SPOKANE, Wash. — Not long after arriving at the Spokane International Airport Saturday afternoon to cover BYU’s final game as a member of the West Coast Conference at Gonzaga, I was reminded how this rivalry has evolved, even while it could be ending soon.
The guy at the Hertz rental counter asked me what brought me to Spokane and I told him I’m a reporter from Utah, here to cover BYU-Gonzaga.
“It’s been an intense series when we play them. Their home court is incredible. We’ve had some legendary-type games and finishes against them over the years. Just great players making big-time plays. This was no different.” — Gonzaga coach Mark Few after the Zags victory over BYU last week
Immediately, he put on his game face.
“No car for you,” he deadpanned. “We’re out of cars.”
I believed him for a moment. He never cracked a smile as he filled out the paperwork.
After I asked him if he was going to the game, he said that he wasn’t but that members of his family were. He explained that his grandfather was an architect on McCarthey Athletic Center, also known as The Kennel, and his family had lifetime tickets. He’s planning to go to the Gonzaga-Saint Mary’s game for the regular-season finale Feb. 25.
Perhaps to show there were no hard feelings, despite the fact I write stories about the enemy — BYU — he upgraded me to a Dodge Challenger.
Speaking of which, if you’re BYU, playing at Gonzaga is a challenge that you can’t dodge as long as you belong in the WCC.
After the Cougars’ 88-81 loss to the No. 16 Zags Saturday, they posted a 3-9 all-time record against the Zags at The Kennel since 2012. It’s also more wins than any other program has notched during that stretch.
Since BYU joined the WCC in 2012, Saint Mary’s is 2-9 in Spokane. The other seven WCC teams have gone 1-75 on Gonzaga’s home court. That lone win came earlier this season when Loyola Marymount shocked the Zags.
Gonzaga is a proud program that has become a national powerhouse. The Zags have made the NCAA Tournament every season since 1999, with seven consecutive Sweet 16 appearances and two Final Fours. Gonzaga has won 22 of 24 WCC regular-season titles and 19 WCC tournament titles since 1999.
BYU has never won a WCC championship or a WCC tournament title.
Jack and Dan’s
The first time I traveled to Spokane for BYU’s first game at Gonzaga in 2012, someone suggested that I visit Jack and Dan’s Bar & Grill, a popular establishment located just a couple of 3-pointers away from campus.
It used to be owned by Jack Stockton, the father of Utah Jazz legend John Stockton.
So on this final trip to Spokane, I decided to return to Jack and Dan’s for a pregame meal and to get a taste of what Gonzaga fans think about the end of an era as BYU prepares to join the Big 12 next season.
It was 2 p.m. on a Saturday and the regular crowd, wearing Gonzaga gear, shuffled in. The Gonzaga women’s game was on the TVs around the bar.
I found an empty table in the back and ordered The Original Jack and Danwich (turkey, cheese, lettuce and tomato on wheat bread) and a large ice water. I think I got off to a bad start with the waitress because I didn’t order a beer.
But I enthusiastically ordered fry sauce when she told me it is offered at Jack and Dan’s. I mean, how many places outside of Utah have fry sauce on the menu?
The waitresses, like the patrons, were wearing Gonzaga T-shirts.
One of the patrons I met at Jack and Dan’s that afternoon, hours before tipoff, was Bob Finn, the senior alumni engagement officer in the Gonzaga alumni office. He agreed to talk to me as classic rock music blared in the background and food and drinks were served up all around.
“I know BYU hates us, and I get it,” said the Gonzaga alum. “Both fan bases are very passionate. How long has BYU been in the league?”
“2012,” I said.
“It seems longer than that,” he replied.
What does he think about the Cougars leaving the conference?
“For them to leave is not good,” he said. “Obviously, they’ve helped out the league itself, giving us an even number of teams (10). And they bring their stature to the game as well. It’s always nice to have that competition level.”
‘Phenomenal’ atmosphere at Marriott Center
For years, Finn has led a group from the Salt Lake chapter of the Gonzaga alumni association to Provo for BYU-Gonzaga games. They’ve filled two buses and made the 45-mile pilgrimage from Salt Lake City to Provo.
Finn was there in January when the Zags beat the Cougars 75-74. He and the rest of the Gonzaga fans will miss going to the Marriott Center.
“That last game we played was unbelievable. I was in the nosebleed section with our group. We had about 150 people there. It was phenomenal,” he said. “It was a great experience. I’ve been to a bunch of different gyms with our alumni group and BYU has, bar none, the best pregame and the best game experience. … It’s incredible.
“Their student section is phenomenal. I thought our Kennel Club was good. It’s been a great experience with BYU. I’m sad to see them leave. I get it. But I don’t know who’s going to fill that spot or what’s going to happen next. It will be interesting.”
Gonzaga has a strong presence in Utah. Salt Lake City natives Tom and Phil McCarthey, former owners of The Salt Lake Tribune, helped build the McCarthey Athletic Center in 2004.
“BYU’s been awesome to work with in making sure we got tickets for the game,” Finn said. “I’d always ask if we could get closer to the floor and they’d just laugh. We’re all up near the ceiling. We have a big following. There’s a connection there to a certain degree.”
Finn laughed as he recalled his first trip to Provo. He contacted his counterpart at BYU.
“Hey, we’re coming down there and we’d like to have a pregame social on campus,” he said.
“Yeah, we’ll help you set it up,” the BYU representative said.
“We’ll just use your caterers and bartenders.”
“There’s no alcohol allowed on campus.”
Pause.
“What? OK, then we can’t do it on campus.”
So they imbibed, and enjoyed pregame festivities, elsewhere.
The Zags generally enjoyed the games at the Marriott Center. Gonzaga finished 9-3 against BYU in Provo.
“We’ve had some great games with them,” Finn said. “You know when we walk in that gym, there’s no love lost, which is great. I love the competition. If we go down there and beat them in their gym, it’s a good day. They are usually close games. Our alumni down there are pretty loyal.”
BYU’s three in a row at The Kennel
For all of the success against BYU, the Cougars’ three straight wins over Gonzaga at The Kennel from 2015 to 2017 still stick in the craw of Zags fans.
Or is it still too soon to bring that up around here?
“I can’t explain that. We’re tough to beat on our home court,” Finn said. “Of anyone in the WCC, BYU has more wins here than anyone else. I’ve been here for 18 years. I don’t see a lot of losses on that court. A couple of times BYU beat us on Senior Night. That’s probably why it’s built up the competition even more.
“I hate to say that we hate them. It’s respect. With them coming up here this time, I was so glad to see the schedule. Thank God we’re not playing on Senior Night.”
No more mocking missionaries
The first several times BYU visited The Kennel, some Gonzaga students dressed up in white shirts, ties and bicycle helmets to poke fun at the Cougars, who usually have several returned missionaries on the roster.
It wasn’t unique to Gonzaga, of course. Maybe the Zags learned something from “The Show” at San Diego State.
But before the 2018 game, on the heels of BYU’s three consecutive wins in Spokane, Gonzaga’s administration asked students to avoid dressing up as missionaries.
The students complied and stopped the practice. That season, one student dressed up as the pope.
Maybe it was a foreshadowing of BYU’s hiring of Mark Pope in 2019. Or maybe refraining from mocking BYU’s faith was what snapped the Cougars’ winning streak, because Gonzaga hasn’t lost at home to BYU since 2018.
Perhaps the main reason why Gonzaga decided to stop wearing missionary attire was because freshman guard Jesse Wade, a Davis High product and 2015 Deseret News Mr. Basketball, who served in the France Lyon Mission, was on the Zags roster.
A few months after that 2018 game, Wade transferred to BYU.
Bigger rival — BYU or Saint Mary’s?
Of course, before BYU joined the WCC, Gonzaga had a longstanding rival — Saint Mary’s.
What’s the difference between the rivalry with the Cougars and the one with the Gaels?
“It’s very similar. For one thing, the BYU atmosphere is like the Saint Mary’s atmosphere but on steroids,” Finn said. “With Saint Mary’s, the relationship and rivalry has gone on longer. We’ve grown to seriously dislike them as well and they don’t like us at all. That rivalry has been there longer. I started in ’05 here. We’ve been in the NCAA Tournament since 1999. In ’05, it was always between us and Saint Mary’s.”
‘We’re going to kick their butt’
But when BYU joined the league, it didn’t take any time at all for Gonzaga fans to dislike the Cougars.
“I think it was there right from the beginning,” Finn said. “It’s the biggest school in our conference, by far, with 32,000 students. Most of the enrollments in our league is 5,000 to 8,000. At that time, there were people from Utah saying they were going to come in and beat us in every sport.
“In 2012, we had been the Cinderella for 12 years. We’d been in the tournament every year. It was like, really? So every time they beat us or we beat them, it was one more little dagger. It had nothing to do with being BYU. It was the size. Maybe someone in the media or someone from BYU said, ‘We’re dropping down to the WCC. We’re big-time. We’re on TV for football. We have our own TV channel. We’re going to kick their butt.’”
Of course, if those thoughts existed, they stemmed from the fact that in the 2011 NCAA Tournament, BYU whipped Gonzaga 89-67 to advance to the Sweet 16 for the first time in 30 years.
“I was at that game,” Finn recalled. “Jimmer (Fredette) scored like 30. And they’re coming into our league next year? That’s not good. Is every one of their players going to shoot like this? We’ve got to go down to Provo and play these guys? There was a lot of respect. I’ve always liked how BYU has played. Every now and then, they’d throw a football player in there. We don’t have that.”
Remembering Kaufusi
No, Gonzaga doesn’t have a football program. Zags fans won’t forget when Cougars football player Bronson Kaufusi played for the basketball team in 2013 after finishing up the football season.
That season in Provo, Kaufusi was whistled for a flagrant foul after knocking down Gonzaga star Kelly Olynyk, who now plays for the Utah Jazz.
“He took (Olynyk) out. It was a hard foul,” Finn remembered. “BYU’s fans were going nuts.”
‘We’ve got to keep doing this’
Perhaps partially in response to that NCAA Tournament game, Gonzaga has upped its game under coach Mark Few.
“We’re definitely getting four-star and five-star athletes now,” Finn said.
While Finn will miss playing BYU in the WCC, he is optimistic that the two programs will figure out a way to play nonconference games in the future.
“I think it will happen,” he said. “It will be a nonconference game in November or December. There’s interest on the alumni’s side. When we did our bus trip, I said, ‘This is our last one.’ They said, ‘We’ve got to keep doing this.’
“Playing in that atmosphere is so conducive to what you’re going to face later on in the season,” Finn added. “Whatever they do down there, it’s awesome. I hate going there but I love going there. Schools visit BYU to see their pregame setup. It’s phenomenal.
“We can duplicate some of it but the energy of the students there is unbelievable. Every year, I come back and I always take a video of the pregame. It’s incredible. There are 20,000 people that honestly hate Gonzaga right now in this gym. And we’ve got to play here.”
Finn only sees positives with playing the Cougars in years to come.
“With BYU being in the Big 12, playing us won’t hurt their (rankings). For us, it won’t hurt anything,” he said. “I don’t know how many home-and-aways we’ll do. I’d rather play down there, honestly. We’re not going to come close to that experience unless we’re playing in a big tournament.”
For BYU’s final game at The Kennel, Gonzaga students, as usual, set up a tent city near the arena to get the best seats.
“We have between 80 to 100 tents, with about eight people per tent. The people on the front row are the people that sleep outside the night before,” Finn said. “We served them breakfast this morning.”
And after the game, many students head to Jack and Dan’s to celebrate another Gonzaga victory.
“It will be packed tonight,” he said. “This place will be standing-room-only for this game. Jack and Dan’s is Gonzaga’s icon. It really is. If you’re going to go to a game at GU, you stop by here, if you can get in beforehand. When I was going to school here, I bartended here for two years with Jack Stockton, who was the owner at that time.
“It’s one of the oldest bars after the prohibition. It started in the 1940s. It’s a college bar. If you want to come back at 10 o’clock tonight, it will be packed with students. Us old guys leave. It stays open until 2 a.m.”
Legendary Los Angeles Times sports writer Jim Murray, who had a reputation for making fun of a lot of cities, once wrote of Spokane: “The only trouble with Spokane, as a city is that there’s nothing to do there after 10 o’clock. In the morning. But it’s a nice place to go for breakfast.”
Murray probably never visited Jack and Dan’s after 10 o’clock. At night.
The Stockton/Jazz connection
Finn said John Stockton stopped by Jack and Dan’s the other day.
There is only one piece of memorabilia in the place today that memorializes the connection between Spokane and the Jazz — a rug that hangs on a wall that reads “Jack and Dan’s Tavern” with the old-school Utah Jazz logo.
“The only thing is that rug over there,” Finn said. “Jack wouldn’t do it. That’s not John, either. This is a place where he can come and not have to worry about people. When I was a bartender here and John was playing, we used to have the top shelf in front of the bar that was filled with Utah Jazz mugs. You could buy a Jazz mug and get a 50 cents off your beer during Jazz games. Other than that, you would never know. Except for that rug. It used to be white. They used to smoke in here and now it’s yellow.”
Back when the Jazz were in the playoffs, including the NBA Finals in 1997 and 1998, fans would fill Jack and Dan’s to watch the games and cheer for Stockton and the Jazz.
Those days are over, but Finn marvels about how far Gonzaga basketball has come.
“I graduated from here in 1988. We were a .500 team back then,” he said. “The (old) gym held 1,500 people. It’s been a sellout since we built (The Kennel).”
BYU and Gonzaga may not meet again as WCC foes, unless it happens in the upcoming WCC Tournament at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks.
If it happens, it would be in either the semifinals or finals. The way things have gone for the Cougars this season, that matchup doesn’t seem likely.
Starting next year, Finn will miss seeing the legions of BYU fans at Orleans Arena for the games during the WCC tourney.
“I don’t see a lot of BYU fans hanging out at the Orleans,” he said. “They stay off-site, somewhere else.”
Maybe the Holiday Inn. Or Uncle Jim’s house.
“Gonzaga fans are having a different type of fun,” Finn said.
On and off the court, apparently.
‘It’s been an intense series’
Though the Cougars led for much of the second half Saturday, Gonzaga went on a big run in the final four minutes and won. Again.
“It’s been an intense series when we play them. Their home court is incredible,” Few said after the game. “We’ve had some legendary-type games and finishes against them over the years. Just great players making big-time plays. This was no different.”
Gonzaga star Drew Timme said BYU and Gonzaga should continue playing each other even when they’re not in the same league.
“This game shouldn’t go away just because they’re leaving. It’s so much fun,” he said. “There’s a lot of respect and hatred.”
The experience made me wonder what it’s going to be like for BYU next year in the Big 12, where there are a bunch of large, passionate fan bases when they go on the road.
How long will it take for the Cougars to create new rivalries with the teams in the Big 12?
That’s a question, and a story, for another day. But Saturday was about reminiscing about all the great games, and great moments, that BYU and Gonzaga have provided over a relatively short period of time.
“We’re not real fond of BYU,” Finn said. “But it’s a great rivalry.”
