SPOKANE, Wash.—In the end, it was the No. 1 team in the country showing why it deserves the ranking. 
 
After Bellarmine hung tough with the No. 1 Gonzaga Bulldogs over the first portion of the game, the Zags slowly started getting separation, and after 40 minutes of basketball, took the 92-50 victory over the Knights.
 
Despite playing its third game in less than a week with nearly 4,000 travel miles, Bellarmine came out with plenty of intensity and outbattled the Zags over the first six minutes of the game and claimed an 11-10 lead on a Juston Betz 3-pointer at the 5:54 mark.
 
However, the Bulldogs (4-0) soon got rolling and ran out to a 48-28 halftime advantage. After the intermission, it was pretty much all Zags as the hosts rolled to their 55th straight victory in the McCarthey Athletic Center. 
 
"Well, it's obvious they're a great, great basketball team," Bellarmine Coach Scott Davenport said of Gonzaga. "What an incredibly class operation.  It's as first class an operation as I've witnessed in my coaching career…so from that standpoint I give them tons of credit."
 
However, the Bellarmine coach said the results of the game proved there is a clear-cut top priority for his team going forward.  "The one that that is non-negotiable, and we have to improve on this right now, when we have bad offense, it totally affects our defense," Davenport said. "Championship teams…when they have a bad possession, they go down as a unit and get a stop," he said. "We're letting our offense affect our defense. This is how teams make runs."
 
Bellarmine (0-4) had no defensive answers against the Zags as Gonzaga was effective both inside and outside.  Drew Timme and Chet Holmgren, the starting "four" and "five" for the Zags combined for 43 points on 15 of 20 shooting, and the perimeter players combined to convert 11 of 23 3-pointers. 
 
Overall, Gonzaga finished with a 53.3 field goal percentage, showing the accuracy that made the Zags the NCAA's leader last season.
 
Bellarmine, meanwhile, struggled with its outside shooting, connecting on just three of 25 from long range, and finished 21-53 overall from the field for 39.6 percent.
 
Dylan Penn had another strong performance for the Knights, scoring a team-high 14 points and dishing out a team-high six assists.  Betz, meanwhile, equaled his career-high with 12 points on five of eight shooting, netting two of his three attempts from beyond the arc.
 
Timme led all scorers with 25 while Holmgren added 18 and guard Julian Strawther added a career-high 19 points.
 
The Knights continue to rack up the travel miles as they go from Spokane to Las Vegas, where they'll meet the No. 2 UCLA Bruins on Monday before turning around to face Central Michigan on Tuesday. 
 
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