Former Gonzaga All-American Dan Dickau explains why he thinks Graham Ike will lead the Bulldogs in scoring this season and why Gonzaga is bound for the Sweet 16 for a ninth straight season.
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00:00 Hey, everybody, it's Christian Pedersen, joined by Dan Dickow, back for another episode of the
00:03 Gonzaga Nation podcast. You're catching us on a mailbag edition. That's where we take
00:08 fan submitted questions from you guys, the viewers, and from our staff occasionally,
00:12 because even people on the inside want to know what Gonzaga legend Dan Dickow is thinking.
00:16 And we asked Dan because he is a source of great wisdom and great knowledge and also very,
00:22 he's a concise host. This is not a long, hard to listen to podcast, Dan gets the information
00:26 clearly and directly to you. Dan, let's get started. The first scrimmage or exhibition,
00:31 or whatever the actual technical verb is, is in the book. Since we got a couple of people asking
00:35 us different forms of what I'm just going to summarize as, is Graham E.K. now healthy?
00:40 Yes, Graham E.K. is healthy. He looked tremendous in the exhibition game against
00:51 LC State. I mean, he's 11 of 13 from the field, 24 points. He was moving well. He had good lift.
00:59 I think it's one of those things where if there were reports coming out that he's limited in
01:06 practice, there's a reason he's limited in practice, because just like Allen Iverson said,
01:11 talk about practice, man, not a game, practice. So you want your best players ready to go in games.
01:19 And many times nowadays, that means monitoring minutes leading up to the season. So you're
01:24 at your peak when it matters most. Not a game, practice.
01:27 That will be clipped on our social media for this episode. Dan, appreciate the throwback there.
01:37 Next question that we got is, and I think this one actually kind of got my brain
01:40 going on some of the podcasts that you've done recently, where you guys have talked with
01:46 Coach Brian Michelson and Adam Morrison and a bunch of different people about what the offense
01:50 is really going to look like. So this one came in on our Facebook. Reminder, you can hit us up
01:53 at Fan Nation Zags on all the social media or Dan at DanDickout21. Someone wanted to know,
01:58 who's going to be the Gonzaga leading scorer this year?
02:00 You know, I think there's a couple different directions you can take, but my money is on
02:07 Graham E.K. You know, Gonzaga has always played fast, but within playing fast, they've always
02:15 wanted to really establish the interior game. And this goes back to their initial teams where you
02:24 had Casey Calvary on the interior, Axel Dench. Then you had other low post scorers like Roni
02:30 Turioff. You had JP Batista. And then obviously most recently, everybody's favorite Drew Timmy.
02:38 You establish the interior, all of a sudden you open up things on the perimeter for your
02:44 wings and your ball handlers to come off pick and rolls or pin downs, dribble handoffs,
02:50 make reads coming off screens. If you don't establish that inside, it's hard to get to those
02:58 other actions that you want. And so by you establishing the interior, by you running the
03:05 floor and then deep rim runs and seals early, you create opportunities for so many things.
03:12 But again, Gonzaga wants to play fast, but they don't always want to establish the interior. But
03:16 to establish the interior as well as they have over the years, you've got to have a productive
03:21 and skilled big man. They've had that with the names I've mentioned. I think Graham E.K. kind
03:26 of falls in line. I don't think he's going to average 21, 22 a game like Drew Timmy did,
03:34 but I don't think he came here to do that. I think he came here to be a great player on a great team,
03:40 try to make a deep run. I would expect Graham E.K. to lead them in scoring. I think he's going
03:44 to be around that 17 point a game mark. I think there's going to be a number of guys that average
03:48 in double figures this season. All right, Dan, final question. And I got a sub question that
03:53 we had to ask. I don't think I'm allowed to ask you actual betting lines based off of your
03:58 journalistic integrity of calling games and whatnot. So I will say maybe we will ask people,
04:02 what do you guys think? Gonzaga, good bet or not on some of the Vegas lines? It seems like it's a
04:09 pretty favorable odd that there'll be a good team getting a deep playoff run. So we had a couple of
04:14 people asking various versions of how deep is this team going to go? So let's pick it right in the
04:18 middle. Is this a sweet 16 or better team? Yes, I firmly think they are a sweet 16 team. Now,
04:26 take that with a grain of salt because you always have to be playing great basketball at the end of
04:32 the year. You hope you're peaking at the right time. You hope you're healthy. You hope the
04:36 matchups in the bracket falls in a way that gives you a logistic line to advance deep into the
04:45 tournament. But Gonzaga has made it the last eight years of the sweet 16. Only other programs that
04:51 have ever done that, UCLA, Duke, and I believe the third is North Carolina. I'd have to go back
04:56 and double check my research, but I know UCLA and Duke for sure. So Gonzaga is in rarified air,
05:02 you know, with the success they've had recently. Five of the last eight elite eights, the talent
05:08 on this team, you know, is there. I think there's, because there's no Drew Timmy, who's obviously a
05:17 four-year kind of standout, because there's no Julian Strother, I think there's a few question
05:23 marks out there nationally. But that's perfectly fine. It gives them time to kind of build and gel
05:28 and learn out of the national limelight. If you remember to a season ago, because Drew Timmy was
05:33 back and because Julian Strother was back, Gonzaga was pre-season two or three, I think, in most
05:39 polls. And I think that those expectations were set way too high. They had a couple losses early,
05:46 namely to Purdue. They kind of knocked a little bit of the shine off the program in some people's
05:52 eyes. And, you know, at the end of the day, one of the things I think that Coach Hugh does best is
05:58 learn from a loss and figure out where this team needs to improve at to maximize their
06:03 potential. They did that last year. They ended up 31 and six and in the Sweet 16 again.
06:08 Fair enough. Fair enough. Hey, look, it's just exciting that we're actually,
06:13 yes, we're talking about the Sweet 16, but we're actually talking about the season now.
06:17 So no matter what, things are just only going to get better from here.
06:21 There's going to be a lot of opportunities for a lot of questions to be asked. So make sure you
06:25 guys submit your questions to Fan Nation Zags and all the social media. Make sure you search and
06:29 subscribe to Gonzaga Nation wherever you get your podcasts. There are a ton of great ones. Dan
06:35 doesn't do the whole self-promotion and hype thing. So I will once again, reiterate that
06:39 they have built him an amazing studio. He has a lot of amazing guests. These are really good
06:43 conversations that you can get on our website, subscribing to our YouTube, or I guess at anywhere
06:48 you get your podcast search and subscribe Gonzaga Nation. Dan, thank you as always for checking in
06:52 with us. We'll talk to you guys next time. Sounds good. Connect soon, Christian. Best of luck
06:57 to Gonzaga as they start the season off on Friday. College basketball, baby!
07:01 No more sleeping. Only coffee and college basketball for the next couple of months.