Gonzaga defeated the St. Mary’s Gaels 73-65 at the Kennels on Saturday night. They did exactly what they needed to do to win, speeding up the Gaels, protecting the ball and relying on the dominant return of Graham Ike, who has missed the past three games with an ankle injury. The Zags trailed by four at halftime, but Graham Ike couldn’t stop it. The win ended Gonzaga’s two-game losing streak at home and reclaimed the kennel in a game in which neither side found much consolation.
ESPN is once again displaying its usual nonsense. Tipf was delayed for ten minutes, and then the live broadcast at the end of Tennessee’s matchup with Auburn was switched to ESPN-U, meaning anyone taping the game missed the kickoff entirely. Worse yet, delayed startup means the DVR recording will ending Before Gonzaga’s game against St. Mary’s was truly over. If you plan on watching it later, tough luck. ESPN making sure you watch the wrong game too early and miss the ending of the game you want is a fitting reminder of how little the network values the viewing experience, and another reason why Gonzaga is exiting the ecosystem next season.
Anyway…
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first half
Gonzaga tried to set the tone immediately, opening the game with a man-press that disrupted Randy Bennett’s offense, ranked 309th in the country, in pace. Offensively, the instructions were simple: push the tempo, attack the rim with guards, force the Gaels to foul or play faster than they like. Also, give the ball to Graham Ayke.
Jalen Warley spent the opening period with WCC Player of the Year front-runner Paulius Muurauskas, and Emmanuel Innocenti helped stymie clean perimeter drives. Gonzaga led 11-7 after four and a half minutes, with five of the Gaels’ seven points coming from Murauskas.
Eight minutes later, the Zags built a double-digit lead with a quick passing game and a pressure defense that tallied five assists on its first seven shots. St. Mary’s struggled to settle, pushing the pace on both ends and being forced into one-on-one contests at the basket. At the first media timeout ten minutes into the half, Gonzaga led 21-13 and led 7-1 in assists.
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Although St. Mary’s made 5 of 18 shots from the field and 1 of 5 from 3-point range, the game’s lead remained tenuous. A few silly turnovers and poor defense from everyone allowed the Gaels to go on a 12-2 run, relying almost entirely on free throws and the 3-point line, to cut the lead to one and force a Gonzaga timeout.
After halftime, Gonzaga switched to a press, and Tyne Grant-Foster threw a transition ball to Ike, briefly stabilizing the score at 28-22. In the final minutes of the first half, the game was over quickly.
The turnovers piled up, St. Mary’s reached the bonus, and the Gaels continued to hang at the free throw line, cutting Gonzaga’s lead to just two points. Gonzaga’s defensive pressure, especially from Davis Fogle on the perimeter, slowed the bleeding but never quite regained control. Sometimes he looks like a patient veterinarian, and sometimes he looks like what he is: a very skilled and very enthusiastic freshman.
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The final two minutes of the half were a classic WCC whistle-fest. Murauskas’ free throw and a late 3-pointer changed the lead, then Dent’s 3-pointer gave St. Mary’s the lead. Ike’s free throw gave him a one-point lead back, giving him 14 points at the half while no other Zags scored more than four points. Those final seconds proved costly. Another silly foul put St. Mary’s back at the free throw line, and then Mario Saint-Supéry fumbled on what should have been the final possession of the first half. Then, with 0.1 seconds left, a very questionable foul call by Fogel allowed the Gaels to hit two more free throws to end the half.
St. Mary’s went into the locker room up 38-34, scoring 15 of their 38 points at the free throw line. Gonzaga controlled the long drive with speed and pressure, then battled fouls, turnovers and whistles in the final eight minutes, which allowed the Gaels to hold on to the lead despite uneven shooting. Shooting 36% from the field and leading by four points at halftime was exactly the infuriating brand of basketball that Randy Bennett has perfected throughout his career.
second half
In the opening six minutes, the Gaels dragged the game into familiar territory, slowing the tempo and letting the clock bleed, the kind of half where every time you look at the scoreboard you’re surprised by how much time has evaporated. Gonzaga tried to counterattack by opportunistic runs in transition, but St. Mary’s shooting continued to apply pressure and the Zags still trailed by five with 16 minutes remaining.
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Graham Ek, meanwhile, opened the first half 0-for-5 from the field as St. Mary’s kept him out of the post and lured him into mid-range shots. But thank God there is Emmanuel Innocenti. With Gonzaga trailing 46-43, Innocenti tied the game with a 3-pointer, scored 10 points in six minutes and rebalanced the court in his own right. He proved equally valuable defensively in the first half, as Fife opted to put Innocenti on Joshua Dent, who had been an unresolvable problem in the first half. The reads were clean from that point, and when Mitch Lewis picked up his third foul, Saint Mary’s lack of depth started to look like a real issue for Randy Bennett.
On the next play, Ike caught the ball on the outside, hit Wessels with a sharp head fake, sent him falling backwards to the floor, and then neatly circled the wreckage for a vicious two-handed dunk. This play set off the doghouse and instantly flipped the emotional temperature of the game. From that moment on, Gonzaga, spurred on by table setups from Ike and Mario Saint-Supéry, started hitting the ball hard, and Saint Mary’s began to react rather than dictate.
The ensuing whistle slowed the game down, but Gonzaga absorbed it better. Ike rediscovered his touch, scored multiple times, and finally hit a dagger three-pointer in the last minute to extend the lead to double digits.
St. Mary’s tried to extend the game with timeouts and some strategic late fouls, but the referee swallowed the whistle and the final possession never came anyway. Ike made a clean steal from Dent on the outside to seal a 73-65 Gonzaga victory in what will likely be the last meeting between these programs in the kennel. It ended the way St. Mary’s games often do: slow, furious, maddening. When the margin for error disappeared, Gonzaga finally came into its own and survived.
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scoring highlights
Ike accounted for 30 of the Zags’ 73 points, 37 points in 40 minutes, 11-for-20 from the field, 5-for-5 from the free throw line, and some SportsCenter-level performance on both ends of the floor. After his triumphant return, Ike refused to let Gonzaga lose to St. Mary’s again at home. He’s had a lot of great games in the past, but this was his most complete game.
The defensive effort was equally evident. Gonzaga limited Paulius Murauskas to 5-for-14 shooting, Mickey Lewis to 1-for-5 shooting and Liam Campbell to 0-for-5 shooting. As a team, Saint Mary’s shot 34% from the field.
Jalen Worley scored a team-high 10 points on 5-of-7 shooting and grabbed a team-high seven rebounds, while Mario Saint-Supéry had nine points and five assists in 25 minutes, including a huge mid-range floater that extended the lead to three possessions with three minutes left.
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The Zags hit 18 of 27 field goal attempts, 18 of which were assisted, outrebounded one of the nation’s best rebounding teams 39-34, outscored them by +16 in the paint and regained a 10-point lead after faltering at the end of the first half. Nine turnovers in the first half and only one in the second half showed that. Mark Favre’s second-half adjustments toward a downhill offense of Emmanuel Innocenti and Taion Grant-Foster quickly turned the momentum around, and Gonzaga sealed the game once the right combination settled into a rhythm around their anchor, Graham Ek.
low light
Free throw shooting has gone from annoyance to problem area, with Gonzaga going 13-for-21 from the line. Tyne Grant-Foster bore the brunt of the attack, going 1-for-5 in a game where free throws could have made a difference.
Adam Miller’s (lack of…) scoring woes also continue to bother fans. Miller went 2-for-7 from 3-point range and 0-for-4 from the field, improving his field goal percentage in conference play to 9-for-40 and just under 23% from 3-point range, averaging five points per game in that span despite playing 20 minutes a night. His shooting looks to be getting worse and worse, always by a foot, and St. Mary’s views his outside shooting as an acceptable risk when he’s on the court.
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Steele Winters’ night was even more worrying. Venters played just three minutes against the Gaels, his fewest minutes of the season, and his only contributions were two fouls and a missed free throw. Since the start of WCC play, Venters has made 9 of 30 three-pointers, a flat 30% shooting percentage, averaging 3.1 points per game, and has been scoreless in 4 of 10 games. Playing eight minutes against San Francisco last week and with even shorter restrictions here, the Eastern Washington transfer’s runway is shrinking unless his defense or shooting undergoes a dramatic turnaround.
final thoughts
Beating your opponent always feels sweeter than your average win, and this might be the sweetest yet as Gonzaga heads to the Pac-12 in 2026-2027. After two straight losses, a win at home felt more like a last-ditch effort than a routine conference win, and Zag fans were right to revel in it.
But the story is far from over, as these teams will meet again in Moraga on February 28 and will most likely collide again a week later at the West Coast Conference Championship in Vegas. Gonzaga won the battle, but the battle for supremacy in the WCC’s final season is far from over.