Gonzaga accepts new role as NCAA blue blood, moves on to Sweet 16

BOISE, Idaho — It wasn’t too long ago that Gonzaga was one of the teams celebrated for being a giant slayer in March, for being the little school from Spokane, Wash., that came to epitomize what it meant to be a Cinderella story in the NCAA tournament.

Those days, however, are over. Gonzaga is now one of those giants the little guys are hoping to take down, one of the teams that many with even a casual understanding of college basketball will recognize. So, in a weekend that’s already had its fair share of upsets, the idea that the Bulldogs would beat a school with the size and prestige of Ohio State — as they did here Saturday night with a 90-84 victory — wasn’t a surprise.

“They’re what you want a program to be,” Ohio State Coach Chris Holtmann said. “That is, year after year after year they have good, young players, so there’s never going to be a significant dip in the program.

“That’s what you want in an elite program.”

The Bulldogs, a year after their breakthrough run to the national championship game, advanced to a fourth straight Sweet 16, where they await the Xavier-Florida State winner.

The victory did not come easy, despite fourth-seeded Gonzaga (32-4) scoring the first 15 points in this West Region game.

The fifth-seeded Buckeyes (25-9) slowly fought their way back and trailed 44-33 at halftime. They then stormed out to a 25-10 run to open the second half.

Ohio State took its first lead on Kam Williams’s three-pointer with 10:35 remaining that made it 56-54, and after the two teams went back and forth over the next few minutes, the Buckeyes took a 67-62 lead on a three-pointer by Keita Bates-Diop — who finished with 28 points in what will likely be his final game before declaring for the NBA draft — with 6:03 to go.

“The run they made in the second half has us back on our heels,” Gonzaga Coach Mark Few said.

At that moment, it looked like the Zags’ hopes of yet another deep tournament run were beginning to fade. But then the Bulldogs scored the next 11 points — a run began by a three from redshirt freshman Zach Norvell Jr., who led Gonzaga with 28 points, and was ended by a three-pointer from Rui Hachimura (who hadn’t made one since December) that swung the game back in Gonzaga’s favor for good.

“I was just told that,” Holtmann said with a wry smile of Hachimura’s three. “That’s nice to hear.

“But, yeah. Those were crushing.”

So Gonzaga’s 20th consecutive trip to the NCAA tournament continues.

“Professionally, I can’t think of any better feeling than winning games in March,” Few said. “Any win in the NCAA tournament, I think, is the hardest thing you can do. To be able to advance now to that second weekend . . . we’re guaranteed of at least five more days with our team, with the hope of getting to that next week [the Final Four] that many of us have experienced how special that is.

“We’ve built this thing the right way. And we have do have followers all over the country, and it’s because my guys are what college basketball is all about.”