Gonzaga freshman guard Dusty Stromer was born on Aug. 9, 2003. He's 20 years old. Not only has GU never missed an NCAA Tournament in Stromer's lifetime, the Zags have been a top 4 seed a majority of those years and a No. 1 seed more often than a double digit seed.
For the players on this year's squad, Gonzaga being elite is a given.
But after an uncharacteristically choppy season, the Zags aren't expected to make a deep tourney run. Instead of playing here in Spokane, they're a somewhat surprising 5-seed — sent off to Salt Lake City to play an upset-minded McNeese State Team. And the reward for a potential victory would likely be fellow perennial national title contender Kansas. Not only is nobody picking the Zags to make the Final Four, the Vegas oddsmakers predict this year will mark the end of GU's ultra-impressive streak of making eight straight Sweet 16s.
So now it's time to see if Gonzaga still has that (under)dog in 'em.
Gonzaga built its name as the plucky team from somewhere in Washington that isn't Seattle (those exist?!?) with a name that nobody could pronounce correctly (and some national basketball analysts somehow still can't).
The team that put the school on the map (and probably saved the university from financial freefall) was the 1998-99 squad. The 10-seed Zags improbably pulled off three upsets to reach the Elite Eight. It was a pure distillation of what people love about watching the early rounds of the tourney — the small school playing better team basketball to knock off the more established power teams with bigger stars. It's a formula that this year's Zags need to follow in order to make any noise.
For the first few months of this season, Mark Few's guys looked like they might not even make the tournament. Point guard Ryan Nembhard seemed to lack a feel for the game, sprinting up the floor with no control. Nolan Hickman, Nembhard and Stromer couldn't hit an outside shot to save their lives. Graham Ike was solid, but seemed a step show. The Zags came up short in every big nonconference game.
While Gonzaga fans have admittedly been spoiled by the program's success, it was a depressing slog to watch a GU team play so disjointedly after years of elite free-flowing basketball grace.
But things turned around when Ben Gregg replaced Stromer in the starting lineup. Ike started dominating in the post. Nembhard found some much-needed pace control and his distributor groove. The guards started hitting from the behind the arc. And the wins against teams like Kentucky followed.
The Bulldogs won 14 of 15 games, and the narrative flipped to "Why did all these haters ever not believe in this Zags team?" But don't let anyone gaslight you with that line of thinking — the team was unfun and not great. More importantly, that line of thinking discounts how much the players and coaching staff have worked to improve throughout the season.
But the good vibes hit a wall in the WCC Championship Game against St. Mary's. The ugly play reemerged as the Gaels knocked off GU while holding them to a gross season-low total of 60 points.
Was that last game a fluke? Or was the fluke actually the hot stretch, when the Zags were beating down conference opponents during an extremely down year for the WCC?
We'll have our answer after this week's NCAA Tournament action.
In order for GU to keep its Sweet 16 streak alive they need to tap into that defiant "nobody believes in us" passion. For this year's Zags to live up to the new expectations for the program, they need to play with that old Gonzaga spirit. The Bulldogs need to embrace being underdogs once again. ♦
