SEATTLE – For 48 minutes of regulation, the Seattle SuperSonics and Utah Jazz waged a tight, testy battle that was worthy of the very best in their long and intense rivalry.
For five minutes of overtime, Utah was no match for a team that continues to win, continues to impress.
After rallying from a five-point deficit in the final 1:25 of regulation, the Sonics continued their surge through overtime, outscoring the visitors 19-9 in the five-minute extra session Wednesday night for a spirited 129-119 victory. The decision came before a raucous crowd of 16,066 at KeyArena that was on its feet for most of the final minutes.
”Our guys kept fighting, kept scrapping and kept making plays against a scrappy Utah team,” said Seattle coach Nate McMillan, his voice hoarse from yelling. ”We didn’t see any quit in our team. It was just a very gutty performance.”
The win was Seattle’s eighth in as many games at KeyArena this season and it lifted the team’s season record to 14-3. It also helped soothe the disappointment of a loss in Portland on Tuesday night.
”Everyone was tired (from playing the night before), but tonight people stepped up,” said Seattle guard Luke Ridnour, who tied a career high with 17 points and added 10 assists. ”Everyone just stuck together. That’s the thing about this team this year. Everyone is sticking together through thick and thin, and it’s been paying off.”
Seattle guard Ray Allen, on his way to a season-high 38 points, had nine points in overtime, making every shot he attempted – two field goals, including a 3-pointer, and four free throws.
Allen has struggled in several of Seattle’s recent games – he was 19-for-65 (.292) in the previous four games – and through one half it looked to be more of the same. Allen was just 2-for-10 from the field in the first half, but in the decisive second half and overtime he was brilliant, going 7-for-10 from the field with two 3-pointers and adding 13 of 15 free throw attempts for 29 points.
Utah, meanwhile, put forth a gallant effort of its own. One night after losing at home to Phoenix, and playing without injured forward Andrei Kirilenko (sprained knee), Utah seemed to have the game in hand with a 108-103 lead inside of two minutes. The Jazz, in fact, had converted five straight field goals and four free throws in a row, but in the late moments the visitors missed all four tries from the field and committed a turnover, giving Seattle a chance to rally.
”We knew we had to get stops,” Ridnour said. ”We’d been scoring all night, and we felt like if we could get some stops against them that we could score, and we were able to do that.”
Utah’s Carlos Boozer dropped in two free throws with 18 seconds remaining in regulation, the team’s only points in the final two minutes, to give the Jazz a 110-107 margin. Seattle took a timeout, and on the inbounds play Allen drew a double-team and passed to forward Vlade Radmanovic near the top of the key. Radmanovic made a nifty head fake to elude Boozer, who was trying to recover defensively, then launched a 3-point jumper that swished cleanly.
Still, Utah had a chance to win in the closing seconds of regulation, but Howard Eisley’s left-handed layin try bounced off the rim. Eisley collected a long rebound in the left corner, but his desperation turnaround try was an airball at the horn.
In overtime, the teams traded some early baskets, but the turning point was a steal by Seattle’s Rashard Lewis on an errant Jazz cross-court pass. Lewis took it the distance for a breakaway dunk and a 118-115 lead with 2:44 left, and from there the Sonics pulled steadily away.
”This team is playing hard and playing well,” McMillan said. ”We’ve had a couple of nights where we didn’t do some things well … but tonight, we came together. We made plays. We were aggressive (going to the basket) and we got to the free throw line 41 times. Then we had 25 assists, so were moving the ball. And we had a number of guys who were knocking down shots.”
”We kind of self-destructed a little bit in overtime,” said Utah coach Jerry Sloan. ”In regulation, we made a couple of mistakes coming down the stretch. We gave them the shots they wanted to get, and when Radmanovic hit that 3 we kind of lost our feet.”
Ahead for the Sonics is a Saturday night rematch with Portland at KeyArena, followed by a two-game swing to Texas next week with games at San Antonio on Wednesday and Dallas on Thursday.
SPOKANE – This game was about a team that had been embarrassed last weekend.
It was about a team that was ticked off because it got knocked out of the national rankings.
It was about a team that wanted to show an instate rival that it still has some growing to do.
And so, the Gonzaga Bulldogs went out and beat the 14th-ranked Washington Huskies 99-87 Wednesday night at the McCarthey Athletic Center.
And in handing the Huskies their first loss, the Zags looked not like a team that got mauled by Illinois last Friday, but like a team that could have beaten about anyone in the country.
They were that good. Not just good. Great.
OK, Illinois blistered them in the Wooden Tradition last weekend at Indianapolis. But the Fighting Illini are looking like a team that could win a national championship after whipping top-ranked Wake Forest 91-73 Wednesday night.
Maybe the Illini are in a class by themselves. Or maybe they just had a super game while the Zags weren’t very good.
Whatever was ailing the Zags, they were over it when they stepped on the court against the Huskies.
“The Illinois loss helped us take a look in the mirror and realize that just because we wear Gonzaga jerseys doesn’t mean we’re going to win every game,” said sophomore sensation Adam Morrison, who had 26 points and eight rebounds.
No, that happens only when they play the Huskies, who are winless in the last seven matchups with the Bulldogs.
What is it about the Zags that they continue to beat their cross-state rivals?
Always before, it was just that they were a much better team.
Now that the Huskies are starting to get some good players themselves, it might be that the Zags are accustomed to playing in big games against good teams. Also, no matter how many top players they lose to graduation (four starters are gone from last year’s team that won 28 games), the Zags always seem to have talented people ready to step in and replace them with positive results.
Take the wiry guard who hammered the Huskies from outside.
They say that Derek Raivio, who didn’t start a game last year and averaged only 3.1 points, hadn’t played that well in the first four games, but the 6-foot-3 sophomore from Vancouver, Wash., performed like he was All-World, banging in 5 of 6 from beyond the arc for a career-high 21 points. His ball-handling had been a little rough in the early games, so what’s he do on this night? Doesn’t commit one turnover in 38 minutes. Not only that, but he hands out eight assists.
“He’s as good a shooter as we’ve had here as far as consistency,” said coach Mark Few, and the Zags have had some outstanding shooters over the years. It doesn’t get much better than what Raivio has done so far, hitting on 13 of 24 treys.
The Zags look like a pretty complete team. They have good shooters, get-after-it defenders and strong rebounders in Ronny Turiaf, the 6-10 senior who opted to come back to school instead of enter the NBA draft, Morrison and Sean Mallon, another sophomore from Ferris High School in Spokane.
What these guys do exceptionally well is hang onto the basketball. It’s as if their hands are visegrips.
Few said they’ve been working on that part of their game because the Huskies have “as good a hands as anybody in the country. Make one mistake and they’re going to get the ball.”
Morrison is a fabulous player. At 6-8, he’s a skillful ball-handler, as he showed in helping break the Husky press, and he can hit from the outside as well as drive the basket with exceptional quickness. He showed his versatility when he scored on a dunk in the second half then buried a 3-pointer from deep in the corner.
Unlike last year when they got blown out early by the Zags, the Huskies made a game of it this time until deep in the second half. What they failed to do all night, though, was play the kind of defense it takes to win a big game against a good team.
Despite that, Few was impressed.
“They’re composed, they withstand the storms, they keep coming at you,” he said. “They’re going to win a lot of games.”
Nate Robinson was his usual glorious self, but it took a half for the little fellow to get going. Once he did, though, there was no stopping him.
After a 7-point first half, he popped in 15 in the second half, including three 3-pointers, to lead the Huskies with 22 points. What the 5-9 guard has learned, coach Lorenzo Romar said, is not to force shots when they’re not there, but to be patient and wait for them to present themselves. He waited and hit 5 of 8 in the final 20 minutes.
The Huskies had opened the season impressively, winning the Great Alaska Shootout last weekend, beating three good teams, Utah, Oklahoma and No.19 Alabama. To win four straight on the road, they knew they’d have to turn in a superior performance in the Zags’ new gym, a $25 million building that seats 6,000 but sounded as if there were about double that Wednesday night.
The red T-shirt-clad student section stood the entire game and made noise, lots of it. When they weren’t cheering the Zags, they were ragging the Huskies, particularly Mike Jensen, the 6-8 junior forward. All Jensen had to do to really incite them was fail to draw iron on two straight baseline jumpers early in the first half. Then came the inevitable “air ball, air ball.”
Whether it affected Jensen, only he knows. But after getting off to a 0-for-3 start, he rallied in the second half with a 4 of 7 shooting display for 13 points.
He and his teammates learned what a number of other teams are going to find out: that the Zags are not rebuilding, but re-loading.
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