Gonzaga men's basketball's last hurdle for transformation to blueblood? National championship

If and when Gonzaga men's basketball guard-forward Corey Kispert hears his team’s name called on Selection Sunday, the rising senior said the euphoric feeling will be two years in the making.

Poised to secure a No. 1 seed in last spring’s NCAA tournament — which was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic — Kispert and his teammates’ potential dream season abruptly ended.

“This March Madness (in 2021) is a buildup over two years,” Kispert said. “Last year’s team, we had a lot of high goals and we were ready to push towards a national championship. We didn’t have a sense of completion.

“Now the biggest thing we’re trying to do with this year’s team is take nothing for granted. If we get to play in the NCAA tournament, we’re going to make it count, to play for some of the guys on last year’s team that don’t get this chance.”

Mark Few, in his 22nd year coaching the Zags, believes this year’s team can be just as good as last season’s — if not better — to secure a No. 1 seed and reach the Final Four. He said the season will be like none other as the country’s Division I teams do their best to manage COVID-19 challenges from safety protocols to scheduling difficulties.

“This offseason was one of the most bizarre offseasons for coaches and players,” Few said. “It was like a ghost town on campus here (in Spokane, Washington), with the players all wearing masks marching across campus to get to the gym. It looked like something out of ‘Hunger Games.’

“But our players have been so committed to doing the right thing, being compliant, following the rules, and quarantining on top of everything that goes into being a college basketball player. Man, it just shows you how bad they want it, especially after losing the opportunity last year. That was traumatic.”

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The Zags have elevated into the upper echelon of the sport in recent years, with Few transforming the little giant mid-major program into a national power. Gonzaga has been knocking on the door of a national championship, reaching the title game in 2017 and the Elite Eight in 2019 — all while compiling four consecutive seasons of 31 wins or more.

The evolution has impressively taken place playing in the West Coast Conference.

“It’s no secret that the last five to seven years we’ve been right there in contention as a program,” Kispert said. “The last thing to nudge our way into the blue-blood category is a national championship. That’s the one thing keeping us from being in that club.”

The Bulldogs (31-2 last season) will be in the mix for preseason No. 1. Of all the Gonzaga teams that have been in the national title conversation, this might not be the best, but Few sees this group as having as good a chance as any to cut down the nets in April based on the program’s winning culture continually carrying over.

“We have our own expectations that are just as high, if not higher, than whatever everyone else has of us,” Few said. “We want those pressures and expectations.

“One of the things I’m most proud of with the program is we haven’t taken a major dip. We’ve stayed relevant and on the national stage, and that’s not easy.

“You have players leave early and there’s turnover. But we’ve consistently been able to recruit and select the right transfers to manage the roster with the best in the country.”

The major loss this offseason was West Coast Conference Player of the Year Filip Petrusev, who signed a contract overseas and ended his college career. Kispert (13.9 points per game) and Joel Ayayi (10.6 ppg, 6.3 rebounds per game) are the top two players back, and then five-star freshman guard Jalen Suggs is expected to make an immediate impact — giving the Zags a fearsome backcourt. Then factor in big man Drew Timme (9.8 ppg, 5.4 rpg), who had a strong freshman debut and is poised to be a key interior force as a sophomore.

“We’re trying to treat this like every year,” Ayayi said. “We’re hungrier, wanting to get back to the point where we were at last March, but we have to control that energy. Because it’s a new year. We have to keep trying to get better, lean on our experience. We know we need to stay focused if we want to be the first Gonzaga team to win it all.”

Kispert feels like there are two facets that make this year’s Zags roster unique and capable of eclipsing the blue-blood glass ceiling. “This year we have more leadership at the guard position than we have in years past,” he said. “If you look at some of the great recent Gonzaga teams of the past, we had Kelly Olynyk, Domantas Sabonis, Rui Hachimura — these were all big men at the center. This year we have guards who have seen pretty much everything get thrown at us.

“And then our camaraderie has grown even more through COVID. We’ve been doing everything together, going through this together. And since we already had a great foundation off the court that carried over on it, now it’s even better. We know we can’t look at this as a normal year. You never know what can happen with this season because of COVID, who’s going to be out there on the floor, and it could be difficult to develop chemistry because of all that uncertainty. But this team is built to go through adversity. That’s what makes this group special.”