What Mark Few said after Gonzaga beat Saint Mary's at the Kennel

Fueled by a 30-point performance from Graham Ike, Gonzaga fended off Saint Mary's for a 73-65 victory at McCarthey Athletic Center Saturday night.

The Bulldogs (22-1, 10-0 West Coast Conference) held onto their position atop the league standings following a dominant outing from their All-America candidate in Ike, who was playing in his first game since Jan. 15, and a collective group effort on the defense end of the floor to hold the Gaels (19-4, 8-2 WCC) to 34% shooting from the floor. Gonzaga also won the battle on the glass, 39-34, and scored 17 second-chance points to the Gaels' five.

Here's what Mark Few had to say about his team's effort, Ike's performance, Emmanuel Innocenti (10 points, five rebounds) and more in his postgame press conference.

On the turning point in the second half

"The biggest thing was just the turnovers. We had nine turnovers in the first half, and most of them were just a crazy variety and just bizarre."

"This was a big crowd, and they were maybe overhyped or over excited; but we missed several coverages there. We even missed two coverages at the start of the second half, but then, man, we really settled in and started playing really, really good defense — which this group has done — and took care of the ball, and that was literally the whole key."

On Graham Ike's performance

"It's just amazing man. He was out 10 days or so and practiced, I think, twice or three times. And then against that front line — that front line is huge and physical and hard to generate easy points against. To find his way into 30 is just incredible."

On Emmanuel Innocenti's impact on both ends of the floor

"He did a great job. They're going to put you through a million ball screens with big, physical guys setting them and really, really smart, crafty guards executing. He guarded it time and time and time again spectacularly, as did Jalen Warley."

"They both did a nice job on [Paulius] Murauskas, because Murauskas is a heck of a player. And we did a nice job. He got 15 [points] but it was on 14 shots."

On Mario Saint-Supéry's 3-point shooting

"Mario's been shooting the 3 great. We've been on him to find some more shots from there, but he settled in. He had a rough start in that first half. He was one of the main proprietors, or whatever you want to call it, of the turnover issue, but he settled in. And once we got him settled in on his coverages, he was much, much better. He's got a clutch gene; he's not afraid. He made a nice little floater in the lane, and made some really nice ball screen reads and some passes down the stretch."

On Gonzaga's rebounding efforts

"[Saint Mary's is] an excellent rebounding team, and those bigs numbers are something on offensive rebounds (Gonzaga had 11 offensive rebounds and 17 second-chance points). I thought we did a great job on that end. We ended up with 11 offensive rebounds, and we needed every single one of them."

"We talked about rebounding a lot. And so the guys did a great job of heeding the message and stepping up and getting it done."