WCC Tournament Quarterfinals Preview: #1 Gonzaga vs. #8 San Francisco

After beating Pacific in their first game, San Francisco will move on to face the Gonzaga Bulldogs in the quarterfinal round of the WCC tournament on Saturday.  San Francisco beat Pacific 62-58, which is slightly alarming as the Dons will have to face a very strong Gonzaga team.

Kruize Pinkins and Tim Derksen both had 14 points in the victory.  If the Dons want to stand a chance against the Zags they will have to score much more than this.  The bench only contributed eight points for the Dons. That will also have to improve if they want to take down Gonzaga.

The Bulldogs are coming off of a loss to BYU.  No one wants to end the regular season with a loss.  I expect the Zags to get out of their slump quickly and come out firing.  Now they have a chip on their shoulder that was not there before.  They know that they are not invincible.

More from 2015 WCC Tournament

• Looking Back on Gonzaga’s Season
• Gonzaga Wins Men’s WCC Championship
• BYU Wins Women’s WCC Tournament Championship
• WCC Tournament Men’s Final Preview: #1 Gonzaga vs. #2 BYU
• WCC Championship Keys to the Game: Gonzaga

Having some time off should help them fine tune some fundamentals.  It is interesting that in the last game against BYU, Przemek Karnowski did not play for most of the second half.  He was getting beat on the boards.  Hopefully the time off has served him well.

This game is key for the Zags to start to gain post season momentum.  Even if they lose the game against San Francisco, they will definitely still make the NCAA tournament. But that is not the way that they want to play before the Big Dance starts.  San Francisco meanwhile would love to beat the Zags.  If they could, that would mean that they could beat anyone in the conference.

I predict that the Zags will win big playing with a newly found fire and start to gain some momentum.

Catch this game on Saturday at 6:00 PM Pacific.  It will be aired on ESPN2.