Six years ago, Gonzaga was a very good, very solid college basketball program. It made the NCAA Tournament every year and won at least one NCAA Tournament game nearly every season. That\u2019s not bad at all for a small school tucked away in the Pacific Northwest, in a small conference on the West Coast without major television money or media centers. Yet, Gonzaga had built a national brand name and had not been able to finish its seasons at the top of the heap in college basketball. The program was a second-round NCAA Tournament program. It had not yet reached the Final Four. There was a higher level for the school to achieve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Starting in 2015, the program was able to make the climb. Gonzaga reached the Elite Eight in 2015, the Sweet 16 in 2016, and then the Final Four and national championship game in 2017. Since then, Gonzaga has taken off. The challenge this season is to remain at the top of the mountain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Offseason Changes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bulldogs lost big man Filip Petrusev, point guard Admon Gilder, power forward Killian Tillie, and guard Ryan Woolridge. Petrusev and Tillie are the especially big losses, and it shouldn\u2019t be viewed as automatic that Gonzaga will lose absolutely nothing from their departures. The composition of a roster changes rapidly each season, and it\u2019s not a guarantee that the new roster will mesh as well as the previous year\u2019s group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bulldogs Will Succeed If\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Their newcomers are the real deal. Gonzaga has landed a top-15 recruiting class, so with four rotation players leaving, it is expected that a new crop of players will sufficiently replace them. Gonzaga is rated in the top three of most preseason rankings because the experts think the new guys will be ready. Five-star recruit Jalen Suggs is predicted to be the engine behind the new Gonzaga offense. Coach Mark Few always wants to run and push tempo, so that Gonzaga\u2019s fast and agile athletes can get up and down the floor and create good shots before the opposing defense can get set. Gonzaga is a speed-and-movement team as opposed to a burly, muscular team which slows the game down and tries to win with defense and rebounding. If Suggs is as good as expected, and if Drew Timme, a sophomore forward, can replace Petrusev, Gonzaga will be able to address each of its departures and simply fill in the gaps. There is a \u201cplug and play\u201d quality to this team, where newcomers are in position to neatly fill the roles left behind by departing 2020 players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bulldogs Will Fail If\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Their bench and role players don\u2019t fit neatly into the equation. Freshman Dominick Harris, Southern Illinois transfer Anton Cook, and backup big man Oumar Ballo are the kinds of players who need to provide relief for the starting five and give this rotation balance and cohesion. The starting five is expected to be great, but fitting in the bench pieces could be the thorny part of the equation for this roster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prediction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Gonzaga program has turned the corner. There are no rebuilding years anymore when the Zags get a No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament. This team is a top-two-seed-level team. It will be in the thick of the hunt for the Final Four, and it will cruise to another title in the West Coast Conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prediction: 1st in WCC<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Six years ago, Gonzaga was a very good, very solid college basketball program. It made the NCAA Tournament every year…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":14504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaab"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14505,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14498\/revisions\/14505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}