What Gonzaga's Mark Few said after win over Pacific

Any college basketball fan would've been able to tell you Saturday's West Coast Conference tilt between Gonzaga and Pacific was far from pretty, though it was somewhat par for the course when considering how some of their previous matchups played out in a similar fashion.

The only difference about Saturday's close-call for the Bulldogs was that it was in front of their home fans, not in a quiet gym down in Stockton, California, and it required outlasting a much more physical and talented Tigers squad than the ones they saw prior to Dave Smart's arrival.

Nonetheless, the end result was the same as the previous 22 head-to-head meetings: the Zags were victorious, and they had to get their hands dirty in the process.

Graham Ike battled and shot his way to 20 points, Davis Fogle came up big with 18 points off the bench and Gonzaga (27-2, 15-1 WCC) dug in its heels defensively to hold off Pacific (17-13, 8-9 WCC) in a 71-62 slugfest from McCarthey Athletic Center on Saturday.

Here's what Mark Few had to say after the game.

On Pacific's size and physciality

"After watching them on tape, I kind of knew it was going to be a game pretty close to this. They're a really, really tough, hard-nosed team. They're incredibly physical; their numbers show that. They have really good size inside."

"Their coach was incredibly successful up in Canada, and he's done a nice job of flipping that thing at Pacific and you watch their games against some of the other teams in the league, and they were knock-down, drag-outs basically down to that 4-minute timeout. That's kind of how this one was."

On Elias Ralph

"I just think he's a terrific player. He knows how to play. He's tough as nails, he's smart, he's skilled. We spent a lot of time talking about him."

"He had 12 [points], but I thought our guys did a pretty good job on him, because he's a tough guard."

On Graham Ike's second half performance

"He got duped into thinking that some of those shots that we were making against San Francisco would be the same tonight. And he's got to remember he's an All-American when he's down around the paint. But there was a lot of bodies in the paint tonight; a lot of bodies, but literally every time he made an assertive move it led to us getting a 3, or him getting to the free-throw line or him scoring."

"But it's hard. He's the focal point of every scouting report. He gets fouled on every possession and they don't get called very often. There's a lot of bodies down there around him too, so, we got to make sure we get him back to doing what he does."

On his team's defensive effort

"It totally kept us in the game. It was what won us the game, because we weren't very good on offense tonight at all. But the defense just kept us in it so we could make just enough plays on the offensive end."

"That's kind of how it's been since Braden [Huff] has been out; we became more of a defensive- oriented team. But we can do that, we can be that, and I think we've shown that."

On Davis Fogle

"He got in the game and helped us because we needed some offense. He comes in and gets 18 [points] in a hard-to-score game. He's clearly progressed well, and especially being able to do it instead of garbage time at the end of the game; this was a really, really hard game to generate any kind of rhythm on offense."