Columnist Steve Carp: Zags say they were no Cinderella

Steve Carp

Monday, March 22, 1999 | 10:11 a.m.

Steve Carp covers college basketball for the Las Vegas Sun. This(R)is column is one in a series on the road to the Final Four.

PHOENIX -- They were defiant to the end. And given the lack of respect everyone seemed to be showing them, who could blame the Gonzaga Bulldogs for leaving the party prematurely and with a bit of a chip on their collective shoulder?

Dan Monson's team was sort of an uninvited guest to the NCAA's big shebang. It's like it was on the list, but more like an afterthought. It was like, give them some hors d'oeuvres, let them snag a few drinks, but don't bother setting a place for them at the table when dinner is served. They'll be long gone by the time the beef Wellington and lobster are carted out.

Well, guess what? The scrappy kids from Spokane not only stuck around, they had some manners to them as well. It wasn't like the Beverly Hillbillies had shown up with no shoes and an inability to use a knife and a fork. The Zags definitely belonged and it took a gutsy effort from a very talented Connecticut team to finally show the Bulldogs the door out of the NCAA Tournament.

"We were fortunate to win this game," UConn coach Jim Calhoun said in the aftermath of his team's surviving, 67-62. "I'm not sure we worked any harder in a basketball game this year.

"If you replaced 'Gonzaga' with 'Michigan State' on their uniforms, we would've believed."

Certainly, the Gonzaga players believed.

Every day, they were trying to sell the country on the fact that they didn't believe in fairy tales, that they didn't want to be labeled as a Cinderella, that respect is something you earn and they felt they had accomplished that.

This team, a No. 10 seed, beat a very good team from the Big Ten in Minnesota, the Pac-10 champion in Stanford and a very competitive and athletic team from the Southeastern Conference in Florida. There certainly were no free rides for Gonzaga, no Texas-San Antonios to warm-up with.

And UConn, the top seed here in the West Regional, was highly motivated, what with the quest for the school's first-ever Final Four berth so close. There's no way the Huskies would overlook the little Jesuit school from Spokane.

The Huskies didn't. And to their credit, the Bulldogs didn't step on the America West Arena floor in awe of the darlings of Big Monday, Super Tuesday and all the other fancy tags that come with having virtually every game televised to the entire nation on ESPN.

See, the Gonzaga guys would watch UConn on TV. And they allowed themselves the luxury of dreaming what it might be like if they ever shared the court with the Huskies. The Zags said they could hang with Connecticut.

Saturday, they did. And with a record crowd of 18,053 looking on, Gonzaga battled and fought and scratched and clawed -- right to the bitter end.

The 3-pointers weren't dropping, so the Bulldogs went inside. The turnovers were kept to a minimum against UConn's pressure defense. The bench outscored Connecticut 15-10.

And despite Matt Santangelo struggling offensively for the second straight game and Richie Frahm being held in check, Gonzaga never lost contact. No one ever led by more than six Saturday because Quentin Hall stepped up, Jeremy Eaton did likewise and Monson used every trick he had up his sleeve to give his team a shot.

And had Gonzaga just made a couple of shots, Calhoun would be the scourge of Connecticut today, not the toast of the state.

So it's on to Tropicana Field for UConn. For Gonzaga? A lifetime of memories crammed into two glorious weeks. A courageous, disciplined, well-coached team that provided America with plenty of thrills and excitement.

"What a crazy ride," Santangelo said. "Being picked up on a private airplane. The police escorts. That doesn't happen too often to little ol' Gonzaga.

"I think we earned a lot of respect with the effort we put in. I want people to remember we belonged here in the Elite Eight."

And that's how this 28-7 team hopes to be remembered in years to come -- a group of guys who may have been from a place few know and that has a funny name, but played the game the right way. And together.

"I'm just tremendously proud of these kids to take the opportunity they had to show that with schools like Gonzaga there is a lot of parity in college basketball," Monson said. "I told them after the game you've only got one thing to feel bad about and that is you don't get to play together again."

His team may have been out of shots, but Monson had one more left, and he let it go before the final buzzer: "Hopefully, we showed people we belonged here," he said. "That it is Gon-ZAG-a, SAN-tan-gelo, MON-son, those kind of things."

Monson's shot caught nothing but nylon. Hopefully, America got his message. If not, it's the country's loss. Not Dan Monson's or his team's.