The two premier faculty basketball methods at the west coast, Gonzaga and UCLA, will meet in Las Vegas on Thursday night time for a possibility to advance to the Elite 8.
LAS VEGAS — The two premier faculty basketball methods at the west coast, Gonzaga and UCLA, will meet in Las Vegas on Thursday night time for a possibility to advance to the Elite 8.
The sport is extremely expected thank you partially to the historical past between those two methods, relationship again 17 years (to the day) when UCLA got here again from 17 down and defeated the Bulldogs, leaving an emotional Adam Morrison at the flooring and growing a long-lasting reminiscence of the heartbreak of school sports activities.
Gonzaga and UCLA met once more in 2021 and revenge used to be dished out in a significant method when Jalen Suggs took the ball to part courtroom and introduced a 37-footer on the buzzer, which banked in and despatched the Zags to some other nationwide championship and despatched the Bruins – a plucky play-in 11 seed that 12 months – house in dramatic style.
These reminiscences make this sport really feel much more enormous than a standard Sweet 16 matchup, and Locked on Zags and Locked on UCLA hosts Andy Patton and Zachary Anderson-Yoxsimer were given in combination to talk about the historical past and the present matchup in a crossover episode.
“I think it’s fun we are seeing this west coast rivalry develop,” Patton said. “West coast college basketball doesn’t get a lot of press. UCLA and Gonzaga and Arizona are the three west coast programs that really stand out, and for good reason.”
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This 12 months’s matchup won’t function a determine as iconic as Morrison, or a celebrity freshman like Suggs, however Drew Timme is a countrywide participant of the 12 months finalist whilst Jaime Jaquez is an All-American and one of the crucial absolute best natural scorers in faculty basketball.
Unsurprisingly, the important thing for each and every workforce on this sport is determining how to prevent the opposite workforce’s prime profile scorer, even supposing there’ll be various different keys for those groups to execute if they would like to advance to an Elite 8 matchup in opposition to both UConn or Arkansas.
“I think it comes down to UCLA spacing the floor with [David] Singleton and [Tyger] Campbell, which opens up the lane for [Amari] Bailey or [Adem] Bona to make those moves. And it just depends on how many turnovers lead to easy points for UCLA. Because they need a lot of easy points.”
Will this sport give us an immediate classic like two of the ultimate matchups have? Time will inform, however two extremely professional, neatly coached groups taking part in with the whole lot at the line certain seems like a sport made for Hollywood’s eyes. We will see if it delivers.
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