Fun Facts: Iowa-Gonzaga

SEATTLE - What could be as fun as the potential for an Iowa-UCLA Sweet 16 game in the NCAA men's basketball tournament?

C'mon, you know. Fun Facts about Iowa-Gonzaga, of course.

1. Iowa leads the series, 2-0. The Hawkeyes beat the Bulldogs (who will be known as the Zags from this point forward) 62-40 in Iowa City in 1984 and 84-64 in Spokane in 1985.

2. This is Gonzaga's 17th-straight NCAA appearance. It beat North Dakota State Friday night for its seventh-straight season with an NCAA win. Only Kansas (nine) has a longer active streak.

3. The 83 points Iowa scored against Davidson Friday is the program's largest scoring total in an NCAA game since the Hawkeyes beat Texas 98-92 in 1992.

4. In NCAA tourney games, Iowa is 1-3 against No. 2-seeds.

5. Iowa is 14-1 all-time against current members of the West Coast Conference. The lone loss was against San Francisco in the 1956 national-championship game.

6. Gonzaga has one player on its team from the state of Washington.

7. The Zags are 2-4 against Big Ten teams in the NCAA tourney.

8. Gonzaga starting guard Gary Bell Jr. has a son. His name is Gary Bell III.

9. Mark Few's coaching record at Gonzaga is 436-102. His .810 winning percentage tops all active Division I coaches.

10. Gonzaga star forward Kyle Wiltjer transferred from Kentucky. He played three minutes in the Wildcats' national-title win three years ago. He scored 45 points at Pacific last month. He was the SEC's Sixth Man of the Year two seasons ago.

11. Wiltjer purportedly set a world record for the longest behind-the-back shot. Here's the video.

12. Iowa's Mike Gesell had six assists against Davidson. No Hawkeye has had that many in an NCAA game since Dean Oliver's six against UAB in 1999.

13. Gonzaga senior guard Kevin Pangos is fifth on his school's career assists list. No. 4 is John Stockton, who had 15,806 of them in the NBA.

14. Pangos is a four-time first-team All-West Coast Conference selection.

15. Gonzaga freshman center Domantas Sabonis is the son of Naismith Hall of Famer Arvydas Sabonis.

16. Fifteen of the 33 games Gonzaga has won have come against schools starting with the letter ‘S.' Three were against San Francisco, two against San Diego, St. Mary's and Santa Clara, and one against Sacramento State, SMU, St. Joseph's, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John's and Southeastern Louisiana.

17. Gonzaga is named for St. Aloysius Gonzaga. It's a Catholic school with 7,423 students.

18. It's 279 miles from Spokane to Seattle. You go through the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest on I-90 to get here from there. Or you could take a plane.

19. 'First of all,” Charles Barkley said Saturday about Gonzaga's location, 'nobody knows where they are.”