The journey is over for Gonzaga in this particular edition of March Madness. The Zags were bounced by Arkansas in the Sweet 16, part of what was a very unconvincing tournament for coach Mark Few\u2019s team, which still hasn\u2019t won a national championship despite knocking on the door several times. What went wrong is mostly an Arkansas-related conversation, but the seeds of this upset were planted in previous weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jaylin Williams and J.D. Notae<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The biggest thing which went wrong for Gonzaga was that Arkansas had two players who played extremely well. Jaylin Williams provided strong interior defense and rebounding against Gonzaga in the Hogs\u2019 Sweet 16 upset of the Bulldogs. Williams did not dominate Gonzaga big men Drew Timme and Chet Holmgren, but he held his own, which was itself a victory for Arkansas. Williams played sound positional defense, got his share of rebounds, and scored enough to offset what Timme and Holmgren were able to do. Notae defensively dominated his counterpart, Gonzaga guard Andrew Nembhard, which was in many ways the key to the whole game. Arkansas was far better than Gonzaga in the backcourt, relatively even in the frontcourt. That was a winning equation for the Razorbacks, who were consistently better than Gonzaga down the stretch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Physical Play<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The formula for beating Gonzaga was shown last year by Baylor in the national championship game, and it was reinforced by Saint Mary\u2019s when the Gaels beat Gonzaga in late February. Arkansas was extremely physical with Gonzaga, especially in the backcourt. Gonzaga\u2019s guards did not know how to handle the intensity and the toughness of their Arkansas defenders. Arkansas made the game uncomfortable for Gonzaga\u2019s backcourt and was able to keep the game at a relatively slow and manageable pace as a result. It is clear that when a good team with strong defense is able to physically push around Gonzaga and get the Zags off their preferred spots, GU is noticeably more vulnerable, but few teams had the muscle or toughness to pull it off. Arkansas did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Guards Playing Horribly<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The backcourt for Gonzaga, featuring Andrew Nembhard but also Rasir Bolton and Anton Watson, did not hit open shots when they were available. Gonzaga shot under 25 percent on 3-pointers in the first half of the game. Those missed looks in the first half were crucial, because Gonzaga didn\u2019t get as many of them in the second half when Arkansas played even better defense and scoreboard pressure mounted on the No. 1 seed. Gonzaga needed at least one player to catch fire from 3-point range and cause the Arkansas defense to scramble, but that never happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Loss Of Form<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Gonzaga erosion was not just one game. GU looked unconvincing against Georgia State and Memphis in the previous week of tournament play, and this followed less-than-dominant performances against Saint Mary\u2019s late in the West Coast Conference season. This was not an out-of-nowhere loss to Arkansas. Gonzaga had steadily failed to play its best level of basketball in the latter portion of the season. The team lacked the edge it had in January and early February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The journey is over for Gonzaga in this particular edition of March Madness. The Zags were bounced by Arkansas in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":9629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaab"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21892"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21908,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21892\/revisions\/21908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}