Gonzaga's Ben Gregg on the Bulldogs making a statement at WCC Tournament: 'The chip on our shoulder only got bigger'
The Gonzaga Bulldogs heard some of the outside noise following some of their letdowns from earlier in the season.
After its narrow loss to Santa Clara and sitting at 11-5, the Zags fell out of the AP Top 25 poll for the first time since 2016 and teetered on the bubble to make the 2024 NCAA Tournament in the eyes of some prognosticators. They had struggled to finish in close games and didn't have many signature wins from the nonconference portion of their schedule, though it's worth noting three losses came against Purdue, UConn and San Diego State. Still, preseason expectations from the national landscape would have one think that Gonzaga wasn't up to its normal standard of being ranked near the top of the polls and rankings.
In reality, learning new roles and building chemistry just took some time. Since the loss to the Broncos, the Bulldogs have won 12 of their last 13 games and ended the regular season on an eight-game winning streak. Three of those victories came on the road at Kentucky, San Francisco and Saint Mary's.
But Gonzaga will have more than just momentum heading into the semifinal round of the WCC Tournament on Monday.
"The chip on our shoulder only got bigger," said Ben Gregg at Gonzaga's media availability on Thursday. "We've heard all the doubters all year, especially in the preseason. Everybody was hating on us. And especially with [the WCC awards] coming out, I think some guys have a little bigger chip on their shoulder, but it's just all fuel to the fire."
Here's more of what Gregg had to say:
On Gonzaga not getting any individual WCC awards:
"First of all props to those guys and I mean, you can't really blame them for getting those awards. It was the coaches who voted for them, but I think we all obviously felt that Graham (Ike) and Ryan (Nembhard) should've got at least one of those awards. But I mean, you can't do anything about it now. Hopefully you just get a trophy in Vegas and that would be that and not really have to worry about the individual awards and I think they'll tell you the same thing. They don't really care about that stuff, they just want to win games and go down to Vegas and win the [WCC] Tournament."
On the team's confidence levels:
"I think we've been confident all year. I mean, just going back to the fall time, you know, preseason stuff, you know, the work we put in, and you know, we lost a couple of games that we should've won. But we never lost that confidence or that swag that we play with. It's just kind of all clicking now, but I don't think we've even reached our full potential yet, which is a scary thing for other teams. I think we can still get better in different aspects of the game, that's what this week's kind of been about, kind of working on ourselves the last two days ... trying to get better, better [ourselves] and then get the scout going these next couple days."
On understanding the importance of the WCC Tournament for NCAA Tournament seeding:
"I mean, we all kind of know, but there's not much being said about it. I think just the big message is just go down there and win the [WCC] Tournament and then everything else will take care of itself type of deal. So we're not looking ahead to, you know, March Madness or anything we're just worried about, [the WCC semifinal] game on Monday and then win that and then worry about the championship Tuesday."
