Former Gonzaga All-American Dan Dickau breaks down Steele Venters' options moving forward after his injury, as well as Gonzaga's best lineup this early into the season
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00:00 Hey, everybody, it's Christian Pedersen joined by Dan Dickow back for another episode of
00:03 Gonzaga Nation.
00:05 And we are joining you guys for a mailbag edition right now.
00:08 That is where we take fan submitted questions and feed them up to Dan Dickows.
00:13 Beautiful basketball brain.
00:15 He is the all things opinion on Gonzaga basketball.
00:17 It's one of the top college basketball brains out there.
00:20 So Dan, thank you, as always, for sharing some of your time.
00:23 We've got a regular season game every couple of days from now until the end of March.
00:29 So we've got a lot of actual relevant stuff to talk about more than just hyperbolic questions.
00:34 So you're ready for some season stuff.
00:36 Let's do it.
00:37 All right.
00:38 First one.
00:39 Got a lot of people writing in about steel ventures.
00:40 They want to know what's the latest what's going on there.
00:44 Obviously the disappointing and frustrating news for steel, but also for Gonzaga fans
00:50 is that, you know, he is hurt and he tore his ACL and he'll be out for what I would
00:56 imagine is the season.
00:58 Typically you tear your ACL, you'll get surgery.
01:02 You either get it right away or you wait 10 days, two weeks or so to get the swelling
01:07 down and then you have surgery.
01:09 So I'm not sure which direction they've decided to go.
01:13 You know, obviously I don't have any insight on that, but that's typically what happens.
01:19 And then in regards to kind of the next step will be obviously he transferred from Gonzaga
01:27 or sorry, he transferred from Eastern Washington to Gonzaga where he's the big sky player of
01:31 the year.
01:32 He's a unique story in the fact that he started as a walk-on, earned a scholarship, but that
01:36 walk-on year that he had his first year, he was a red shirt.
01:41 So he's already used his red shirt year.
01:43 When you looked at the roster and how he's described in Gonzaga's website is he's a red
01:49 shirt junior.
01:50 So that leads me to think that he does have two years left of eligibility.
01:55 So he could come back and play one year as a quote red shirt senior, or he could possibly
02:01 apply for a medical red shirt and play two years.
02:05 Now I don't have any particular insight of what he's thinking or what the staff is thinking.
02:11 That's just based on what you see in regards to, you know, his classification of grade
02:16 level on the website.
02:18 So a couple of things to think about.
02:21 Right now it's too early to project, predict what he would do.
02:26 But that being said, my focus and my hope is for him, because I think he's got a bright
02:33 future playing professionally, whether that's overseas, whether that's here in the States,
02:38 it's hard to determine at this time, but he's just got to get healthy, you know?
02:42 And so hopefully if and when surgery occurs, it goes extremely well and he's taxed his
02:48 rehab just the way he attacked improving his game early in his college career to have the
02:53 success he had at Eastern.
02:55 So thoughts, prayers go out to him and hopefully he has a quick and speedy recovery and a healthy
03:02 recovery as well.
03:03 Absolutely.
03:04 You always only ever want the best for these kids.
03:07 It does seem like medical science is getting better every single injury, every single year.
03:11 So you hope for more and more success rate and speedier recoveries and full recoveries
03:16 too for some of these injuries.
03:18 Dan, we've got a sample size that's growing now of actual game footage.
03:23 You are an expert at breaking down set game footage.
03:25 So we had a couple of questions, one of them coming in about lineups and rotations that
03:29 I really like this one.
03:30 Have you seen a favorite rotation or lineup on the court this season that you like the
03:35 most?
03:36 I haven't yet.
03:37 There's a couple that I do like.
03:38 There's a couple that are of interest that I want to see more of.
03:43 In particular, those are the big lineups for Gonzaga.
03:47 You saw at least one version of a big lineup during the game.
03:51 There's a couple of different big ways I think Gonzaga could go big.
03:56 To me, it's essentially you have Anton Watson at the three and then you have a combination
04:01 of Ben Gregg, Brayden Huff, and Graham Ekay rotating to those two other positions.
04:07 Now the reason I think that it can work at times is because Ben Gregg and Brayden Huff
04:12 can shoot it a little bit from beyond the three-point line.
04:16 Anton Watson obviously can hit an occasional trail three, but that's really not his focus
04:22 or his strength and you don't want him hunting those shots the way that maybe you would want
04:26 some others in that position.
04:27 But what I think it really does is it puts size on the defensive glass where you can
04:33 absolutely shut down the interior for opponents.
04:36 It gives you a chance to really pound it on the inside as long as your spacing is true
04:42 in the high-low game and you're deep in the short corner and in the dunker spot when that
04:48 calls for it.
04:49 But I do want to see more of that.
04:52 A few years back, there was a team, the year is escaping me, but there was a team that
04:57 I thought you might see some three big lineups.
05:01 It didn't come to fruition as much as I would have thought it would.
05:05 That's simply because a lot of times teams go back and gravitate towards the ways that
05:11 they played in the past.
05:13 So curious to see how a three big lineup would work, but I don't think you're going to see
05:17 tons of looks at it unless it's really successful early in the season.
05:23 When it seems like you said it's not something that historically fits into Coach Fugue's
05:27 narrative.
05:28 So it would be outside of the norm for him to lean toward heavily on that.
05:33 Yes, I would agree.
05:35 Yeah.
05:36 Dan, last question coming in from you.
05:37 A reminder, you guys can send your questions to Fan Nation Zags.
05:41 Hope you write them more concisely than I wrote that promo because that was horribly
05:45 done on my part, but you can send them to Fan Nation Zags on all the social media.
05:48 DanDicko21 on his socials.
05:51 Dan, some of our viewers are very concerned or were concerned at least after the most
05:55 recent game, you almost took a ball straight off the court.
05:59 Are you okay physically, emotionally?
06:01 What was that experience for you?
06:03 Yeah, no.
06:05 I guess you could say almost, but the fact is I would have deflected it had Greg Heister
06:12 not barely gotten his hand in front.
06:14 There was a long, loose ball that was coming towards the broadcast booth and Greg Heister
06:21 knocked it away.
06:22 He deflected it.
06:23 I thought he would have caught it so that he at least could have passed it back to the
06:26 official.
06:27 But all being said, Greg's a tremendous partner to work with.
06:32 He made a somewhat athletic play to keep the ball away from myself and Richard Fox.
06:37 Does Greg get to cross?
06:38 I know this is kind of crossing sports, but does he get to do the pass deflection celebration
06:43 that all the defensive backs are doing in the NFL now for a successful breakup there?
06:48 No, he did not.
06:50 But maybe if it happens again, I'll mention it to him.
06:53 There you go.
06:55 He's just funny enough, self-affirming enough that he can pull it off in a way that the
06:59 internet would absolutely love.
07:00 But you are good.
07:01 You are ready.
07:02 Head on a swivel.
07:03 You're up.
07:04 You're saying your reflexes are up to game speed.
07:06 Yes, absolutely.
07:07 Absolutely.
07:08 Basketball season.
07:09 Here we go.
07:10 That's what I'm saying.
07:11 If you check out some of our other podcasts that are coming out, Dan has been talking
07:16 about how great Gonzaga is.
07:17 He feels like they are elite team.
07:19 So like, you know, when Dan is that level of excited that you just saw that this is
07:23 real, like he actually this registers on him for the emotional scale and he's feeling something
07:27 this year.
07:28 It's an uptempo, different kind of three bigs, potentially team.
07:32 It's awesome to see.
07:33 There's a ton of great coverage going on because there's a lot of games now every single week.
07:37 So make sure you check out everything that we got going.
07:39 Like I said, search and subscribe to Gonzaga Nation.