| | SPOKANE, Wash. -- America's national pastime is a tough sell
on the basketball-crazy Gonzaga University campus these days.
The Bulldogs baseball team played a doubleheader before a sparse
crowd the morning after the school's hoops heroes staged another
upset victory in the NCAA Tournament, raising hopes for a second
consecutive trip to the Elite Eight.
Tom Black, a student grounds-crew employee for the baseball
squad, had only good things to say about the basketball team as he
joined about 50 other baseball fans watching the Bulldogs take on
Loyola Marymount on a breezy, chilly day.
"It's good for the whole school," Black said. "It's not a
competition-type thing with the basketball team because they get
more media attention."
"They've definitely got a good chance to go all the way to the
Final Four," said another student worker, Greg Dorrington, who
sold tickets to a trickle of fans entering the baseball stadium.
The basketball team enjoyed a day of rest Sunday after arriving
at Spokane International Airport in the wee hours following their
82-76 victory over St. John's in the West Regional at Tucson, Ariz.
Hundreds of fans who traveled to cheer on the team and enjoy the
Southwest sunshine headed back home Sunday, including students who
ditched classes for the week to make epic road trips.
After Saturday's victory, first-year coach Mark Few and his team
gathered at midcourt and waved to Bulldogs fans to show their
appreciation.
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Zags win; Tyler does too
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SPOKANE, Wash. -- Gonzaga basketball does strange things to
people, especially during the March Madness of the NCAA Tournament.
Case in point: Tyler Shawnson.
As the Bulldogs began a second-half run Saturday evening en
route to an 82-76 victory over St. John's in Tucson, Ariz., the
Gonzaga freshman turned to sophomore girlfriend Kathy Martinez in
the hubbub of the campus' Crosby Student Center.
"Will you marry me?" he asked, as 300 others fixed their eyes
on a six-foot-wide TV screen showing the game.
The answer was yes, and Shawnson proceeded to stand atop a desk
and proclaim his joy to Bulldogs fans who had been biting nails
throughout the seesaw game.
"I'm so happy. This is so cool," he said.
But romantic?
"All the people are so excited here, and I just thought it was
a good way to show her how much I love her," Shawnson explained as
his fianceé beamed nearby.
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Few also had kind words for his players, who struggled earlier
in the season to live up to the expectations generated by last
year's trip to the Elite Eight.
The team has come up big in the postseason, winning the West
Coast Conference tournament championship and upsetting
higher-seeded Louisville and St. John's in the NCAAs.
"I am so happy for these kids right now," Few said. "They
have worked their entire basketball careers, and this is a great
thing for them right now. These guys came through when the lights
were on bright."
The next test comes Thursday, when the tenth-seeded Bulldogs
(26-8) play sixth-seeded Purdue (23-9) in the West Region
semifinals in Albuquerque, N.M.
The Boilermakers beat No. 3 seed Oklahoma 66-62 on Saturday, and
No. 8 Wisconsin beat top seed Arizona to make it a clean sweep of
the top three seeds in the suddenly wide-open regional.
The success of the tournament's lower seeds boosted the
confidence of the hundreds of students who crammed into Gonzaga's
Crosby Student Center to watch Saturday's Bulldogs game on a
big-screen TV.
"With this kind of spirit, we can go all the way," said
Cecelia McMullen, a Gonzaga law school employee and self-professed non-basketball fan who watched the game with several neighbors and children from her northwest Spokane neighborhood.
"I don't even know how to play basketball, but the kids love to
root for the team," McMullen said. "This is so huge, they even
got me down here."
"This team has heart, and they can go all the way," said
freshman Adam Ueltschi as students gathered outside the center after the victory and staged an impromptu rally.
A crowd of several hundred gathered in a
square next to a statue of Gonzaga's most famous alumnus, Bing
Crosby.
Young men bared their chests and hammed it up for TV news
cameras that have appeared with increasing frequency on the
normally straitlaced campus since the Bulldogs' emergence in last
year's NCAAs.
A 40-foot-long banner at the back of the student center
proclaimed, "The Road to Indianapolis" -- the site of this year's
Final Four.
A trip to Indianapolis would require two more upset victories
for Gonzaga. That does not seem out of reach for students at the
small, Jesuit-run liberal arts college with the frequently
mispronounced name (It's gon-ZAG-ah, not gon-ZAWG-a, or GON-za-ga).
The school is named after St. Aloysius Gonzaga, the patron saint of youth, who died in 1591 while caring for victims of the plague in Rome.
The fans knew of their team's talents before the Bulldogs
surprised the rest of the nation with their run in last year's
tournament. Gonzaga won four regular-season WCC titles in the 1990s
and made five postseason tournament appearances.
That record has won over such unlikely fans as Da Duong and Tom
Nguyen, who joined the throng at Crosby Student Center on Saturday.
The two business students from Vietnam knew next to nothing
about basketball before they left their native country to attend
Gonzaga. This season, they attended every home game at the
4,000-seat Martin Center and played basketball in a student
recreational league.
"We're always underdogs, and I like that," Duong said of the
Bulldogs.
After they graduate, Duong and Nguyen plan to return to Vietnam
and introduce friends there to basketball.
"We want to bring some of this excitement back home," Nguyen
said.
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