The Gonzaga Bulldogs enter the 2024-25 season with what will most likely end up as one of the more experienced rosters in college hoops. Boasting a line-up featuring six seniors, there aren’t a whole lot of question marks surrounding this roster, outside of: How is Mark Few going to find enough minutes for everyone?
Throughout the years, there has been a sometimes fair, but mostly unfair, level of griping about Mark Few’s roster management being too “tight,” as if top-flight championship level contending teams always operate with 10-man rotations.
For Few, his sweet spot when presented with a bounty of riches has generally appeared to be an eight-man rotation. That is what he employed in the 2017 title run and in 2019, 2020 (until Anton Watson went down with a season-ending injury), and 2022. (Note: I am largely defining an eight-man rotation as eight players receiving at least 10 minutes per game.)
(Second note: 2019 is an interesting year because technically nine players averaged 10 minutes per game. However, Killian Tillie only played 15 games at the end of the year as he came back from injury, and those minutes largely came at the expense of Filip Petrusev. At any given time, the team was realistically running an eight-man rotation.)
In each of those years, the theoretical ninth-man in the rotation was not someone that necessarily elevated the rotation in a meaningful way with their minutes. Here are the “ninth-men” for those years:
- 2017: Freshman Rui Hachimura or sophomore Bryan Alberts
- 2019: Freshman Filip Petrusev, freshman Joel Ayayi, or freshman Greg Foster
- 2020: Freshman Martynas Arlauskas
- 2022: Freshman Hunter Sallis
You might notice a keyword popping up there over and over. All of those very good teams had the core players that they needed with the young ‘uns waiting in the wings. For a program that is just about knowing when to wait your turn as it is for its success, the clamoring from the fans to just throw minutes at a player just because really ring hollow.
This year, one could easily argue that is not the case, because your ninth-man in the rotation, depending on how it looks, is going to be either a redshirt sophomore Braden Huff, who averaged 13.5 minutes per game in 2023-24, or sophomore Dusty Stromer, who saw 23.5 minutes per game of play. All of these guys have earned the right to play:
- Guards: Ryan Nembhard, Nolan Hickman, Stromer
- Wings: Steele Venters, Khalif Battle, Michael Ajayi
- Bigs: Ben Gregg, Graham Ike, Braden Huff
Just one year of experience can go a long way in college hoops, and having essentially one extra player you know you can rely on is helping to cement this Gonzaga team as the potential for one of the best. Top to bottom, the team will not go down in history as one of the most talented, but it very well could be one of the most versatile and deep rosters we’ve seen in years.