Perhaps the only thing more difficult to comprehend than Gonzaga’s rise to national power status is that 25 years have passed since the Bulldogs arrived on the March Madness stage with their breathtaking Sweet 16 victory over Florida.
Today’s college players – most of them, anyway – have not lived in a world in which Gonzaga was not an NCAA Tournament fixture. They have grown up with Adam Morrison, Domantas Sabonis, Nigel Williams-Goss, Rui Hachimura and Drew Timme as established college basketball stars. They have known Mark Few as a future Hall of Famer.
They are not at all puzzled when they hear the word “Zags”.
They recognize exactly what that means.
Gonzaga did not rise to a quarter-century of dominance by accident. Their formula began with a vision that was turned into a plan that was funded at the level necessary to make it a reality. Of course, the program won way more than its share of basketball games. All along the way from their first NCAA Tournament appearance in 1995 to that stunning Elite Eight under Dan Monson four years later to reaching national championship games in 2017 and 2021 with Few in charge, they have been members of the West Coast Conference.
Why would they be foolish enough to change that now?
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The Pacific-12 Conference was reanimated last week when four members of the Mountain West Conference joined with the two Pac-12 exiles to form the core of a new league. They will endeavor to add new members, primarily with a focus on football performance and audience, but it has not been rare to hear Gonzaga suggested as a target for basketball-centric expansion.
Agreeing would bring such programs as San Diego State, Boise State, Oregon State and nearby Washington State to Spokane on a regular basis during the college basketball season. Those games certainly would be more attractive than the regular appearances by Loyola Marymount, Pacific and Portland.
Changing conferences, however, also would dramatically alter the chemistry that has elevated Gonzaga to its current status. The Zags’ current run of nine consecutive Sweet 16 appearances is tied for the longest in the NCAA Tournament’s expanded bracket era. The other two programs with nine-year runs? Duke from 1998-2006 and North Carolina from 1985-1993.
During this streak, Gonzaga has advanced to at least the Elite Eight five times. The Zags have been seeded lower than No. 5 just once, and they’ve been a No. 1 four times. They’ve reached the 30-win mark six times. Their record in those seasons is 282-41, an .873 winning percentage.
All suggestions that competing in the WCC doesn’t properly prepare them for March have been obliterated by their 27-9 record in NCAA Tournament games since 2015. North Carolina has 24 NCAA wins in that period, Duke 23, Kansas 21 and Kentucky 14.
As well, there is no precedent to indicate such a change would be competitively beneficial.
As a member of the Southern Conference, Davidson made 12 NCAA Tournament appearances between 1966 and 2013, including seven in a 16-year period under legendary head coach Bob McKillop. After climbing to the Atlantic 10 Conference in 2014-15, the Wildcats reached the NCAAs three times in nine opportunities. They have not yet had a winning season since McKillop retired as head coach in 2022.
Butler made a similar move, climbing from the Horizon League to the Atlantic 10 for one season and now the Big East. Under Barry Collier, Thad Matta, Todd Lickliter and Brad Stevens, the Bulldogs reached the NCAAs 11 times in 17 years. They reached the tournament four times in a four-year stretch after joining the Big East, the first three with Chris Holtmann as coach and then one with LaVall Jordan. But after a certain bid in 2020 was erased through cancellation of the 2020 tournament because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve not been back since.
We do not know what Gonzaga basketball will become when Few, now 61, eventually decides to retire. But that chapter of the future may not arrive for a while. Mike Krzyzewski did not leave Duke until he was 75. Leonard Hamilton will coach Florida State this season at 76.
There have been occasions of principals attempting to “fix” something that obviously was functioning at an elite level, the most notorious being the introduction in 1985 of what came to be known as “New Coke”.
Not all learned the lesson taught by that disaster. A half-decade later, Francis Ford Coppola directed and co-wrote The Godfather Part III, which did make money but holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of only 66 percent positive reviews, down from 97 percent in the first two films of the series.
In 2021, Columbus Crew SC executives changed their popular uniform crest and attempted to drop the “Crew” from the team’s name. Furious supporters protested until a compromise made them the Crew again. By that name, they are the reigning champions of Major League Soccer.
The bottom line: Never mess with what’s nearly perfect.
Gonzaga basketball is as close as it comes in sports.
