Saint Mary's basketball: Jock Landale clinched WCC POY with Gonzaga win

There are very few times where future Hall of Fame coach Mark Few doesn’t have a strategic answer for a player. That happened on Thursday night, as Jock landale led Saint Mary’s over Gonzaga.

Coming into the game at Gonzaga, Saint Mary’s 18-2 (7-0) was in dire need of a big win. The Gaels’ best non-conference wins were New Mexico State and Dayton, and the loss to Washington State looks worse and worse each day.

It was basically determined by college basketball analysts that in order for Randy Bennett’s team to get back into the NCAA tournament, they need at least one win over the WCC juggernaut Gonzaga Bulldogs. That appeared to be a difficult task, considering that the Zags smashed them three times a year ago.

But the graduation of 7’0 Polish center Przemek Karnowski provided an opening for another big in Saint Mary’s Jock Landale, whose only one of three players in the country to average 20 points and 10 rebounds. He’s both the top scorer and rebounder in the WCC as of now as well.

At the biggest stage of the season, he played his best game of his senior year, scoring 26 points and grabbing 12 rebounds on an incredibly efficient 12/15 shooting. Besides the great scoring production, he played 37 minutes in the game and avoided foul trouble throughout the night, something that didn’t happen a year ago.

All night long, the Gaels’ game plan was to feed the ball to Landale and force the Zags to make a painful decision. Either have a smaller forward guard a center or leave a Gael wide-open for three. That happened last night, with them going 8/13 from deep.

This is hardly a surprise for Landale, who in conference play is averaging 23.4 ppg and has grabbed at least nine boards in every game. But his top two games, at Gonzaga and scoring 31 points in an overtime win at BYU, have put Saint Mary’s in the driver’s seat for the regular season title. He’s more than the favorite to win Player of the Year, and now he’s all but won it.

Next: Where is Saint Mary's in latest Bracketology?

Saint Mary’s still can’t afford a letdown, as they have another road game against an improved Pacific team this Saturday followed by another battle with BYU. However, as long as they have the best player in the conference on their side, they’ll be just fine.

Saint Mary’s basketball: Jock Landale clinched WCC POY with Gonzaga win

By Tristan Freeman | Jan 19, 2018

There are very few times where future Hall of Fame coach Mark Few doesn’t have a strategic answer for a player. That happened on Thursday night, as Jock landale led Saint Mary’s over Gonzaga.