national level, Yeo played in three of South Korea’s six qualifying matches ahead of the 2021 FIBA Asia Cup and averaged 12.3 points in just over 16 minutes per game.
A product of the NBA Global Academy in Australia, Yeo was previously enrolled at Korea University. He begins classes at Gonzaga this semester and will be listed as a sophomore when he takes the court next season.
Surprisingly, Yeo is the only international player on Gonzaga’s roster this season. Just three seasons ago, in 2020, the Zags had six international players on the roster. Without Yeo, this year’s roster would’ve been Mark Few’s first constructed entirely with American players.
NEXT UP
LMU at Gonzaga • Thur, Jan. 19 at 6 pm • KHQ/Stadium
Gonzaga vs Pacific • Sat, Jan. 21 at 7 pm • KHQ/ROOT Sports Plus
