Too Much Morrison for Loyola
With the aura of a rock star and the soul of a shooter, Gonzaga’s Adam Morrison turned away what would have been Loyola Marymount’s biggest victory since the end of the Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble era Saturday.
Loyola Marymount, a feisty team with a losing record, led No. 5 Gonzaga by 10 points in the first half and by two with six minutes left, only to watch Morrison show why he is in a two-man race for national player of the year with a 37-point second half and a career-high 44 points in Gonzaga’s 79-70 victory.
“It might be one of the best individual performances that I have seen,” said Loyola Marymount Coach Rodney Tention, a former Arizona assistant who had a front-row seat during the careers of Mike Bibby and Salim Stoudamire.
The chanting, mostly crimson-clad crowd of 4,482 in Gersten Pavilion was the second-largest home crowd in Loyola Marymount history, only 43 shy of the record set against Pepperdine in 1988.
Morrison, his long shaggy hair and thin mustache the targets of taunters, scored only seven points in the first half, missing all three of his three-point attempts.
In the second, he made eight of 10 three-pointers, many from NBA range, and finished by making 14 of 20 shots overall.
“I played horrible the first half,” said Morrison, a diabetic who gave himself a routine shot of insulin on the bench during the one minute of the game he missed.
“Then I went out there and got a wide-open three to start the second half and it went down. Then the second one went down. End of story from there.”
Whatever the crowd was saying -- “Probably stuff you don’t want in the paper,” Morrison said with a grin -- it wasn’t working.
“I like it,” Morrison said. “People from Gonzaga know I like to play on the road. Nothing I hadn’t heard. Nothing too original. Just kids having fun.”
With his 44-point performance -- his fifth 40-plus game of the season -- he overtook Duke’s J.J. Redick in their nip-and-tuck race for the national scoring title by raising his average to 29.4 points a game.
The knock on Morrison in the player-of-the-year race is that he scores many of his points against lesser competition. But he scored 43 against Michigan State, 43 against Washington, 34 against Memphis and 34 against Stanford.
“The only sad thing is they pit the two against each other,” Gonzaga Coach Mark Few said. “They’re both great players. I love ‘em both.”
For all Morrison’s efforts, Loyola Marymount (11-14, 8-3 in West Coast Conference) which had won eight of its last 10 games, was still in the game until the final 2 1/2 minutes.
With less than 6 1/2 remaining, Brandon Worthy, a guard who darted and drove his way to 22 points, forced his way into the lane and scored on a scoop shot, crumpling to the floor after a blow to the cheek as he was fouled on the play.
Unable to continue for the moment, he was replaced at the free-throw line by John Montgomery, whose father, Golden State Warrior Coach Mike Montgomery, was in the stands. Montgomery made the free throw for a 61-59 lead, but it would be Loyola Marymount’s last.
Morrison made consecutive three-pointers for a 65-61 lead, and though Worthy returned with 4:14 left, the momentum had turned.
Loyola Marymount cut the lead to one twice more, but Morrison made two more three-pointers for a 73-66 lead with 2:36 left.
“When the game got tight, he rose up. That’s vintage Mo,” Few said.
Had the Lions been able to pull the upset, it would have been their first victory over a ranked team since defeating Alabama in the 1990 NCAA tournament, shortly after Gathers’ death. “They played great. They’re like an NIT or NCAA tournament team,” Morrison said. “Their record isn’t so good, but they started slow.”
Gonzaga (22-3, 11-0) might have long-term concerns about its defense and its offensive balance, if it took a record-performance by Morrison to beat a sub.-500 team.
But Saturday was about what has become routine for Gonzaga. The victory clinched a tie for the regular-season conference title.