As with all West Coast Conference teams this season, San Diego never had a chance. Gonzaga entered this game as a favorite with 32 points. 20 seconds from the end of the first half, they had a 32 point lead. Gonzaga scored 51 points in the first half without hitting a single three-point ball. In the end, the Bulldogs improved to 22-0, eliminating Toreros 106-69 on Saturday night.
After a few very agitated first minutes, Gonzaga turned on the clamps defensively and took easy buckets to the other side. San Diego spun the ball more than 12 times in the first half, leading Gonzaga to 19 points. The Zags scored 40 points in the first 20 minutes, led by Drew Timme’s 17 points in 7 of 7 shots inside the arc. Corey Kispert and Jalen Suggs added 11 points in the first half.
The second half was filled with individual highlights. Sean Farnham won a pizza named after him, Pavel Zakharov got three and Aaron Cook put a poor San Diego kid on a poster.
Timme finished with the team’s highest score, 21 points. Kispert added 17, Suggs 16 and Andrew Nembhard 12. Eleven different Zags scored a bucket on Saturday. His 70 points in the painting were more than the San Diego team’s 69 total.
Gonzaga has now won 49 consecutive home games, one far from drawing the program record, set when the McCarthey Athletic Center opened in 2003-2007. The Bulldogs’ next opponent is the team that ended that series of 50 consecutive wins at home, the Santa Clara Broncos. Santa Clara had a good home win over Pepperdine on Saturday, exploding to 86 points. It was the first time they scored more than 80 points against a D1 team this season. They will need yet another monstrous offensive performance to stand a chance against Gonzaga, who beat Santa Clara by at least 49 points in each of the past three seasons.