When Gonzaga opened the season with a 101-63 thumping of preseason No. 8 Baylor on Nov. 4 at Spokane Arena, it was the usual suspects who garnered the most attention. Familiar names like Ryan Nembhard, Nolan Hickman and Graham Ike stuffed the stat sheet. New high-profile transfers Khalif Battle and Michael Ajayi were positive contributors. Dusty Stromer and Braden Huff played big minutes off the bench.
Emmanuel Innocenti and Ismaila Diagne combined for just six points in three minutes apiece. Despite the extremely lopsided score, they barely saw the floor.
But recently those two international Bulldogs have become a spark that's helped salvage a season that went a little off the rails in the months since that game against Baylor.
After back-to-back losses to Oregon State and Santa Clara in mid-January — in which Innocenti played a grand total of two minutes — the Italian sophomore transfer from Tarleton State moved into the starting lineup for three games.
While he's now back to coming off the bench, Innocenti has cemented himself in the rotation as a defensive stalwart. As a freshman at Tarleton State last season, the Italian was named to the WAC All-Defensive Team. And while he couldn't find minutes early, his presence was much needed for Gonzaga after giving up a shocking 101 points at home (the McCarthey Athletic Center record for a visiting team) in the loss to Santa Clara.
Since Innocenti moved into the rotation, Gonzaga rates as the 14th-most-efficient defensive unit in the sport, according to statistician Bart Torvik. Prior to that, Torvik's stats show Gonzaga as the 59th defensive team in the country.
Innocenti's role as a defensive-minded player who does little in the scoring column — he's scored zero points in half of the games he's played since moving into the rotation — is reminiscent of another small forward from Gonzaga's past: Mike Hart.
As a senior in 2013, Hart moved into the starting lineup midway through the season and helped lead Gonzaga to the first No. 1 seed in program history.
It's not just that their roles are similar, but their paths to playing time are as well. Head coach Mark Few rarely tinkers with his lineups as dramatically as he has this season with the insertion of Innocenti.
Since that 2013 team, this is only the fourth time that Few has significantly altered his rotation midseason for noninjury reasons. It happened last year when Ben Gregg replaced Stromer as a starter, in 2021 when Andrew Nembhard took a starting spot from Anton Watson, and in 2020 when Joel Ayayi replaced Admon Gilder.
The difference now is that those previous three situations involved players who suddenly got more minutes were already firmly in the regular rotation. Innocenti was, from a playing time perspective, an end-of-the-bench afterthought until late January.
While not as impactful on the court as Innocenti, fellow newcomer Ismalia Diagne has provided a spark down the stretch as well.
The 7-foot-tall freshman from Senegal came to Gonzaga with a strong basketball background. Prior to Spokane, Diagne was in Spain playing for Real Madrid, one of the top professional clubs in Europe. Despite that pedigree, the big man struggled to crack the rotation.
Diagne has appeared in just nine games this season, the first six of which were blowout wins. But he's now played in three of Gonzaga's last four games and logged a career-high 18 minutes in the regular season finale against Santa Clara.
That game was an aberration, as foul trouble forced Few to go deep into his bench. Diagne bailed out his struggling teammates, scoring 9 points on 4-of-4 shooting and grabbing 4 rebounds in the game, drawing praise from Gonzaga legend Adam Morrison.
"He's always happy, he's always smiling, he's always joking," Morrison said on his podcast, The Perimeter. "Guys always gravitate to those types of players, so when they do get their chance it kind of hypes everybody up."
Diagne's energy off the floor was also visible during the WCC Tournament. In the semifinal against San Francisco, in an uncomfortably close game, Diagne got right up in the face of both Ben Gregg and Graham Ike during a timeout.
It wasn't aggressive, it was inspirational.
He played just three minutes in that game, but Diagne's presence on the bench and his connection with his teammates was palpable even through the TV screen.
When the season began in November, Innocenti and Diagne weren't thought to be keys to Gonzaga's success, but both players have left their mark on this team and helped to stabilize the season. ♦
