As with every West Coast Conference team this season, San Diego has never had a chance. Gonzaga entered this game as a 32-point favorite. With 20 seconds left in the first half, they maintained a 32-point lead. Gonzaga scored 51 first-half points without hitting a single three-pointer. In the end, the Bulldogs improved to 22-0, which wiped out the Toreros 106-69 on Saturday night.
After a rather turbulent first few minutes, Gonzaga turned on the clamps defensively and this led to easy buckets. San Diego turned the ball around 12 times in the first half, leading to 19 Gonzaga points. The Zags had a whopping 40 points in the paint in the first 20 minutes, led by Drew Timme’s 17 points on 7-of-7 shooting inside the arc. Corey Kispert and Jalen Suggs both bagged 11 first-half points.
The second half was full of individual highlights. Sean Farnham got a pizza after him, Pavel Zakharov hit a try and Aaron Cook put a poor San Diego kid on a poster.
Hours end with a team high of 21 points. Kispert added 17, Suggs 16 and Andrew Nembhard 12. Eleven different Zags scored a bucket on Saturday. Their 70 points in the paint were more than San Diego’s team total of 69.
Gonzaga has now won 49 consecutive home games, one of which did not set the program record set when the 2003-2007 McCarthey Athletic Center opened. The Bulldogs’ next opponent is the team that finished the original 50-game winning streak, the Santa Clara Broncos. Santa Clara took a good home win over Pepperdine on Saturday and exploded for 86 points. It was the first time they scored 80+ points against a D1 team this season. They will need another monster offensive performance to have a chance against Gonzaga, who have beaten Santa Clara by at least 49 points in the last three seasons.