Among men’s college basketball’s blue bloods and new bloods, where does Gonzaga rank?
When No. 4 Kentucky faces No. 7 Gonzaga this weekend in Seattle, the Wildcats will be seeking to avoid the first losing streak of the Mark Pope coaching era and trying to prevent Mark Few’s Zags from recording a third straight win over UK.
Since the Cats (7-1) and Bulldogs (7-1) will not be tipping off until 10 p.m. (EST) Saturday, it leaves ample time for us to ponder the remarkable men’s hoops program Few has constructed at a smallish Catholic institution (some 7,306 total students) in Spokane, Washington.
With one glaring omission, Gonzaga is at least in the argument to be regarded as the preeminent men’s college hoops program in the country so far in the 21st century.
If you think that claim is audacious, consider:
▪ Few has coached Gonzaga to at least the round of 16 in the past nine NCAA Tournaments. No other men’s program in college basketball — not Connecticut, not Kansas, not North Carolina or Duke and certainly not Kentucky — can make that claim.
▪ From the 2016 NCAA Tournament through the March Madness concluded last spring, Gonzaga has more NCAA tourney victories (24) than any other men’s Division I hoops program.
Immediately behind the Zags are North Carolina (21 tourney wins since 2016), Kansas and Villanova (20 each) and Duke (17).
▪ Gonzaga may, for now, play in the mid-major West Coast Conference, but in the current decade the Zags are 32-14 head-to-head vs. opponents from power conferences (for our purposes deemed to be the current football power four, the Big East and all teams that were in the old Pac-12).
▪ In games since 2019-20 against six of men’s college basketball’s most historically regal programs — Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan State, North Carolina and UCLA — Gonzaga is 10-1 head-to-head.
The Bulldogs are 4-0 vs. UCLA, 2-0 vs. Kansas, 2-0 vs. Kentucky, 1-0 vs. Michigan State, 1-0 vs. North Carolina and 0-1 vs. Duke.
Essentially, Few has built Gonzaga into a major conference program while still competing in a mid-major league. The Zags have won or shared the WCC regular season title in 22 out of 25 seasons in the 21st century.
Nevertheless, in the ever-evolving world of big-time college sports, Gonzaga is making a move. After buzz about the Zags possibly joining the Big 12 or even the Big East in conference realignment, Gonzaga will instead shift to the reconstituted Pac-12 beginning with the 2026-27 school year.
With all the success that Few and Gonzaga have amassed, what makes it impossible to just declare the Zags the preeminent men’s college basketball program of the 21st century to date is this:
As great as the Bulldogs have recently been at getting out of the NCAA Tournament’s first weekend, their track record at reaching the tourney’s final weekend is not stellar.
So far in this century, 13 different schools have won men’s NCAA Tournament championships (one of those titles, won by Louisville in 2013, was subsequently vacated by the NCAA for rules violations in the Cardinals’ program).
Gonzaga is not one of those 13.
Starting with the 1999-2000 season, eight programs have gone to four or more men’s NCAA Tournament Final Fours in the 21st century — Michigan State (7), North Carolina (7), Connecticut (6), Kansas (6 on the court, but 5 officially since the Jayhawks’ 2018 Final Four appearance was subsequently vacated by the NCAA), Duke (5), and Kentucky (4), UCLA (4) and Villanova (4).
You will note that Gonzaga is not on that list, either.
Those nine consecutive trips to the round of 16 produced by the Zags have yielded five visits to the Elite Eight, two Final Four appearances and NCAA runner-up finishes in 2017 and 2021.
That is why even though Gonzaga has been a far more stable and consistent program than UConn, many would say the Huskies, with their five NCAA titles won since 2000 (and six overall), have the stronger claim on “preeminent men’s college hoops program of the 21st century.”
Heading into Saturday night’s “Battle in Seattle” between Kentucky and Gonzaga, UK will be seeking to get back on track after the Wildcats were upset 70-66 on the road at Clemson in the SEC/ACC Challenge on Tuesday night.
No one will have to educate UK’s Pope on the magnitude of the program that Few, 61, has built at Gonzaga. In his time coaching at Utah Valley and BYU, Pope went a combined 1-9 in versus the Zags.
In the 2024-25 season opener, Gonzaga smoked then-No. 7 Baylor — the team that beat the Zags in the 2021 NCAA Tournament championship game — 101-63. Against Scott Drew’s Bears, Few’s Bulldogs looked every bit like a team capable of cutting down the nets on the final Monday night of this season.
That is the one missing achievement needed to secure Gonzaga’s standing in the top tier among the men’s college hoops titans.
This story was originally published December 5, 2024 at 7:00 AM.
