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No. 20 Saint Mary's wary of overlooking Portland (Feb 09, 2017)
No. 20 Saint Mary's cannot afford to get ahead of itself.
The Gaels have a big home game against No. 1 Gonzaga coming up on Saturday, with the ESPN Game Day crew scheduled to be on hand in Moraga, Calif., for that one.
But for that game to have the significance Saint Mary's wants it to have, the Gaels first must get past Portland in Thursday's West Coast Conference matchup on the Gaels' home court.
Saint Mary's (21-2, 11-1 WCC) must fight overconfidence after the Gaels limited the Pilots to nine first-half points in a 74-33 victory in the first meeting four weeks ago in Portland, Ore.
"Probably the best game we've played for 40 minutes," Saint Mary's coach Randy Bennett of that performance.
The Gaels are coming off a performance that was just as impressive, holding San Diego to nine points in the first half of Saturday's 71-27 road victory over the Toreros.
"I've been there," Portland coach Terry Porter said.
The Toreros were held to their lowest scoring output in school history while shooting 19.6 percent from the field.
"We played really well defensively," Bennett said. "We've been getting better defensively."
The Gaels rank second in the nation in scoring defense, yielding just 56.6 point per game, and have won six straight since their 79-56 loss at Gonzaga. Meanwhile, Portland (9-15, 2-10) has lost 10 in a row, and has failed to score more than 52 points in half of them.
One bit of optimism for Portland came in Saturday's loss at BYU. The Pilots held a six-point lead with 4:37 remaining against the favored Cougars before losing 73-62.
Porter, a former member of the Portland Trail Blazers, is not sure the Pilots' success against BYU provides a blueprint for success against Saint Mary's.
"They're totally different teams," Porter said. "Saint Mary's system -- they're so precise in regards to how they go about it. They have good patience and play at different speeds. They have the pick-and-roll game, and their perimeter shooters."
The Gaels lead the conference in 3-point shooting at 39.7 percent. Calvin Hermanson has made 44.3 percent of his 3-point attempts while averaging 13.0 points, and Emmett Naar is shooting 46.6 percent from long range while averaging 10.1 points. Their star, however, is center Jock Landale, who is averaging 16.9 points on 60.3 percent shooting and 9.5 rebounds.
The Pilots' challenge will be greater than it was the first time they faced Saint Mary's, because senior point guard Alec Wintering, the team's leading scorer at 19.5 points a game, suffered a season-ending knee injury two days after the loss to the Gaels. It leaves guard Jazz Johnson, who is averaging 16.0 points, and forward Gabe Taylor, scoring at a 12.2 points-per-game clip, as Portland's top offensive threats.
"Obviously, we're going to have to try to do a really good job early on," Porter said. "We can't give them anything easy. We gave them too many easy shots early (in the first meeting), and they got their confidence."
Despite the apparent talent gap between Saint Mary's and Portland, Bennett knows his team does not have the athleticism to deviate from its precision execution. The Gaels nearly blew a big lead against Pacific last Thursday before escaping with a 74-70 victory. Bennett let his players know about it the next day.
"I got on them a little bit," Bennett said. "We were up 17 and we just didn't concentrate. We haven't had that many close games in league, so we need to get better when we separate and just finish it."
