Eventually, the Gonzaga Bulldogs are going to win the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The only thing that could prevent it is a technicality: the NCAA disbanding and some other organization rising from its ashes. When this private school from Spokane reaches the mountaintop, you do not want to be one of the losers who knew this truth years earlier but threw it away before it manifested in real life.
In 2021, “Gonzaga Could Become the Greatest Men’s College Basketball Team Ever” was the headline of my bullish primer. (It nearly happened, but the Zags lost the national final.) “Just Pick Gonzaga,” I followed up in 2022, with the added promise: “Their time has come. And if it has not, I will rewrite this argument every March until it does.” By 2023, the Zags were a little bit less elite but still very good. “Just Pick Gonzaga Again. No, Really!” was our headline. In 2024, the team was not quite as serious, but I still was. The page blared, “March Madness Is Here Again. You Know What You Have to Do.”
In 2025, I have thought about dropping this obsession. Gonzaga has made every tournament since 1999 and fallen short every time, only ever reaching the championship game twice. All but the first of those tournament appearances has come under coach Mark Few, who is both a legendary program-builder and a complete loser in March. This year’s Gonzaga team has been iffy all year, losing an unusual eight regular season games—all to decent teams but none to fellow juggernauts. The Bulldogs are the No. 8 seed in the tournament’s Midwest region. They must hoe a long row to even reach the Sweet 16.
But the reasons to believe in Gonzaga this March are stronger than a writer’s childish desire to subject a long-dead horse to more beatings for the sake of ego. The Bulldogs enter March Madness as by far the most underseeded team in the tournament relative to their true ability. In a year when most people will not give the Zags much of a thought as a potential champion, the tournament is threatening to deliver a scalding irony. This time, this year, Gonzaga is poised to win the NCAA Tournament.
The definition of Gonzaga used to be doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result. Few has a distinct style, honed and tweaked over the years: Dominate the West Coast Conference while playing offense at lightning tempo, working the ball inside, and running up the score with incredible interior scorers. Few used to have to develop those players himself, yielding all-time college stars like forward Adam Morrison (2003–2006) and center Drew Timme (2020–2023). Somewhere along the line, Gonzaga’s reputation became so strong that Few could contend the old-fashioned way, by signing NBA lottery picks out of high school. All along the way, he has been savvy about getting the right veteran transfers—something he was doing all the time even before “the transfer portal” was a thing—and scouting worthwhile international prospects.
This version of the team is a bit different. Gonzaga still moves pretty quick and still has little interest in 3-point shots, but the team has new elements to it. The Zags put more of a premium on ball movement than the hurry-up-and-get-the-ball inside teams of the recent past. Sixty-two percent of their made field goals feature an assist, the 10th-highest mark in the country and a major ramp-up from any recent teams of Few’s. Their possessions are short but full of whipped-around passes. They do not have a pair of giants like Timme or Chet Holmgren patrolling the rim on defense all night, and opponents’ shooting efficiency inside the arc has skyrocketed. But their opponents have shot a miserable 30 percent from deep, something that owes to some mix of luck and Gonzaga playing pretty sticky defense that requires the opponent to take long, drawn-out possessions. This isn’t the same Gonzaga you’ve watched lose 25 years in a row. It’s a freshened version, and one that—unlike many of Few’s teams—happens to be nails from the foul line. Only one team in the tournament, Wisconsin, beats Gonzaga’s 80 percent at the stripe.
The Zags are now deeply underrated. Ken Pomeroy’s efficiency numbers adore them, believing the Zags to be the ninth-best team in the country on a neutral floor. Yet the Bulldogs are an eight seed because they took a while to settle into the season. They were 16–7 on Feb. 2, after a 4-point loss to WCC rival Saint Mary’s. That team beat them once more a few weeks later, but Gonzaga got its revenge in the WCC title game and hasn’t lost to a non-Gaels outfit since Jan. 18. That will stand as Gonzaga’s last loss.
This bunch has been playing together for a long time. Gonzaga is fourth in Pomeroy’s “minutes continuity,” which counts playing time carryover from one year’s roster to another. One key man to watch is guard Ryan Nembhard, who’s quintessential Gonzaga in that he’s Canadian and his older brother played for Few. The best player on the team is forward Graham Ike, a transfer from Wyoming who just ran everyone off the floor in the conference tournament. The Zags have a full nine-man rotation, and who would I be to tell you which players will become the faces of this championship run? That would spoil the fun.
I am emboldened by the obvious fallibility of the best teams in the country. Duke is the top team, in my opinion, but its best player, Cooper Flagg, will be returning on a tight timeline after spraining an ankle. Of the other No. 1 seeds, Auburn (the No. 1 overall seed by the selection committee) and Florida both spent the season playing in the 14-bid SEC, the deepest single-season conference ever. They must be tired from three months of endless battling with no easy games, and Florida (as well as No. 2 seed Tennessee) must be extra drained after playing three games in three days over the weekend at the SEC Tournament. Note that Gonzaga, on the other hand, only had to play two games in the WCC’s event, and will have been off for nine days by the time the players take the court in the first round. Fresh legs!
The other No. 1 seed is Houston, the defensive monsters that they are under coach Kelvin Sampson. I respect Houston, but they are just Diet Gonzaga, a team with an extensive history of making the tournament from a mid-major league and then not quite getting it done despite being one of the best squads in the country. Houston moved from the American Athletic to the Big 12 last season, but if we are docking Gonzaga for its history of March failures, we must dock the Cougars in the same way. Like Gonzaga this year, Houston will only get its championship once the masses cease to expect it.
Gonzaga’s path to San Antonio and the Final Four will start in Wichita, with a first-round game against No. 9 seed Georgia on Thursday. (Yes indeed, that’s the University of Georgia playing in an NCAA Tournament game, something that hasn’t happened in more than a decade. The SEC really was that good this season.) Next would be Houston, the biggest challenge in the region. The Cougars are rock-solid but have lost a few games to teams of roughly Gonzaga’s caliber (Texas Tech and Alabama) and even dropped an overtime game to a San Diego State team that earned a No. 11 seed. Nobody in the Zags’ region looks insurmountable. Do not let the boys from the Pacific Northwest get hot.
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