Montana at Gonzaga

Move over Ammo, here comes Addo! Cousy Award pre-season selection committee: eat crow, Pargo is for sure one of the top 40 point guards. Heytvelt did not sniff paint or glue, but he is out. This and more, inside the Game Critic Repor(t).




While Micah Downs has been stewing in potential for half a dozen years, Austin Daye had a game-changing performance on game one for the Zags. This long, lean, talented, basketball-savvy and athletic player had no fear on offense and was not shy shooting either. He had a 20/10 game, but more importantly he changed the both on offense and on defense as a shot blocker/shot changer.

Pargo brought the house down twice with some impressive power dunks, and played almost every minute as the lone point guard. With Stephen Gray down with an injury, and P-Mac transfering, Matt Bouldin is the temporary backup point guard when Jeremy Pargo takes a quick breather on the bench.

Pendo (short for Pendergraft) and Bouldin were the solid tough do-it-all fill-in-the-blanks kind of players that Gonzaga needs in their rotation. Larry Gruganious is back after a red-shirt (he shouldn't have R/S last year unless it was an injury) and looks like another value member in their rotation. The former baseball-pro JuCo Ira Brown was not in the rotation (he played when the walk-ons came in).

But that's where the good news end for the Zags. Now get ready for the cold shower. Kuso is still Kuso, a foul waiting to happen, but the Zags can get defense, rebounding, blocked shots, and 1 out of two baskets made when he is inside the paint. Will Foster is 7'4", and his height alone was able to change some shots but that's all he seems to be able to contribute. He would have R/S if it wasn't for the new Heytvelt "outage". Theo Davis DNP for personal reasons.

And now to Heytvelt. No, he did not sniff glue or paint or mushrooms. He is going to have surgery and as a result of that he is going to be out for at least six weeks, which puts him out of the out of conference schedule. The Zags will face their patented tough OOC schedule once again without Heytvelt. The good news is that they got trained in these type of situations since Heytvelt went down in early 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 (for different reasons).

And while this was a great performance by the Zags, and the game was really fun to watch (lots of offense, defense "did not get in the way"), most of their high profile opponents will be much better than Montana and not all games will be played in a capacity Kennel crowd, and Austin Daye will get scouted a bit more by then.

Speaking of Montana, they looked like good Big Sky team, which is perhaps why they were picked to finish in the top two of the Big Sky. Very promising as a mid-major player was their point guard Martin.

And now to the Mark Few critic segment. Mark Few almost let Montana make a comeback in the second half when he waited for six minutes before bringing Austin Daye back in the game. Montana's defense tightened and they were chipping at the margin. But once Daye came back it, the game was over for the Montana Grizzlies.