In a perfect world, a well-run blog focused on the Gonzaga Bulldogs 2024-25 season would have player previews, scheduling previews, and endless amounts of content to keep the reader well prepared for the beginning of the season.
A well-run blog this is not. So instead, I will have to devolve to such Buzzfeedy-topics as TAKES. With the Zags returning basically the whole crew from a Sweet 16 team, here are some of my bold predictions for the 2024-25 school year.
Ryan Nembhard breaks his single season assist record
Gonzaga’s senior point guard set the single season school record for assists last season with 243, beating out Josh Perkins by nine. Nembhard did that while averaging 6.9 assists per game, the second best mark outside of John Stockton at 7.2 per game.
There was also a drastic difference in how he started out the season vs. how he ended the season, paralleling the offensive effectiveness of Gonzaga on Day 1 vs. Gonzaga in March.
- November: 5.8 apg
- December: 6 apg
- January: 6.5 apg
- February: 7 apg
- March: 10 apg
He might not average 10 assists per game in November, but it will be much higher than 5.8. Nembhard should blow by his own school record and he also should top Stockton’s 7.2 mark if the team is able to hit the ground even remotely close to as fast as it was running to close out last season.
Gonzaga will own the top-ranked offense this season
Last season, from February on, the Zags owned the second-best offense in all of college hoops, only behind UConn, and just by 0.2 points.
After two championships, never bet against Dan Hurley is fair, but UConn has lost a lot of its integral pieces. Gonzaga hasn’t. The Zags are going to own the nation’s best offense, and it won’t even be that close.
It has been three years since Gonzaga last trucked out the nation’s best offense (which they did for three years straight in 2019-2021). The Zags still have to fill an Anton Watson-sized hole, easier said than done, but Michael Ajayi and Khalif Battle are more than capable. With a majority of the team returning from last season, the chemistry is already established and the offense should flow like it did in March, not in November.
Gonzaga will not run the table in the WCC
Despite Gonzaga’s rise to threat level Final Four more years than not lately, the days of wiping every single WCC opponent off the face of the Earth has not correlated. Despite what some fans might think, the WCC has also improved, and away games, even against the likes of say, Santa Clara, are still away games–easier said than done.
Even with what looks to be a down Saint Mary’s team, the Zags are not going to be able to go undefeated in conference play this season. As much as many Gonzaga fans seemingly expect it each year, Gonzaga has only made it through WCC play completely unscathed twice in the past 10 years, in 2019 and in 2021.
Even with a down Saint Mary’s team and no BYU in the conference, the likes of San Francisco and Santa Clara have stepped it up by respectable margins. This take is less of a hot take and more one driven by reality.
Gonzaga will win the national championship
There we freaking go. You can’t get much hotter than this, maybe outside of saying Gonzaga will miss the NCAA Tournament. But to heck with it, let’s go with it. Some people might be saying Elite Eight or bust. Daring individuals say Final Four or bust. Only the truly insane say natty or bust. All freaking aboard.
Winning a national championship is just as much about skill as it is about timing. Last year it was always going to be UConn or Purdue. In 2023 it became very clear by the third round of the tournament it would be UConn. Gonzaga definitely missed an opportunity in 2022 and in 2021 Baylor was a buzzsaw.
This coming season, Kansas is of course going to be good, and Alabama and Houston will be at the top. National writers are going gonzo for UConn for reasons that they should no better. Everyone loves Cooper Flagg but Jon Scheyer hasn’t quite gotten Duke over the “we can recruit well but have nothing to show for it” hump.
Gonzaga, meanwhile, returns every single major contributor from a Sweet 16 team and added two massive impact transfers in Battle and Ajayi. On any given year, that would be enough for an easy top 5 preseason ranking, and yet, national writers such as Gary Parrish have the Zags at No. 8. It is unfair for me to rail on preseason rankings being the dumbest thing on the planet while also placing emphasis on them at the same time.
But this year, Gonzaga is an exceptionally good team that might find itself somehow operating a little bit under the radar to start the season. This year, there seem to be a lot of really good teams and no “duh it’ll be them” teams. The skill is there. The timing is there. The Zags just have to put it all together.
Gonzaga will not be in the WCC by the end of the season
You probably won’t believe me, but I wrote all of this before all of the nonsense about Zags going to the Pac 12 erupted on Twitter on Monday. The writing has been on the wall for quite some time, and with the binary decision of either stay or go, the past, which is comfortable and nice, is stay. The future, which is scary and unknown, is go. The future is also the path forward.
College sports is destroying itself. The NCAA Tournament will not stay at 68 teams for that much longer. Gonzaga needs to do whatever it can do to position itself as a major player with a major conference. The door to the Big 12 appears to be closed for the future. The Big East fits like a glove if your left and right gloves were okay being a five hour flight away from each other at all times.
The mummified corpse of the Pac 12 is doing whatever it can to maintain relevancy on a national level. They made a good start by adding San Diego State, Boise State, Cal State-Fresno, and Colorado State. The Pac 12 just needs two more schools to be FBS eligible, and let’s remember here, that is the big driver–football.
And now that Memphis, Tulane, South Florida, UTSA, and UNLV (last I checked) have all rebuffed the Pac 12’s advances, the number of impact schools is dwindling. And that works to Gonzaga’s favor in terms of leverage.
Of course, the Pac 12 still needs to hit the magic number of eight. But after that, Gonzaga looks like an incredibly ripe target for adding some prestige to the basketball pedigree of the conference.
At the end of the day, it will come down to money. Honestly, this is also the prediction I really hope does not come to fruition.
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