I’ll be honest, I’m always a glass is half full kind of guy when it comes to the Gonzaga Bulldogs men’s basketball team. I may have some minor qualms with roster rotations, minutes distributions, plays coming out of time outs in the fourth quarter, etc. But at the end of the day, I’m more of a proof is in the pudding kind of guy, and for that, it is hard to bet against Mark Few and company.
I’m not a gatekeeper for fandom, however, and viewing this season overall you have to acknowledge the downs. After the loss to Santa Clara, I said so myself: The season at that point had become WCC Tournament Champions or bust.
With three Quad 1 wins since the writing of that post, the big one at Kentucky, at San Francisco, and just last night against Saint Mary’s, we can safely erase the “or bust” portion of the outlook. Gonzaga is a NCAA Tournament team, no matter the results of the WCC Tournament, and they are looking to be a dangerous one at that.
There are a whole load of factors that got the team to this point: Ben Gregg inserted into the starting lineup, Graham Ike and Ryan Nembhard turning into an impossible to defend combo, the offense finally firing on all cylinders as one of the best in the nation, and much more.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about this turnaround is the sheer amount of noise coming from everywhere while this all was happening. That is what happens when a school has 24-straight NCAA Tournament appearances under its belt. The national media starts chirping. It gets mentioned ad nauseam on every national televised game, no matter how many times Sean Farham and Dave Flemming say, “You know, I think this is a NCAA Tournament team.”
The noise from the “fanbase” was even larger. Whenever I mentioned that Gonzaga has been in this place before, as recently as 2016, I was inevitably met with a declaration that the talent on this team is garbage ass garbage and Domantas Sabonis is a professional basketball player, or something similar.
The reality of the situation was always going to be somewhere in between. The nature of this year’s squad, with its high impact transfers that constantly rated as one of the top 10 transfer classes in the country, was always going to take some time to gel. That is how playing a team sport works. Losing Steele Venters did not do any favors. Having the youngsters be not as far on their development as one could hope happens, every year.
Throughout it all, Gonzaga did what all good teams do–they silenced the outside noise and focused on the only thing they could possibly do to salvage the season, namely, win all the games. They did that. The Zags aren’t WCC Regular Champions, but I’d argue that they are the WCC team, as of right now, that I’d put money on to go deeper into the NCAA Tournament.
This was an odd year for Gonzaga and its fans, no doubt. The team has been on an absurd upward trajectory featuring top 10 high school recruits, lottery draft picks, championship appearances, best players in college hoops, you name it. Hype piled on hype piled on hype.
Not all seasons are like that. And for the past 25 years, that hasn’t mattered much. The coaching staff and the players know exactly what they need to do and they get it done.
So for all those doomers and gloomers that have been hate watching the team all season, they’ve missed out on some absolutely delightfully fun basketball over the past two months. The “worst” team Gonzaga has ever fielded during its NCAA Tournament streak is going dancing on the graves of your fandom. So last night’s win was especially for you.