Former Gonzaga All-American Dan Dickau breaks down the Bulldogs' upcoming WCC slate against LMU and Saint Mary's.
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00:00 What's happening, everybody?
00:01 Christian Pedersen joined by Dan Dickow,
00:03 welcoming you back to another episode
00:04 of the Gonzaga Nation podcast.
00:05 Thank you very much for checking in
00:07 on our weekly sort of State of the Union updates
00:10 that Dan is now giving as we weather our way
00:12 through a tumultuous Gonzaga season.
00:15 Dan, over the last couple of days,
00:18 depending on when you are listening to this
00:20 versus the previous podcast that Dan has been releasing,
00:23 maybe it's 30 seconds ago for some of you
00:25 or three days ago for some of you,
00:26 but Dan talked about Gonzaga's one third of the way
00:29 through the WCC season.
00:30 That podcast, go check it out.
00:32 It's a really great deep dive
00:33 on everything that's going on right now.
00:35 Dan, I'm just curious though,
00:36 if you had maybe a short little dive
00:38 or some follow-up thoughts from that
00:41 for people that hadn't checked that podcast out.
00:43 Let's start with you. - Yeah, for sure.
00:45 You know, I went to, you know,
00:46 kind of through each team, where they sit in the net,
00:50 why they're sitting at the net,
00:51 but also why they have opportunities,
00:54 being Gonzaga, St. Mary's, Santa Clara, San Francisco
00:56 in particular, to stay where they're at in the net
01:00 or possibly move up.
01:01 You know, the biggest thing about it right now
01:03 is St. Mary's and Gonzaga
01:06 are the only two schools right now
01:08 that if they do not win the conference tournament title
01:12 in Las Vegas, will have an at-large bid.
01:15 You know, if you look at all these bracketologists
01:18 from Mike DeCoursey to, you know,
01:23 Jerry Palm to Joe Linardi,
01:27 you could look at them until you're blue in the face.
01:29 There's 10, 12 of them that are, you know, respectable.
01:31 I'd say half of them right now have Gonzaga in,
01:34 half of them have Gonzaga out.
01:36 You know, the bottom line is, you know,
01:39 Gonzaga has to keep taking care of business.
01:41 St. Mary's still has to keep taking care of business
01:45 so that neither one of those two teams
01:47 now loses the rest of the way out to a Santa Clara,
01:50 to a San Francisco.
01:52 But more importantly, none of,
01:54 neither of those two teams can lose to anybody
01:57 not named San Francisco or Santa Clara,
01:59 simply for the fact that it would absolutely crush
02:02 their net ratings.
02:03 St. Mary's beat LMU
02:06 and they dropped in the net rankings on Saturday.
02:08 Gonzaga wins on the road at Pacific
02:11 and they drop in the net rankings
02:13 simply because those teams, you know,
02:15 are not ranked high enough in the net.
02:17 Pacific, oddly enough, is now sitting,
02:21 here, let me pull this over real quick
02:23 so I can kind of get the full updated.
02:25 So out of 362 teams in division one,
02:28 St. Mary's, excuse me, Pacific is sitting at 355.
02:33 So no matter what you do, I mean,
02:36 St. Mary's beat them by 48 at home.
02:39 Gonzaga won by, I think it was 11 on the road.
02:42 Both teams dropped in their net rankings
02:45 because of the metrics that Pacific has.
02:48 And so then you keep looking at the other ones,
02:50 Portland 310, Pepperdine 253, San Diego 248,
02:55 LMU at 165 as we speak today on Monday.
02:59 None of those games are going to positively impact your net
03:04 in your quad one, quad opportunity,
03:06 two opportunity, four wins,
03:08 which is what Gonzaga needs badly.
03:10 But, you know, Santa Clara at 108,
03:13 you gotta hope that they keep winning
03:15 so that maybe you beat them on the road.
03:18 Gonzaga can't say they can do that now
03:20 because they lost on the road.
03:21 So that Gonzaga home game against Santa Clara
03:24 will actually be a quad three.
03:26 So it doesn't help them in any way, shape or form.
03:28 But, you know, Gonzaga went on the one
03:31 against San Francisco at home.
03:33 That's currently a quad two.
03:35 If they keep losing, that could slide to a quad three,
03:38 which would impact Gonzaga's resume as well.
03:42 And then they still go on the road to San Francisco.
03:44 They still go on the road to St. Mary's.
03:46 They play at home this upcoming week against St. Mary's.
03:49 So really, I mean, you're looking at Gonzaga
03:51 has to absolutely take care of business
03:54 against everybody on their schedule.
03:57 I think they need to win both games
03:59 against St. Mary's at home and on the road.
04:03 Obviously, if you win the conference tournament,
04:05 it doesn't matter.
04:06 But then now that's really where that Kentucky game
04:09 is becoming more and more important as we get into it.
04:14 Because Kentucky, as we talk, is sitting at 23.
04:19 And that is a road game.
04:20 You know, they're higher in the AP.
04:21 I want to say they're eight in the AP.
04:25 Today's AP poll hasn't come out quite yet.
04:27 But that would be a massive monster road win.
04:30 That would be a quad one.
04:32 So Gonzaga really has three quad one opportunities
04:34 left this season.
04:36 And they haven't been able to take advantage of any of them.
04:39 They're sitting at 0 and 4 in quad one games, 3 and 1
04:43 in quad two.
04:43 And that's something that Gonzaga has never
04:46 had to worry about the last few years because they've
04:49 won the non-conference games they needed to.
04:52 They lost to Kentucky.
04:53 They lost to UConn, who are clearly national title
04:56 contending teams.
04:57 San Diego State is a top 24, I think, 25 in the net right now.
05:02 The UW loss is really starting to hurt them
05:06 because they've had some bad losses now.
05:09 And then the UW, U-C-L, UW and USC wins,
05:13 which we all thought, even after they happened,
05:15 were going to be good, haven't quite turned out to be good.
05:18 And same with the Syracuse.
05:20 You've got to hope that Syracuse can make a run in the ACC.
05:23 So maybe that win bolsters their resume a little bit.
05:30 Yes, I'm glad that you closed the loop there
05:32 with the non-conference teams because I felt maybe
05:35 Pacific caught a little bit of an undue stray in the analysis
05:39 there in the blame.
05:40 But yeah, it's a disappointing thing
05:42 where all the other opportunities that you have
05:44 sort of held is like, here is where
05:46 the standard of playing a Pac-12 team gets us in terms of just
05:49 like, hey, we win or lose.
05:50 It's a good thing because it's a quad one game.
05:52 And so to have those win or lose drop down to quad twos and threes,
05:56 it's brutal.
05:57 Let me ask you this.
05:58 Going forward, the Kentucky game is far enough away
06:02 that I don't want to get into it on this podcast.
06:04 But let's talk about the lead up to it.
06:06 If I had to ask you kind of hypothetically next three
06:08 games or next 10 games or whatever it is that you want
06:10 to talk about, what would be the one thing roster wise you
06:15 would want to see change or improve?
06:18 I'll let you pick the descriptive adjective,
06:19 but say you're saying, hey, if this guy gets a couple more
06:22 rebounds a game, we're great.
06:24 If this guy scores more, if this guy gets more minutes,
06:26 what would be the one, in your case, ideal scenario
06:28 thing to see roster wise?
06:30 I'll call it just improved or tweaked.
06:33 But like you said, I'm rambling at this point,
06:35 but I think you can get where I'm
06:37 trying to give you a little wide berth to creatively answer
06:39 this however you'd like.
06:40 But what would you want to see changed?
06:42 Well, I like the change of the starting lineup.
06:46 Putting Dusty Stromer to be that first perimeter off the bench
06:50 to spell whoever it may be.
06:53 I think Ben Gregg has continued to prove
06:56 that he needs major minutes.
06:58 And he's played well when given that opportunity.
07:00 So I do like that.
07:03 The things I'd like to maybe see tweaked,
07:06 and maybe not necessarily tweaked, but improved upon,
07:09 is Dusty Stromer.
07:13 His confidence is kind of wavering right now.
07:16 I think he's a really good player.
07:17 I think he's got a chance to have a tremendous career here.
07:20 But you just don't see that pop in his game
07:23 that you saw maybe earlier in the year,
07:26 where he's stepping into shots.
07:27 He's shooting it with confidence.
07:28 He's playing with an edge for a freshman that he had at times.
07:33 I mean, he did shoot an airball in that second half
07:37 at Pacific that I think from watching it,
07:43 it looked deflating when it was short.
07:45 And now, freshmen a lot of times kind of
07:48 hit that freshman wall, where you've never
07:51 played this physical of games.
07:53 You've never traveled this much.
07:54 You've never had this physical of practice.
07:57 The intense pressure, stress, scrutiny, both on your team
08:01 as well as on you, have never been there.
08:03 So it's a completely new scenario
08:06 to work in college for the first time ever.
08:08 What's that?
08:09 All while also going to college for the first time.
08:11 Like you're away from home.
08:12 Exactly.
08:13 Yeah, 100%.
08:14 So I mean, I think what you're saying
08:16 is he's probably hitting that freshman wall a little bit.
08:20 And many times, it takes players just a reset.
08:24 Sometimes it's a talk with the coach.
08:25 Sometimes it's a talk with a teammate.
08:27 Sometimes it's taking a day off where you as a team
08:31 have a day off.
08:32 And you truly give away.
08:34 You don't touch basketball.
08:36 You don't watch film.
08:38 You just go do something that's non-basketball related
08:41 to kind of reset your mental and physical
08:44 and your emotional well-being so that you can be successful
08:46 the rest of the year.
08:47 Now, I don't know Dusty well enough
08:49 to know that that's anything that he is going through
08:52 or has talked about or is doing.
08:55 But that's just speaking from personal experiences
08:57 of having been through it, done it myself, as well as
09:00 seeing other guys.
09:01 Because I think he's going to play a huge role down
09:03 the stretch of this season.
09:04 I think he's too talented to not have some good games
09:07 down the stretch.
09:09 So that's one thing.
09:10 And I do still think--
09:11 and I'm curious because I haven't heard or seen
09:15 any updates.
09:16 You've got to find that next perimeter,
09:18 whether it's June as a ball handler, where--
09:21 sorry, Luka Kranjic, if he's almost back healthy
09:24 from his hand injury, I would imagine,
09:26 because they said about six weeks right off the bat
09:28 when he got hurt.
09:29 We're right about that six-week mark.
09:30 So I'm curious how much longer he's out.
09:33 So can he come back and give you a four- to six-minute spell
09:37 of any kind during a game?
09:39 Or is June going to be able to finally crack through and get
09:44 himself into the rotation consistently?
09:46 Because they played seven guys at Pacific,
09:48 and that's difficult to do.
09:51 But I get where the season is at.
09:54 You can't have-- you can't let an opportunity slip,
09:58 especially against a team like Pacific,
10:00 where you struggled in the first half.
10:02 They hit that shot to go up.
10:05 All down the line, things were going well for Pacific.
10:08 You weather that storm.
10:10 You go to what's comfortable.
10:11 And right now, I think what you see is, for Coach Phiu,
10:14 it's that top seven in the rotation is what's comfortable.
10:19 So basically, to summarize, you want
10:21 to see the health and confidence of this team improve.
10:24 And you're not technically, functionally too seemingly
10:27 worried about the permutation of players on the court.
10:30 You just want to see things optimized.
10:31 And I like that.
10:32 So going in then to the next three games,
10:36 Gonzaga is going to be playing LMU, St. Mary's, and Portland.
10:39 Those three games are going to lead up to the Kentucky game.
10:42 So give us the preview.
10:44 Give us the teaser.
10:45 Give us the analysis.
10:46 What do you want to see?
10:47 Or what do we need to see out of these three games
10:49 for Gonzaga to be looking good going into that Kentucky game?
10:52 Or right where you want?
10:53 LMU is an interesting team.
10:56 Obviously, they came into Spokane last year
10:58 and broke their long nationwide or nation-leading home winning
11:03 streak when Cam Shelton had a tremendous game.
11:07 They're a different team.
11:08 Kelele Pepe is still there.
11:10 Mark Valadze is still there.
11:12 There's another big that is out of the-- that's healthy,
11:15 finally.
11:16 Name's escaping me.
11:17 But I think the name that everyone's going to recognize
11:19 is Dom Harris, who was at Gonzaga for three years.
11:21 Came in with Jalen Suggs, Julian Strother.
11:23 Just battled injury, battled guys ahead of him
11:26 in the rotation.
11:26 He needed a fresh start.
11:29 He's led them in scoring throughout most of the year.
11:32 I didn't look at the numbers before we started recruiting.
11:35 But he's either first or second in the scoring for LMU
11:38 right now.
11:39 He's one of the best three-point shooters in the league
11:40 right now.
11:41 You know he's going to have something to prove.
11:43 You know he's going to want to play well in Spokane.
11:45 So I think Gonzaga's got to make sure they limit him.
11:48 They got to match the physicality of Kelele Pepe,
11:51 which I'm sure they will.
11:53 But again, get off to a good start, really,
11:55 is what they need to do.
11:56 Don't give LMU any confidence that it's
12:00 going to be a similar result as the season before.
12:05 Now the next game, Saturday, home game against St. Mary's,
12:09 that's a monster game, as we can all imagine.
12:14 It's been a monster game for years now.
12:16 For the last 15 years, it's been a monster game.
12:18 But I think when you look at this year,
12:24 St. Mary's struggled early on.
12:26 Now they've caught fire.
12:27 They're playing extremely well.
12:29 Aiden Mahaney may be the front runner for player of the year
12:33 in the conference, especially after Mobo
12:34 struggled the last two games.
12:36 He's scoring in over 20 games, shooting into right around 50%
12:40 from three.
12:41 So they can get it going from the perimeter with him.
12:44 Augustus Marcellonis is really kind of taking
12:46 the reins as a point guard, allowing Mahaney to hunt shots.
12:51 Mitchell Saxon on the interior is always
12:54 giving Gonzaga problems.
12:55 Tremendous offensive rebounder, physical shot blocker,
12:58 rebounder.
12:59 And then you got guys like Dukas,
13:01 who just do the little things.
13:03 And they can shoot it and stretch it,
13:04 but on the three-point line.
13:05 Josh Jefferson has really improved from freshman
13:08 to sophomore year.
13:10 He was flirting with a triple-double, excuse me,
13:12 in their road win at San Francisco.
13:15 So he's a really good player.
13:16 I think for Gonzaga in that game, they must rebound.
13:20 If they get off to a good start, now all of a sudden,
13:23 the game will be played at Gonzaga's pace,
13:26 as opposed to St. Mary's pace.
13:28 Because St. Mary's, they get so much credit for their offense.
13:37 But really, in all actuality, what it is,
13:39 is their defense makes things difficult to score.
13:43 They're such a good defensive team
13:45 that they grind you out early.
13:47 They get to a lead, and you can't speed them up
13:50 in any way, shape, or form.
13:51 Because they always have ball handlers
13:53 that take care of the ball, make good decisions.
13:55 They don't get sped up.
13:57 And coming back from a deficit to beat St. Mary's,
14:01 say it's a six-point deficit with seven, eight minutes
14:04 to play, it feels like a 12, 13-point deficit.
14:07 Because they don't make mistakes.
14:09 They don't turn it over.
14:10 They take good shots.
14:11 They're going to run the shot clock down.
14:13 And then they're so unbelievably difficult to score on.
14:16 So that makes this week big.
14:18 The last thing that game leading into that Kentucky game
14:22 that you were asking about was University of Portland next
14:24 week.
14:26 Portland's an interesting, unique team
14:28 in that they've had so many injuries over the last two
14:31 seasons that you don't know who you're going to get you.
14:33 You don't know what you're going to get.
14:35 When they're playing well, they look really good.
14:37 Because they hit a lot of threes.
14:38 They got freedom to shoot a lot of threes.
14:40 They'll change up their defense.
14:42 And Tyler Robertson is the best player
14:46 in the league that doesn't get a lot of attention,
14:48 because Portland hasn't been winning.
14:50 But they've got some pieces.
14:52 And same thing.
14:53 It's kind of like a recurring theme.
14:55 I keep saying, you got to get off to a good start.
14:58 Because everybody gets up and is excited to play Gonzaga.
15:02 But when you allow a team to get started on the right foot,
15:06 build some confidence, let them hang around,
15:09 that confidence builds.
15:10 And that's one thing that teams in the past couple of years
15:13 has done a good job of, is getting off to great starts
15:16 and kind of taking the will, taking the heart out
15:18 of the opponent right away.
15:20 Like that, crush the opponent's will to live.
15:22 That's Dan Dickow's message over the next three games.
15:25 Obviously, we will be back and talking with you guys
15:27 before this game.
15:28 So these are not the definitive end of our analysis.
15:31 Dan has the studio that he's cranking out
15:33 a ton of great podcasts.
15:35 And there is going to be an unbelievable amount
15:40 of great minds and information coming out
15:42 of that studio over the next couple of weeks
15:43 leading up to this Kentucky game.
15:45 There's going to be great articles on the website.
15:47 Dan, is there anything that we missed this week
15:48 that you want to get to?
15:49 Or can we say adios to everybody?
15:52 No, I mean, we're getting to the dog days of the college
15:56 basketball season.
15:57 February is almost here.
16:00 And that's when league title races really pick up.
16:05 As of now, it's still a four-team race--
16:08 St. Mary's, Gonzaga, San Francisco, Santa Clara.
16:12 And that's due to the fact that Gonzaga
16:13 dropped one at Santa Clara.
16:16 Now, you have to understand and realize
16:19 that you're not going to win a league title in one game.
16:22 You have to do it incrementally.
16:24 I know it sounds cliche.
16:26 You have to do it incrementally by taking care of the business
16:29 that is at hand.
16:30 And so I know you're geared up.
16:32 You want to play well in that St. Mary's game, which
16:35 will be on ESPN as well as on national radio.
16:38 But that St. Mary's game is not a big game
16:43 if you don't take care of business on Tuesday against LMU.
16:46 Absolutely.
16:47 Time to take care of business for Gonzaga.
16:49 This is not the dog days where they're just on cruise control.
16:52 This is the fighting through the dog days.
16:54 This is the dog fighting days.
16:55 This is going to be a crazy couple of games
16:59 as they close out this season, hopefully
17:00 try to get back into the top 25.
17:02 We thank you guys for tuning in all season long,
17:04 as you have, for great Gonzaga content.
17:06 Dan, who you got in studio next couple of weeks or this week
17:10 or coming--
17:10 it's always hard when people non-linear live television.
17:14 But what do you got recording this week?
17:16 Yeah, so just in about 45 minutes from now,
17:20 when we finish recording here, we're
17:22 going to have Gonzaga's second all-time leading scorer
17:25 joining Adam Morrison and I in studio, Jim McPhee.
17:28 He was a tremendous scorer in the early '90s.
17:31 He was the leading scorer in program history
17:34 until Drew Timmy broke his record this past season.
17:37 So should be a fun one, because he kind of bridged
17:39 that gap from the Stockton era to the first era that
17:43 made a postseason.
17:46 And he's a lawyer now in Spokane.
17:48 He's tremendously respected in the community.
17:51 And it'll be a chance for Adam and I to hear a little bit
17:53 about his experiences.
17:55 Love it.
17:55 Everyone go check that out.
17:56 Make sure you search and subscribe
17:58 wherever you get your podcasts.
17:59 And we'll talk to you guys next week.