At the end of the 2022 season, after the Gonzaga Bulldogs’ season unexpectedly ended at the hands of the Arkansas Razorbacks in the Sweet 16, the national narrative was that the Zags, featuring Chet Holmgren among others, had missed one of their best chances to win a championship.
That sentiment wasn’t wrong, of course, but attached to it was the statement that the championship window was closing. After the 2023 season, in which the Zags started out with high preseason hopes but struggled to fulfill that promise. With Timme time over, the national narrative was cemented–the window was closed.
Less than two years later, here we are, once again. With Gonzaga showing up in many top-5 preseason rankings, the Zags are thought of as championship contenders once again. Looks like someone forgot to fully latch close Gonzaga’s championship window.
Now, how can the esteemed national media be turning around on such an about face so quickly? To their credit, the transfer portal and NIL has moved at lightning pace in the two years since Chet Holmgren hung up his Zag laces. Teams now can lose any level of production and reload in ways not possible five years ago.
That is about all the credit we can give them, however. It is important to note that the national narratives solely exist for people to be able to click something during the offseason. They don’t exist to say anything of actual substance. Because if they did, the idea that Gonzaga’s national championship window had closed, a program that has been arguably one of the nation’s best consistently for five years plus, wouldn’t exist.
By not having won a championship during that time, the Zags have not earned the benefit of the doubt, despite the fact that throughout college basketball recency, the Zags have always made the right moves to stay beyond relevant.
Gonzaga has had itself an offseason. They took a team that went to the Sweet 16 and filled it out on every single level to the point there are no scholarships left. No one should be surprised that this happened.
All of this goes to show why in this day and age of unlimited clicking and 24/7 news cycle, it is important, as a fan, to ignore all the noise. With all due respect to Matt Norlander, Kevin Sweeney, The Field of 68 folks, and others, their jobs are content and clicks, and sometimes that gets in the way of taking an actual top-level view of what is going on.
On my old website, after Gonzaga’s loss to UConn in 2023, I wrote about this exact thing. The crazy thing, is I wrote this:
You can also put me firmly in the camp of the future looks bright. Even in the worse case scenario, with all five of those names departing, the Zags return a core featuring Hunter Sallis, Nolan Hickman, Dominick Harris, Ben Gregg, and Efton Reid.
Gonzaga only returned two of the players on that list (of course Anton Watson returning was a huge huge piece) and hit the transfer portal hard to make a Sweet 16 team that was performing as one of the best as the year progressed. They’ve returned essentially everyone and only added pieces, and once again, the future is looking very bright.
Zags got dudes. Zags will always have dudes. Only a fool doubts the Gonzaga Bulldogs.