Gonzaga was Shellshocked After the Loss to Kentucky

After a good night’s sleep, I still can’t believe Kentucky beat Gonzaga. I’m not nearly as shocked as the Gonzaga Bulldogs.

Mark Few, Graham Ike, and Ryan Nembhard met with the media following the 90-89 overtime loss to Kentucky. It was challenging for the players to find the right words to describe the defeat.

“They changed to matchup (zone defense) and did a couple things different and we missed some good looks from three,” Ryan Nembhard said.

Graham Ike said just as much. He looked deflated from the defeat despite tallying 28 points and 11 rebounds. The issue was that 18 and 8 of those came in the first half. Nembhard had the same kind of night, with 8 of his 10 points and 7 of his 10 assists before the intermission. That’s when Gonzaga had a 16-point lead, before Mark Pope threw a junk defense at the Dogs.

“They were doing a fake zone where they’d stay in it for two passes. We do that every once in a while,” said head coach Mark Few.

“We were getting really good looks, but they probably weren’t in the same rhythm or context of what we had in the first half. We had post-ups. We had wide-open threes. I think we were 0-for-9 from three in the second half and pretty much all of ’em were teed-up and wide open. It might have affected us a little bit. The guys knew what they were doing, we just kinda channeled through our man stuff.”

The threes fell for Gonzaga in overtime, but it was too little too late. Kentucky seized all of the late momentum to win a thrilling college basketball game.

“We gave them life,” said Mark Few. “They did a great job. They got a lot of confidence on the offensive end and I think our offense affected our defense a bit, our intensity started to kind of deviate from the plan. But it was a great basketball game. Listen, both teams gave great effort. Those guys made heroic plays on both sides of the ball. It was a hell of a basketball game.”

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