College Basketball

‘They got the best fans in the world’: Gonzaga lays claim to best home-court advantage in college basketball

Gonzaga men’s basketball guard Khalif Battle doesn’t pay too much attention to what’s going on in the stands during a game. He’s usually too consumed with his own thoughts — admittedly some negative ones — to give any bother to how the crowd might be reacting to one of his highlight dunks or game-changing 3-pointers.

But Battle, who’s in his sixth year of college hoops, had never experienced an environment quite like the McCarthey Athletic Center prior to this season. The Kennel has earned the reputation as one of the most intimidating home-court advantages in college basketball, and it has the numbers to back it up. Gonzaga has won 93.9% of its home games since The Kennel opened in 2004, which ranks second-best in the nation.

On Sunday, Battle couldn’t ignore the Kennel Club after he swung momentum in Gonzaga’s favor with a high-flying, one-hand dunk off an alley-oop pass from Ryan Nembhard in the second half of its win over Arizona State. The highlight reel moment had all 6,000 fans on their feet for the duration of the thrilling second half between the Bulldogs and Sun Devils, making for quite the spectacle for those in attendance and watching at home.

“Honestly, when I do stuff like that, I don’t even hear the crowd,” Battle said of his dunk. “I’ll be so focused on what I’m saying to myself that I don’t be hearing the crowd sometimes, but everybody was turning up [after the dunk] so I was turned up.”

Battle’s dunk tied the game 63-63 at the 8:48 mark in the second half. Moments later, Ryan Nembhard stepped into a deep 3-pointer to knot things up at 67 apiece. By that point, no one in the building was sitting.

“That environment was better than any one across the NFL that I watched on Sunday,” CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander said of The Kennel on a podcast. “Just an amazing, amazing environment.”

Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley noted after the game that he felt his team lost “five or six possessions” because of communication breakdowns over the crowd noise. Still, the Sun Devils hung around and even managed to take a 4-point lead around the 9-minute mark in the second half, despite the hostile environment.

With the crowd alive and well, the Zags rode their wave of momentum to the final buzzer, as they outscored the Sun Devils, 21-13, over the last seven minutes and change following Nembhard’s 3-pointer. Battle scored nine of the team’s final 21 points, including a 3-pointer with just under three minutes to go and four free-throws in the final 20 seconds to seal the victory. He finished with 19 points, all of which came after halftime.

Braden Huff led the Bulldogs (2-0) with 21 points off the bench. The redshirt sophomore played the final 13 minutes of the game and came up big down the stretch alongside Battle. Just like last season, the 6-foot-10 post leads the team in scoring through two games (17.5 points per game). 

Ryan Nembhard recorded his second double-double of the season with 13 points and 11 assists against the Sun Devils. He’s up to 22 assists to just two turnovers in the young season.

“I think we did a good job of closing the game,” Mark Few said after the game. “They look tough and they look versatile, and they got a lot of guys and they all bring a little bit of something different.”

When asked if he’d experienced an atmosphere similar to The Kennel’s before, Battle (though biased) couldn’t recall a moment quite like Sunday’s in his college basketball career. 

“I got to be biased because I’m in the Gonzaga jersey,” Battle prefaced. “So I’m gonna say Gonzaga, for sure; they got the best fans in the world.”

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