What is next for Gonzaga

I think you would be hard pressed to find a more frustrating season for Gonzaga as of late. A team that returned basically everyone minus Anton Watson and added a couple of major transfer portal additions in Michael Ajayi and Khalif Battle could never really fully click.

Gonzaga’s final game–a five-point loss to Houston–was the ninth on the season and in-line with basically every single other one. Gonzaga lost every game by an average of 5 points, honestly a spread that is much larger than how close the games actually were due to last-ditch-effort fouling.

It wasn’t an ego problem. It wasn’t a coaching problem. It wasn’t a player problem either. Sometimes, it just doesn’t all work out the way it is supposed to. Considering that next week will be the first Sweet 16 without Gonzaga since 2014, even with the lack of nattys during that time span, I’d argue we don’t have it that difficult for fandom.

Next year will be different, just by the sheer fact that a majority of this team are seniors. Ryan Nembhard, Khalif Battle, Ben Gregg, and Nolan Hickman will all be off on their next steps. Technically, Ajayi and Graham Ike can return for another year–although I highly doubt either one does.

That right there are your six top minute getters this season and six of your top seven scorers. When the dust settles, of the contributors who are left is the likes of Braden Huff, Dusty Stromer, Emmanuel Innocenti, and Ismalia Diagne. In our minds, we can logically say why each of those players should return, but in this era of college basketball, the offseason provides zero guarantees.

I think we can pretty conclusively assume that Braeden Smith and Jalen Warley, after redshirting this year, will be playing in a Gonzaga uniform next season. Otherwise, that would be a weird way to waste a year of your life.

Smith averaged 12.5 points and 5.6 assists in his sophomore season at Colgate. He will have huge shoes to fill but a year under the tutelage of Nembhard hopefully helps out. Warley is a former top-35 high school prospect with good size and athleticism. As two of your five starters, that is a good starting point.

Gonzaga will welcome another top 35 recruit in Anacortes, Washington bred Davis Fogle. That is the sole recruit barring one of those crazy last minute international additions, although considering the state of the union at the moment, I wouldn’t bank on one of those. Like every team now does every season, expect some big transfers to be attached to Gonzaga and a couple/few of them follow through. This team will reload. It always does.

Next year does seem like it has the potential to be a bit of a segue year, however. With as much roster turnover that will happen this offseason, those following years tend to have that feeling. Next year will also be the final run through for Gonzaga in the West Coast Conference before it joins the Pac 12 in July 2026.

The Zags will not enter next season with a top 5 ranking. I doubt they enter with a top 10 ranking. They will probably have the lowest preseason ranking since the 2017-18 Zags, who started the season at No. 18 and ended up in the Sweet 16 and a “what if” finish because of a Killian Tillie injury minutes before tip-off.

Right now, we can’t say a lot about next season, which is a good thing, because the NCAA Tournament is still happening. Even though we don’t get to enjoy the second weekend for the first time in a decade, I wouldn’t expect Gonzaga to take a Sweet 16 break for too long.