Early season victory over Gonzaga sent team the wrong message

On Dec. 23, in the midst of one of the biggest snowstorms in Rose City history, the men’s basketball team was taking the Northwest college basketball scene by storm as well.

With early season victories against Portland, Cal State Fullerton and a narrow one-point defeat against Washington, the Vikings played their most complete game of the season and defeated the Goliath of mid-major basketball programs, Gonzaga.

The seven-point victory in Spokane looked like a sign of things to come, and fans and media alike—myself included—nearly anointed the Vikings as the guaranteed Big Sky Champions for the second consecutive season.

But in between that impressive victory over the then No. 7 ranked Bulldogs and their recent stretch of torrid and inconsistent play that has seen head coach Ken Bone’s squad drop four straight conference road games by a margin of nearly eight points apiece, something happened to the once-brimming-with-confidence Vikings—they got complacent.

Just about every media outlet that covers the Big Sky picked Portland State to repeat this season, some even going so far as to suggest that the Vikings could run the table over an anemic Big Sky Conference.

And that gigantic December victory against Gonzaga only elevated the Portland State players’ opinions of themselves.

But what athletes, fans and even those who cover the action always seem to forget is that in every gym, teams and individuals are always fighting to get better. They are working on new moves, designing cutting-edge plays and perfecting schemes.

They are getting better and avoiding that smugness that drowned the Vikings before their monumental fall back to earth this month. They are staying motivated and hungry.

While it was Portland State who garnered national attention for knocking off a highly ranked team, it seems that the Vikings may have benefited more by losing that game, an outcome that would most certainly result if the teams played right now.

And while the Vikings were gloating over their successful trip and the subsequent appearance on ESPN’s Top 10 plays, the other Big Sky schools were preparing for the conference season, most by taking on teams that are just as talented as the Bulldogs.

Weber State, the team with the highest RPI rating in the conference and the likely host of the conference championships in three weeks, played Utah State, BYU, Utah and Arizona in their nonconference matchups.

Montana took on Duke, Washington and Santa Clara, while Idaho State battled with Boise State, Wisconsin, Arizona State and Utah State.

The point is that while the Vikings were gloating over their impressive nonconference resume and trying to decide if they should buy their plane tickets to Kansas City, Minneapolis or Boise—all three cities that host first-round NCAA Tournament games—the squads in Ogden, Missoula and Pocatello may have been working on the little things that could actually help them get to one of those destinations.

If you asked most Portland State fans, Dominguez, Nelson and Co. aced their test early this season when they defeated the media darling that is Gonzaga.

But based on how the squad has responded, that victory may have lulled the squad into a stupor of lackadaisical basketball instead of transforming the team into the giant-killers that many labeled them as. And that undoubtedly is a failure.

Should the team somehow transform into the tenacious, scrappy and hardworking team that they were before the Gonzaga game, the future could be bright.

And luckily enough for the team, they have one more test this season to prove who they are: the Big Sky Tournament.