Former Gonzaga All-American Dan Dickau breaks down the Bulldogs' path to success amid a loaded Maui Invitational field
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00:00 Hey everybody, Christian Pedersen joined by Dan Dickout back for another
00:03 Gonzaga Nation podcast and well look, we teased it for a long time that college basketball was
00:11 coming back baby and Dan, I am proud to say I have slept less, my vocal cords are already kind
00:21 of sore from cheering and I have a nice comfy little divot already worked out on my couch.
00:28 So I feel like early preseason for me is going right where I need it to be for college basketball.
00:34 I hope the season is treating you well, it seems like it's treating Gonzaga well.
00:37 Let's talk about Gonzaga, let's talk about the WCC in general because some really wins and losses
00:44 out the gate kind of confusing some people and then we'll throw in a little Chet at the end
00:48 because never a bad time to talk about some Chet Holmgren now that he has, I was surprised about
00:54 the amount of facial hair he's grown up a little bit. All right, so Dan, let's start with happy
00:59 college basketball season, let's start with the Gonzaga side of the WCC but then let's talk about
01:03 everything. Let's open up the fire hose and start feeding the people college basketball.
01:07 Yeah, I mean we always kind of keep alluding the start of the college season here is almost upon us,
01:15 then it is and then it was a little bit of a letdown because Gonzaga didn't play on that first
01:19 night, it took them four nights to play and when you look at the WCC conference standings right now,
01:26 Gonzaga has only played two games and only one of those is the division one opponent in Yale
01:30 and then everyone else has played at minimum four games, Santa Clara being quote unquote
01:39 first in the league at 4-0, St. Mary's the surprise with five games in, they're two and
01:44 three, they've lost their last three which I would be curious when the last time a St. Mary's team
01:50 has lost three games in a row. I can't think of one right off the top of my head, it's got to be a
01:56 long time but yes, feast week as they call it at ESPN is upon us, it started last Friday and it
02:04 runs all through this week. I mean you've had terrific games on literally every network you
02:10 could think of, ESPN, CBS Sportsnet, Fox, go on down the line there's some great games.
02:17 To find the last three that St. Mary's lost was to Washington, New Mexico and number one overall
02:26 Houston in late November, early December of last year's season.
02:31 Wow, so it was last year. Washington and then number one overall Houston feels excused.
02:38 Yeah, okay, interesting. So it was a lot more recent than I would expect but I guess for
02:45 anybody thinking oh St. Mary's is not very good this year, well if they did it last year and they
02:51 ended up having the season that they had, they're going to get the ship right in a hurry and they're
02:56 going to be all right. So the only thing that does hurt with that is their Ken Palm numbers
03:01 just absolutely went downhill. I want to say they were as high as about 18, they're now around 70,
03:09 75 with their Ken Palm. Granted it's five games and they're going to have opportunities to improve
03:13 upon that but interesting last three games for St. Mary's. So not quite panic time.
03:21 Also I'm hearing you say it is not quite time for Gonzaga fans to kick back and relax and say oh
03:28 we're going to run away with the WCC this year. 100%, nope it's not time to think that. I mean
03:32 Gonzaga hasn't been, they had a good test in their opener against Yale who I think will be an NCAA
03:37 tournament team and oddly enough we might see two Ivy League teams in the tournament this year
03:44 because Princeton is undefeated and if you look at their schedule, I read an article the other day,
03:49 there's a good chance that they could run the table deep into Ivy League conference play before
03:56 they match up with Yale. They got the meat, the heart, the tough stuff of their schedule out of
04:02 the way early and they came through with flying colors. So that Yale win may end up being better
04:08 than expected if they are as good as we think they might be. But back to the topic at hand,
04:14 Feast Week in Gonzaga, this is now the start of college basketball in a lot of people's eyes.
04:21 Once you see the Maui Invitational, once you see the classic, the Battle for Atlantis, once you see
04:28 all these different events happen and if you just flip the TV channels the last couple days, I mean
04:34 St. Mary's, they were obviously on the road, San Francisco was down in Vegas, you're now going to
04:42 see, or no sorry San Francisco was in Phoenix, you're going to see all these neutral site games
04:47 with good teams. You're going to learn a lot about many teams including Gonzaga in a hurry.
04:53 We're recording this on Monday morning, five, six hours from now, Gonzaga's playing number two
04:59 ranked Purdue. It doesn't get more real than that. Yeah, it is kind of odd when nobody's in the right
05:05 spot where they're supposed to be playing like geographically. Like you said, you're watching
05:09 San Francisco is in Arizona, you're like they're not playing anybody from Arizona. Last night I was
05:14 watching teams play in Las Vegas, none of which are based out of Nevada. So you just kind of look
05:19 at the court and you're like, huh, what part of the country am I watching this game in right now?
05:24 That doesn't care, let's keep flipping around. So big week, Maui week, feast week, big games,
05:31 past the Purdue game, we know that Syracuse and Tennessee and there's a lot of opportunities out
05:37 there for UCLA, I don't, or for Syracuse and UCLA and my schools to meet with Gonzaga. Apologies for
05:44 that. I'm going to leave this in to show what a poor broadcaster I am at sometimes, but also just
05:48 about how excited I am about specifically this Maui tournament. I don't want to play the,
05:52 the what if game and get too hypothetical and be like, Hey, give everybody this
05:56 situation, give everyone this situation. So let's focus primarily on that Purdue matchup,
06:01 but also maybe what the fallout of that matchup could be, what a win versus Purdue means,
06:07 what a loss versus Purdue means. Just give some of the people, you know, the table settings for
06:11 this first big true test for Gonzaga. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing, say things go incredibly
06:18 well for Gonzaga and they beat Purdue. Then they were saved. They match up with Tennessee in the
06:25 second round. If that were the case, Tennessee's ranked seven, say they win that one. Then they
06:30 move on to the championship. I would imagine they would be playing either number four Marquette
06:35 or number one Kansas. I mean, you can't come up with a better scenario to strengthen
06:40 your strength of schedule and bolster your resume early in the season. Then the opportunity,
06:46 not just in front of Gonzaga, but in front of every team that is in Maui, the field this year.
06:53 So I think it's a unbelievable event in the field. I mean, you know, coach, if you had a comment,
07:00 I think it was Cole Forsman, our great journalist wrote an article about coach.
07:04 He said he doesn't remember Maui field ever looking this good. And I agree. I mean,
07:09 I remember watching this tournament as a high school kid, wanting to play in it someday,
07:12 thinking back to all those games and teams. And yeah, this is an epic field.
07:18 Granted, they're probably that in the Atlantis probably has the best fields of these non-conference
07:23 tournaments every year, but this one just seems over the top difficult, you know, back to a season
07:29 ever for Gonzaga. Like, are we talking about this is one of the most difficult gauntlets any Gonzaga
07:34 team has ever had to run out the gate? I mean, I don't want to go there yet because Gonzaga has
07:38 always played a difficult schedule. I mean, they've, they will not duck any opponents. They
07:43 will schedule as difficult as they can. It's just, you know, the PK 85 last year was incredibly tough.
07:50 The PK 80 few years back was incredibly tough, but this one, you know, just because of, of,
07:55 of how it could come together, playing the number two, possibly playing seven, possibly playing one
08:02 or four, depending on how things shake out. It's, it's going to be a learning curve. Now,
08:07 if Gonzaga come out with flying colors, you're going to learn a lot about them and, you know,
08:12 just how far they may be able to advance in the NCAA tournament. Now on the flip side,
08:15 say Gonzaga loses against Purdue or say they sweep by Purdue and then lose to Tennessee and or
08:21 Syracuse. I think what you're going to see is you're going to see the ability to learn in a
08:27 setting, what your true colors are in regards to strengths and weaknesses and what you really have
08:33 to work on. And coach few and staff have been as good as anybody in the country about learning
08:41 from losses and cleaning up areas of weakness and, and kind of making those not as visible
08:50 later on in the season and really strengthening you know, the focal points that they want to
08:56 focus on. So, you know, for fans, they want to see three and O do I think they're going to go three
09:02 and O I said on the broadcast, I think this is as good a chance as they will have to fly under the
09:09 radar in any of these tournaments. So I think they can go three and O I will say on record,
09:16 I think they will win the tournament because they're flying under the radar. You got the one,
09:21 two, the four, the seven ranked team all there. And I think Gonzaga has enough depth this year
09:27 where, and some of the depth and youth doesn't know what to expect. They don't know the,
09:35 the, how big the Maui Invitational, you look at Luka Kranovic, Kranovic, you look at June,
09:42 these guys, I mean, yeah, they know this is a big time tournament, but they didn't grow up
09:48 watching this, maybe like a Ben Gregg or a Nolan Hickman. So I think a lot of the opportunities
09:56 that are in front of Gonzaga are enormous. And I think they are flying under the radar
10:00 to a certain extent, and I'm excited to see how they play.
10:03 - So for those of you who are watching this podcast, as opposed to listening to it,
10:07 you saw my body build up there. Cause I was so excited because we have, we've tried as a
10:12 collective staff here at Gonzaga Nation to bring out less of the realistic journalistic punditry
10:18 of Dan and more of the wrestling character of him saying, Gonzaga is going to win it all. Like he
10:23 had to give rational analysis just to also say that he thinks they're going to beat the number
10:27 two and number four and number 17 potentially. So Dan, I can sense that this means you're very
10:32 excited about this team. You mentioned a couple of different players, maybe give the people out
10:37 there who are, who didn't get a chance to turn it, tune into the first two games this season,
10:42 one or two like on court things, individual players, way pieces,
10:47 look together, different lineups, just one or two things to watch for out the gate in this tournament.
10:52 - Well, first off, you got a huge, and that's kind of a play on word, words,
10:58 a challenge in Zach Eaddy, cause he's so big, seven, three, seven, four reigning college player
11:02 of the year. You know, I think Gonzaga has a better opportunity to guard him and make life
11:07 difficult this year as opposed to last year. I mean, last year, you know, you didn't want to get
11:12 Drew Timmy in foul trouble cause you didn't have the depth or you didn't want him off the floor.
11:17 Ben Gregg, this was the game last year where he kind of really broke out and earned rotational
11:22 minutes for the rest of the year. But if you look at this year's team, you now got four bigs that
11:27 you can rotate on him. And that's EK, Braden Huff, Ben Gregg, and then, you know, in stretches,
11:35 because I think he's such a smart player, Anton Watson. So you got four bigs right there that you
11:40 can throw at him. Now it'll be interesting to see, do they play behind and try to challenge
11:46 him to score, you know, 35, 40, do you double, do you dig down and, you know, dare the other
11:51 perimeters, Braden Smith, Fletcher Lawyer to make shots from the perimeter and beat you that way.
11:57 What I think you're going to see is I think Gonzaga is going to mix up a number of different
12:00 coverages against him. But I also think on the offensive end of the floor, even though Edie's
12:06 gotten better at guarding this, I think you're going to see Gonzaga put him in a lot of pick
12:11 and rolls to get him moving his feet and also get him away from the basket.
12:16 Okay. So then maybe give us one lineup on the Gonzaga side that you are say,
12:23 you had talked in previous podcasts, how you want to see them experiment with some of the bigs,
12:27 but what are you thinking that people might hate? If you see this lineup on the court,
12:31 look for this. This could be the best permutation that Gonzaga has.
12:35 Well, I think, you know, you're probably going to have to see some big lineups just because Purdue
12:40 is a big 10 team is physical and they're big, they got good size, but I wouldn't be surprised
12:44 to see a two man big road lineup at some point with Braden Huff and Ben Gregg on the floor,
12:51 simply because that will make you stretch the floor and Edie will have to step out and guard
12:57 because both of those guys can shoot it from beyond the three point line. So that'll be curious
13:01 how early that lineup goes in and how often or how many minutes they play together in that kind
13:08 of capacity. That's a lot of Gonzaga. This is a WCC weekly episode. So what of the rest of the WCC
13:17 should anybody know about for Feast Week coming up? I mean, is there any tournaments the teams
13:21 are in? Is there any individual games, anything on your radar that you would say, hey, Gonzaga fans,
13:26 just keep it. You don't have to watch the game, but just have a little second screen open so you
13:30 can see the results of this one. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think as opposed to looking to this
13:36 week, I think it's going back and looking at the following few games that may have been of some
13:42 type of consequence. I mean, you know, Santa Clara sits at the top of four and oh, Herb Sendak's
13:48 doing what Herb Sendak does, and that's get teams ready to play and win. They beat Stanford on the
13:54 road. So that is a good win. You know, the Carlos Marshall Jr. is healthy this year, and he's kind
14:01 of taking on that. You know, Jaylen Williams, Brandon Podjimski coming out of nowhere to be a
14:07 unbelievable player for the Broncos. San Diego's at three and one. You know, there's no real
14:14 exciting wins in there because Jackson State, who they beat, is not a, I don't know how to put this,
14:23 you know, very good Division One team, but they're not like a surprisingly good, like you're not
14:30 going to rest your laurels on that win. And the only real true test they've played so far was
14:35 UC San Diego, and then they lost. You know, St. Mary's, we already talked about. University of
14:40 Portland, they were looking good, and then they lost two games, one at home to Tennessee State,
14:45 and then they went down to Reno and got blasted by Nevada by, you know, 25 points. So they were
14:50 starting to look like, hey, they might have something because they beat Long Beach State
14:54 and they beat UC Riverside. Pepperdine at three and two. San Francisco, you know, they've played
14:59 a really tough schedule up till now, and it doesn't get any easier because they're going to
15:02 play Big Ten Minnesota at the end of this week. I believe it's on Sunday. Loyola Marymount sits at
15:09 two and two. The loss to Yale, I don't think was a huge surprise after seeing Yale give Gonzaga
15:16 a test, you know, and then Pacific sitting at two and two as well. You know, they got blasted by
15:25 Nevada, but they won at Cal. I mean, so I think the league and the schools, they've won for the
15:33 most part, they've won the games that they need to outside of probably St. Mary's dropping those
15:38 three in a row we talked about, but no huge surprises right now other than St. Mary's.
15:43 We've, as promised at the start, said we'd close out with a little bit of Chet Holmgren. He had a
15:48 huge shot to send the Thunder into overtime and I am not the basketball evaluator, but I would say
15:58 that that shot was not a simple and easy shot. So it looks like it kind of fits with your narrative
16:03 that he could be the rookie of the year. Your reaction to that shot and how Chet is doing so
16:07 far this season in his first real full slate of action. I mean, that's an all-star type shot.
16:13 You know, just, you know, the willingness to take it and then the ability to step up and knock it
16:19 down in that situation against an unbelievable team in the Warriors. You know, I think what
16:25 you're seeing is a player who's over the first 12, 15 games or so of his career is starting to
16:31 become more and more comfortable. I mean, you're talking about a month and a half in or so, he's
16:37 already scoring, you know, mid-30s in the game against, you know, a team like the Warriors.
16:43 You see him picking and choosing his spots, being really smart and a high IQ student of the game.
16:49 You pair that with his skills, it is a great tandem, you know, to begin with. But I think
16:56 what you also see is the competitive fire and drive that he has. Coach, if you talked about
17:00 that a number of times when he was at Gonzaga, you know, his willingness to do whatever it took to
17:05 win and whether it was take five shots one game or 15 the next, I think you're starting to see
17:10 that at the NBA level. This Chet versus Victor Wembenyama, you know, proposed rivalry. It's not
17:19 a rivalry yet. It's a proposed rivalry, which is one thing the NBA has always kind of done is,
17:24 you know, put some of these matchups on full display. If the NBA handles that correctly
17:32 and if the two players, Chet and Victor, continue on the pace that it looks like they're on,
17:38 and these two teams are very good and they both stay with their respective teams for a long time,
17:44 I think there's something special brewing in the NBA between those two, that's for sure.
17:48 Does Chet's immense facial hair make him look more Pacific Northwest-y? Like, I feel like he
17:54 would have fit in perfectly if he had that rocking while he was with Gonzaga. All he's missing is a
17:59 flannel and he can be the Brawny spokesperson, yes? You never know. Maybe he couldn't grow one
18:08 during his time in Spokane at Gonzaga. It's hard to say. Or maybe Oklahoma City just does this to
18:14 people because James Harden showed up sans beard and left with the beard. Maybe there's just
18:19 something about playing for the Thunder that makes you want to just grow out a wizardly-like
18:24 beard. Dan, thank you as always for checking in with us for another episode of the Gonzaga Nation
18:28 podcast. Anything else that people need to know or can we say goodbye? Nope. Enjoy Feast Week with
18:35 all the great games of college basketball on tap on all the different networks. We will be having
18:40 a unique live stream during the game today. Myself and former point guard Winston Brooks are going to
18:47 be breaking down things live during the game against Purdue on a live stream. It's also going
18:52 to be edited down to be another secondary release if by chance you don't come across it at the right
18:58 time. Lots of things going on with us at Gonzaga Nation. Overall, enjoy college basketball this
19:04 week and have a good Thanksgiving. All right, everyone, search and subscribe Band Nation Zags
19:08 on all the social media so you make sure you don't miss any of that or find Dan at DanDickout21.
19:13 We'll talk to you guys soon.
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