THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Zags well worth the late nights

The phone call made me laugh.

It was a coach on the East Coast, and he started by complaining about having to “stay up forever” to watch games in the Pacific time zone.

Specifically, he was whining about Gonzaga, and the fact that somehow Mark Few just never falls off the ledge.

In a serious vein, the college basketball community admires the Zags’ seemingly endless run of success — but at the same time, coaches and administrators like to gripe about having to scout this team “playing twice a week in the Guam time zone.”

Most of the coaches I know believed that Gonzaga would wind up in the Big 12 to boost the school’s income, and the move to the Pac-12 caught most of them wrong-footed.

“At least it’s closer to home for most of us,” said my buddy on Tuesday morning.

“Scouting Few’s latest group of surprising talent doesn’t have to keep me from eight hours’ sleep.”

Indeed, this particular call was about Few’s current and future crop of athletes — and questioning if the program was on the edge of another rocket ride.

“I never have been able to scout Mark’s players, at least not right away,” the coach said.

“Which ones are just products of program, and which are going to average 20 and 10 in the NBA?”

IT’S NOT a surprise that folks with connections to the Gonzaga program — even columnists like us, way out on the North 40 — hear from hoops people all over the place.

Even some big-name coaches can be baffled by the Zag Path.

They’d like to hear about it … just anything we know about how Gonzaga manages to keep those 27-win seasons rumbling along.

Consider: Few had 80 percent of his scoring returning to play this season.

But Mark has been burned a couple times in the NCAA tournament, on some dark nights when shots wouldn’t fall and other teams canned buckets of 3-pointers.

So, prior to last season, he signed a stone-cold shooter from just down the road at Eastern Washington.

Steele Venters was the 6-7 wing sniper that Gonzaga needed — except that he got injured and was lost for the year.

The Zags STILL didn’t have a reliable gunner.

This past off season, Few’s staff landed Khalif Battle, a bona fide microwave whose last stop was Arkansas, where he averaged around 30 in his final month with the Hogs.

Still not enough.

Gonzaga next reeled in Michael Ajayi, who led the WCC in scoring with a sweet 17.9 at Pepperdine last year.

Battle is a powerful 6-5, Ajayi a muscular 6-7, and these guys can get shots off at will.

Returning guards Ryan Nembhard and Nolan Hickman are both good shooters, and soph Dusty Stromer seemed to be trending that way, so even watching from the East Coast, it sure seemed like Few had his stable of shooters.

SO, LET’S look at how this is all falling into place — and why my longtime pal would phone after seeing the Zags handle San Diego State on the road Monday night.

“I’ve got a copy of the box score in my hand,” he said. “Unless Mark is playing (Graham) Ike and (Braden) Huff together, it looks like a game from 1965.

“Nembhard runs everything, maybe gets downhill to the basket, or one of the big guys posts up and Nembhard gets them the ball — pick and roll like always or just straight entry passes.

“Ike gets his points, and Huff scores almost the same way when Ike sits.

“What I don’t understand is what happened to that idea of having a bunch of outside shooters — Battle just took five shots and Ajayi was just a rebounder.

“Is this just another of the same Gonzaga teams we see every year?”

I understood why this coach was puzzled.

Four games is a small sample, but it looks to me as though Battle IS absolutely a shooter —who will have plenty of fun “mail-it-in” nights — but Ajayi does not live off his stroke.

He’s strong and finds his way down low. He’s going to score from close range and do damage on the boards.

Few is counting on Stromer and Hickman (plus Huff) to add some 3-balls.

The mystery is that is NO mystery.

The Zags are playing the same ball that’s won all those games.

They’re hoping that this group is physical enough for the tournament, and that they can get a shot from deep when they it.

The coach on the phone finally sighed.

“They’re a team that could win it all,” he said. “They’re just what they look like.

“I’ll have to keep staying up late.”

Email: scameron@cdapress.com

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press four times each week, normally Tuesday through Friday unless, you know, stuff happens.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”