Dec. 15—NEW YORK CITY — Determined to shake off a slow first half against Connecticut, Graham Ike returned to the court at halftime to warm up his shot. The forward retrieved a basketball, planted himself a few feet from the hoop and starting working through his portfolio of low-post moves.
Short jump hooks. Push shots. Turnaround jumpers. Mid-range shots off the glass.
In no particular order, four consecutive practice shots either clipped the front rim, ricocheted off the back iron or hit some combination of the backboard and rim before dropping to the floor. A visibly frustrated Ike kept at it until Gonzaga players were called back into a huddle to start the second half.
Things didn’t improve once live defenders returned to the frame.
Ike traveled on Gonzaga’s first possession coming out of halftime, committed two fouls on the defensive end and then missed a two-footer in the painted area where he’s normally as close to a sure thing as you can get. The forward’s opening second-half shift ended a few minutes later, and perhaps not soon enough.
A bleak night from Ike was far from the only reason Gonzaga struggled to generate offense in the second half of a 77-71 loss to UConn. He was on the bench when the Zags went 3 minutes, 25 seconds without manufacturing a field goal to close the game, scoring just one point — on a Khalif Battle free throw — during that stretch.
But, on a night when the Zags scored a season-low 71 points, and made just 39% of their 2-point attempts in the second half, it was understandably hard to ignore the three points next to Ike’s name on the final stat sheet.
The player who led Gonzaga in preseason accolades, and paced the Bulldogs in scoring (15.6 ppg) entering Saturday’s high-level nonconference test against UConn, matched his lowest point total in a Gonzaga uniform, making 1 of 3 shots from the field in a game that saw him commit more turnovers (4) and fouls (4) than he had points (3).
Ike also scored three points in last season’s win over UCLA at the Maui Invitational — a game where he finished 0 of 6 from the field in 18 minutes.
“Just the way the game was, man,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said when asked about Ike’s struggles. “It was a physical, hard-fought game and as I told them going into it, we’ve just got to find guys that can function and rebound and find plays and make plays on defense. As we said at the start of the year, we’ve got a lot of different answers and a lot of bodies. So you kind of shuffle through who’s making plays that night and just kind of roll with it.”
The Zags shuffled often and didn’t roll with Ike for long. The starting forward’s 12 minutes were less than half of Braden Huff’s total on a night that saw the redshirt sophomore register 28 minutes off the bench and score eight points with six rebounds.
Ike is still a focal point of opposing scouting reports, but he’s regressed in a number of offensive categories since his productive junior season — one that culminated with the Colorado native reaching double digits in the team’s final 12 games, and scoring 20 points or more during one seven-game stretch.
Ike averaged 16.5 ppg last season, but that number has since dipped to 14.1 ppg following Saturday’s loss. As a junior, he made 60% of his shots from the field and 78% of his attempts from the free throw line. Both of those numbers have declined this season, too. Ike is currently making 52% from the field, converting at 72% from the line and averaging just 18.9 minutes per game compared to 24.2 last year — a swing that can be mostly attributed to the emergence of Huff, whose consistent production and efficiency have earned the 6-foot-10 sophomore roughly five more minutes per game off the bench.
During a media call on Friday, UConn coach Dan Hurley said one of the key bullet points on the team’s defensive scouting report was preventing Ike from getting to his right shoulder.
UConn was successful in that regard last year, mainly due to the defensive work of Donovan Clingan, a 7-foot-2 “cheat code” — Hurley’s words — who limited Ike to five points on 2 of 5 shooting in a 76-63 win at Climate Pledge Arena.
“Ike, he’s made some middies and he’s got a little Zach Randolph type of offensive game to him,” Hurley said on Friday. “He’s nasty, he’s hard. Everyone says, you can’t let him get to his right shoulder but it’s hard to keep him off his right shoulder.”
Clingan, now a rookie with the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, is playing basketball much closer to Gonzaga’s campus than UConn’s, but even without him in the middle of things, the Huskies were still able to limit Ike, who had only two touches result in made baskets or assists, while five others culminated in missed shots or turnovers.
The Huskies held Ike in check both before and after losing starting center Samson Johnson to concussion protocol early in the first half. Tarris Reed Jr. and other UConn players were effective in preventing Ike from getting to his right shoulder and routinely denied post entries to the big man.
Ike had attempted at least five shots in 44 prior games at Gonzaga, and 82 consecutive games dating back to his freshman season at Wyoming, but was limited to just three attempts on Saturday, marking his lowest total since a Feb. 17, 2021, game against New Mexico.
“I thought they fought him off his spot,” Hurley said. “I thought they did a pretty good job of fighting him off his spot. I thought we did a good job of trying to take away his right shoulder. When he gets to his right shoulder, he’s a devastating player that way. Their tandem with Huff and Ike are just so hard to deal with.”
Not hard enough, apparently. Certainly not in two games against the back-to-back national champions.
