Feb. 24—We went overtime on the latest Zags Insiders Podcast in honor of Team USA's golden hockey teams and Gonzaga's busy stretch to close the regular season.

There was a lot to sort through for former GU center Richard Fox, analyst on Gonzaga telecasts on KHQ and SWX, and yours truly with the selection committee's top 16 seeds, GU's two wins last week, Senior Night vs. Portland on Wednesday and a showdown looming Saturday night against Saint Mary's in Moraga.

Here are a few excerpts. Tune in for the full 66-minute podcast at https://youtu.be/YVUPdkj2UB4" or https://www.spokesman.com/podcasts/zags-basketball-insiders/.

Graham Ike finds a way

Fox: What (Pacific) did to Ike, he felt off in the first half, and that happens to even the best players. He kind of got stubborn about (taking jumpers) but to be fair, every time he'd touch it there'd be no less than four Pacific players with at least one foot in the paint.

That has an impact on what you're seeing and how you think you can score. I thought in the second half he obviously did a better job of getting deeper touches. He would spin away from the double, but he also started catching it in that higher post area, kind of on the logo just under free-throw line. That's a really difficult place to double and he had some success.

And he hit some really hard shots. That's what great players do and they needed every single one of those. He played like the (WCC) player of the year in the second half.

Meehan: He's carried a massive load on his shoulders with (Braden) Huff's injury. In the first half it really felt like he played into Pacific's hands. This is what they were willing to give him and he took it, the perimeter shots.

It felt like this was a game he was tiptoeing on that line — he did this against San Diego — his edge is what makes him who he is, but there's a point where he gets to that line or even over it.

Mark Few said afterward that he gets fouled every play. That's an exaggeration but not a huge exaggeration. He is getting fouled a ton in there. He picked up that technical (foul) in frustration. He's been great about it all year. He's had a couple times where he pushed that edge a little too far.

He did play through it. They don't win that game without him. If he scored 12 points, where are the rest of the points coming from?

Zags, Gaels always a big deal

Meehan: There isn't going to be lot of space in the paint. Those two guys from Pacific were big guys and they held their ground. (Saint Mary's Harry) Wessels and (Andrew) McKeever are enormous and the help-side defender might be (Paulius) Murauskas, who is 6-8, 230-ish.

There is no mystery with these teams. You know what's coming — what Pacific did to a larger degree. Try to make Gonzaga play half-court offense, execute, and try to make them shoot over you. They're probably going to tempt them at the 3-point line with a couple of their guys. If you want to shoot it, go ahead, we're willing to live with that.

Offensively, they're going to run their stuff, milk the clock. That crowd is going to be out of their minds with the last (WCC regular-season) game against Gonzaga. It'll be their Senior Night. Start to finish, it's going to be a tough place to play.

Fox: Pacific's game-plan is not that much dissimilar to what Saint Mary's is going to do. The difference is Saint Mary's has much bigger and better bigs and better players, and they're playing at home.

You're going to see heavy doses where it's one-on-one coverage with Graham and they'll give him that jump shot, but as he starts trying to work his way into the paint they're going to have a lot of people around him.

I just have this concern you're going to see some iteration of this defensive scheme every night. That makes life so difficult for Graham. They have to figure out a solution to that. Part of reason he's taking all these 3s is he's just as capable as anybody else and he's also getting open looks.

They just played Wessels or McKeever (in Spokane), they didn't go double big. I'll be very interested to see if they do that in Moraga, where they put one of their big guys on (Jalen) Warley and even for small stretches on Tyon Grant-Foster, understanding that he's going to drive against that matchup.