What Saint Mary's Randy Bennett said after WCC championship vs. Gonzaga

Ranked inside the top 25 of the NET rankings, Saint Mary's didn't need to worry about its NCAA Tournament aspirations heading into Tuesday night's West Coast Conference tournament championship game.

But the Gaels (28-5, 17-1 WCC) will have to wait until Selection Sunday to confirm a fourth consecutive appearance in the big dance after falling short to Gonzaga in a 58-51 final from Orleans Arena in Las Vegas.

Saint Mary's swept the regular season series against its WCC rival, though beating Gonzaga a third time in a six-week span proved to be easier said than done for Randy Bennett and company. It didn't help that the Gaels had one of their worst offensive performances of the season, as they went 0-of-16 from downtown and committed 18 turnovers that led to 20 points the other way for the Zags, who notably didn't shoot the ball well either but only committed four turnovers.

Here's what Bennett had to say after the game.

On the physical, grind-it-out nature of the ballgame:

"I think that's how it turned out. I don't think they wanted Saxen to score 20. But it did turn out that way. They took Augustas [Marciulionis] out a little bit but, some other guys are going to have to make some shots if they're going to take the ball out of Augustas' hands and then Saxen's in the middle of the floor. And from there you have 4-on-3, so, you should be able to shoot a decent percentage."

On the Gaels committing a season-high18 turnovers:

The biggest thing, and you won't get me off this, is you can't have 18 turnovers. Right down to the last minute we had a chance to cut that thing to two or three ... it's just too many [turnovers]. Like I said those possessions, you get 1.1 points per possession — that's 15 points plus, 16 points that you get no chance at. And a lot of those turned into layups at the other end so, the game was right there."

On the Gaels' defensive effort against the Bulldogs:

"We won the boards considerably. We held them to a decent field goal percentage [41.3%]. We did a good job. They didn't shoot it well either. So we did a good job there and usually that can get you a win in a bad offensive night. But our offensive night was so bad. And that's kind of how those games can be — second night [of a back-to-back], they can be a bit grimy and it was, but they were better at the grindy-ness than we were."

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