Tonight was the first home game of the year where I felt the team did not play up their capabilities and give maximum effort. While this was the perfect situation for such an effort, a quite crowd-undermanned opponent-with a huge game in the near future, it was still a bit disappointing the see the lack of fire for long stretches of the game tonight.

Early the Bulldogs let the Vikings hang around, and if it wasn’t for Raivio’s 16 first half points the team could have been in serious trouble. While Derek was great tonight from the 3 point and free throw lines, especially in the first half, he really forced his mid range game and took some poor shots which hurt the team. As Derek cooled off in the second half Josh did a nice job to get a double double. While it is hard to ever fault a player who gets a double-double, Heytvelt relied on his superior athleticism to get the job done, and at points also forced his offense a bit and had too many turnovers. Derek and Josh led the team and put up nice numbers, but tonight both forced too many shots, committed too many turnovers, and let their frustrations influence their play in a negative way.

On the offensive end the team had far too many turnovers, especially against a team that was not too high pressure, including an abysmal 14 in the first half. Gonzaga also shot the ball poorly from the floor, actually shooting worse from inside the 3-point line than on 3 pointers. The high number of turnovers and poor shooting percentages stemmed from the Zags not relying on the their offense to get them easy baskets, and then trying to create shots individually when the offense faltered. Another disappointment tonight was Gonzaga only out rebounding an undersized PSU team by 2 rebounds and being out rebounded in the second half.

Once again defense was a positive of the game tonight. Gonzaga did a great job of limiting the Vikings best offensive players, Morrison and Kamara, and therefore was able to hold Portland State to 51 points. The team did a nice job of contesting shots and getting their hands of a lot of balls at the defensive end, leading to a bunch of steals and even a couple shot clock violations. This type of defensive effort is becoming this team’s calling card and tonight it won the game for the Zags, which is a great sign because in previous years Gonzaga could not always count on its defense to almost single handly win a ballgame. The one positive on the offensive end was the Bulldogs 3 point shooting, led by a 4-7 effort from Derek and 2 3s from Mallon.

After the first month of the season the Bulldogs have been extremely impressive and done much better than most expected before the season. Now the team must continue to improve as they embark on the toughest month of their schedule, and arguably the hardest month in the history of the program, starting on Saturday with a test against nationally ranked University of Texas and nation’s