Most of the hoo-ha over college-basketball rankings Monday had nothing to do with Gonzaga, and maybe that’s fitting. The Zags powered through Kansas in both the AP (media) and coaches polls to No. 1, and gee, what can you say but ho-hum?
This is the third Gonzaga team in school history to crack the No. 1 spot, joining 2013 and 2017. The three appearances were done essentially with distinctly different casts of characters. More on that later.
Most of the noise Monday was made by the initial release of the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking, which was developed to replace the controversial Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) computer rankings. No doubt even Ohio State was shocked to learn it’s No. 1 in the first NET rankings. And generally, the part of the world that cares about college hoops was as stunned as if you’d told it no illicit cash ever changes hands in the sport.
A couple of quick thoughts on the NET, which has Gonzaga No. 5: It’s early, and making too much of the rankings would be like trying to project a marathon winner after a mile and a half. But, uh, the Buckeyes indeed seem like an odd choice, notwithstanding road wins at Cincinnati and Creighton, both of which are 5-1. The Bearcats haven’t beaten anyone of renown, while Creighton has one notable victory over Clemson, which was ranked 16th at the time.
But the rankings that really piqued the interest of Zag fans were the media’s and coaches’, each of which, ever so narrowly, allowed heretofore No. 3 Gonzaga to leapfrog Kansas to gain the No. 1 spot after its landmark victory last week over Duke in the Maui Invitational final.
I figured that margin would be razor-thin, and defensible either way. Gonzaga has the big hammer, a victory over a team some were touting as a potential undefeated all the way, while Kansas has already bagged two wins over Top 10 teams, Michigan State and Tennessee. There’s no wrong answer there.
No way to get inside the heads of voters who opted for Kansas, but what wouldn’t be the proper way to assess it is this: Kansas was No. 2, ahead of Gonzaga, and it had a marquee win, so it should naturally get the nod for No. 1. This early in the season, the rankings are something akin to a blank easel – a sketch that may not look anything like rankings once they’ve settled in a couple of months, and teams’ strength can truly be assessed relative to others. For now, it’s more of a guess, which is why it’s dubious to think that the No. 2-rated team a week ago is necessarily better than the No. 3 team.
Again, it’s early, and maybe that’s a rationale for the ballot of Jesse Newell, the AP voter who kept Duke at No. 1 (the only top vote nationally for the Blue Devils), and thus caused some observers to wonder whether he was spelunking in Nepal last week as the Zags were nipping Duke. Newell does work for the Kansas City Star, one of the best newspapers out there, and he explains that he gives heavy consideration to analytics sites like KenPom.com and Torvik and their predictive nature. Both cling to Duke as the No. 1 team; KenPom has Gonzaga No. 6 and Torvik puts it at No. 3.
I appreciate analytics as much as the next guy. But don’t the actual results matter, too?
As for putting into perspective the Zags and their ascent to No. 1 . . .
Since Gonzaga attained its first No. 1 ranking in March of 2013, a total of 13 schools have been ranked at the top in the regular season: Arizona, Baylor, Duke, Florida, Gonzaga, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan State, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Syracuse, Villanova and Virginia.
Of the 13, only four – Gonzaga, Kentucky, Michigan State and Villanova – have been ranked No. 1 as many as three times in that period (four for Kentucky), and only GU, Kentucky and Michigan State have done it with largely separate casts (‘Nova did it the last three years, with a fair amount of overlapping personnel). For the record, the contribution by current Zags on the No. 1-rated 2017 team was by their Nos. 6-8-9 scorers, Josh Perkins, Killian Tillie and Rui Hachimura. Perkins averaged 29 minutes, Tillie 12 and Hachimura a mere 4.6.
College-hoops rankings are, of course, as disposable as the latest from the tweeter-in-chief in Washington. It all comes out in the wash in college basketball, so nobody gets too frothy about rankings. Besides, they’re notoriously fluid, and the Zags, after their game Monday night against North Dakota State, have potential landmines at Creighton Saturday, with Tennessee Dec. 9 in Phoenix and at North Carolina Dec. 15. (My fingers are having trouble typing Washington as a potential landmine.)
Besides that, the Zags are now without guard Geno Crandall for 4-6 weeks with a broken hand. Tillie is already out, and in my memory, I can't recall two key pieces being down for an extended time simultaneously.
I distinctly remember writing for my trusty newspaper back in 2013 that the Zags’ first No. 1 ranking meant nothing, and yet it meant everything. That day, there was a 21-foot sheet cake with blue icing placed on tables in the middle of campus, available to students in a celebratory mood.
I’m guessing there was no sheet cake Monday and only modest revelry. As is increasingly the case at Gonzaga, been there, done that.
So much was made nationally of Duke’s fabulous start against Kentucky, and its nonpareil freshman class, that it obscured the chance Gonzaga might have Wednesday against the top-ranked Blue Devils. Lo and behold, it was a pretty good one: The Zags controlled most of the game, steadied themselves in some teetering moments down the stretch, and in the Maui Invitational final, upset the team widely presumed to be the 2019 national champion, 89-87.
You can almost see it now: Deep in March, if these two teams collide again, the stage will be set for Mike Krzyzewski, maybe the greatest college coach in the sport’s history, to prove to the world how far his team has come from that November day in the Islands, and the Blue Devils will own the motivational edge.
To which Zag fans would surely say: So be it.
Victories against Duke, the unquestioned kingpin of the landscape, must be cherished, savored, burnished and placed on the mantel inside a glass case for perpetuity. This is a Duke program that in 2009 beat the mess out of the Zags so badly (76-41) that, as recounted in Glory Hounds, it sent Mark Few and his assistant, Ray Giacoletti, out into a Saturday-night snowstorm in New York for a long, long walk to ponder how to resurrect their fallen team.
Among other things, the upset broke Duke’s crazy 17-game, five-tournament win streak in Maui, which dates to the 1992-93 field 26 years ago. In the five previous finals, the Blue Devils had vanquished BYU (1992), Arizona (1997), Ball State (2001) – Ball State? – Marquette (2007) and Kansas (2012).
Assorted thoughts:
The Zags were No. 3 entering the game, a spot behind Kansas, giving rise to some speculation that Kansas, which survived a struggle against Marquette, might be ranked No. 1 next week. I seriously doubt it. Not when so many hosannas were being thrown Duke’s way this month.
If that happens, it’s the third time (2013, 2017) for Gonzaga to attain a No. 1 ranking, with essentially three different casts. Think about that in the context of the program’s history.
It’s often noted that Gonzaga’s increased profile as a national player is due to its defensive chops. No argument there, but I think the biggest noticeable jump in recent years is its rim-protection capability. It now has legitimate shot-blockers. Consider this: Nobody shot better than the low 40s against the Zags in Maui, and Idaho State’s 45.7 is the opponent best in the six games this year.
Most arresting stat in Maui: Gonzaga had 58 assists to the three opponents’ 22. When Gonzaga allowed baskets, it was getting beat off the dribble or by the three (hello, Illinois).
Short trip, sometimes, from the outhouse to the penthouse. If Trent Frazier hits his three on Illinois’ final possession Monday night, people are wondering what’s wrong with Gonzaga. Instead, after playing three lackluster halves to begin in Lahaina, the Zags followed with three scintillating ones.
This stands to be a nasty offensive team as long as it takes care of the ball. It shot low-50s percentages in all three games, and its lowest point total is 84 in the six games.
Jeremy Jones was the forgotten man among the trio that sat out the 2015-16 season at GU, lost behind fellow redshirts Nigel Williams-Goss and Johnathan Williams III. But he’s blown his cover. With Killian Tillie sidelined, he played 51 minutes in Maui, with 23 points and 21 rebounds, and his double-double against Illinois – punctuated by two clinching free throws in the last seconds – was absolutely pivotal.
When it comes to assessing NCAA-tournament resumes in March, this will be a chip of monumental proportions.
The question, on a Gonzaga message board, got me to thinking. It asked if there was even slight concern the Zags might not live up to the considerable hype in 2018-19.
So I hit the archives, in search of any telltale signs that preseason expectations have proved too much for the Zags to shoulder. Their No. 3 preseason ranking (the current station) was highest ever at GU.
In the previous 20 seasons – the Gonzaga golden era – the Zags were preseason-ranked in 15. Three of the misses came in the first four years.
This is the fifth time GU has gone into a season ranked in the AP top 10. Maybe the most enlightening thing that can be said is that three of the previous four seasons with a preseason top-10 ranking ended in some of Gonzaga’s most crushing losses.
(It's worth noting that self-imposed pressure isn't the only potential reason for failing to deliver on the hype. It could be because of lousy chemistry or because a key player underperformed, etc.)
Surely the most herky-jerky in that group of the preseason-ranked-top-10 was the 2015-16 outfit, which started at No. 9. This was the team that had lost Kevin Pangos and Gary Bell Jr. to graduation.
It mucked through December with home losses to Arizona and UCLA when Przemek Karnowski injured his back; saw Karnowski miss the entire season after surgery; got swept in the regular season by Saint Mary’s; looked for all the world like it might finally miss the NCAA tournament; suddenly sprang up out of a casket to win the WCC tournament; as an 11th seed, blew away Seton Hall and Utah by double digits in the NCAA tournament; and finally fell to Syracuse in the Sweet 16 after losing a lead down the stretch.
Oh, and all of this for the world to see on an HBO series on the team. As Mike Roth, the athletic director, called the season: “. . . a freakin’ Greek tragedy.”
On more than one occasion, I think you can make the case that Gonzaga’s prominence – its seed in the NCAA tournament – might have had the opposition on high alert and thereby made it more difficult for the Zags. In that vein, Nevada, a 10 seed in 2004 at KeyArena, blew away No. 2 seed Gonzaga.
It’s worth throwing out this: There have been times in the past when I thought Gonzaga was overrated – not as a failing of its own, but because of the nature of the polls. The Zags don’t lose much when January hits, and if you don’t lose, you move up in the polls. It looked worse when that No. 3-ranked team lost to Nevada, simply because Gonzaga probably was overrated.
By and large, though, I would point to only one case in which the Zags might have felt the weight of the world – when they attained their first No. 1 ranking in March of 2013, narrowly slipped by a 16th-seeded Southern University team, and then fell to ninth-seeded Wichita State. Everything was new to the Zags – being ranked No. 1 was a late-season novelty, and being a No. 1 seed was a first.
In the evolution of any program, there are fits and starts and mountains climbed and lessons learned. The whole of it, the fact Gonzaga has been to a Final Four and checked most of the boxes of a high-level program, and had experience dealing with all of it, seems to argue against a significant shortfall. But hey, such unknowns are why they play the games.
A look at how the previous 20 seasons developed with regard to the AP poll (preseason ranking is in parentheses):
1999: (Unranked) Stormed to the Elite Eight.
2000: (24) . . . reached No. 22 late in December but then fell out of the rankings for good . . . barged to the Sweet 16.
2001: (Unranked) . . . was never ranked . . . made the Sweet 16 for a third straight year.
2002: (Unranked) . . . rose all the way to No. 6 by March 12 but had its first real downer in the 20-year tournament run, losing to Wyoming.
2003: (22) . . . inched to No. 20 by Nov. 26, then fell out of polls the rest of the way . . . finished with memorable double-OT loss to top-seeded Arizona in the NCAA second round.
2004: (10) . . . stayed in polls throughout and was ranked No. 3 in mid-March before stunning blowout loss to Nevada at KeyArena.
2005: (25) . . . fell out of the polls one week, got as high as No. 10 on March 15 and eventually lost to Texas Tech in the NCAA second round.
2006: (8) . . . stayed in single-digit poll rankings all season . . . lost heartbreaker to UCLA in the Sweet 16.
2007: (Unranked) . . . got as high as No. 16, but shorthanded club fell in the NCAA first round to Indiana.
2008: (14) . . . had nine-week period in mid-season unranked … re-emerged late in season at No. 24 before falling to Stephen Curry-led Davidson in first round of NCAA, the last time GU lost in the first round.
2009: (10) . . . jumped to No. 4 in early December after Old Spice championship, fell all the way out of the rankings with three-game loss streak in December, then recovered to No. 10 before Sweet 16 loss to eventual champ North Carolina.
2010: (Unranked) . . . got as high as No. 13 and was 22nd when it was ousted big by Syracuse in NCAA second round.
2011: (12) . . . lost five games by mid-December (San Diego State, Kansas State, Illinois, WSU, Notre Dame) and never saw the rankings after November . . . got Jimmered in the NCAA second round.
2012: (23) … the most in-and-out (of the rankings) team in the 20-year run, it entered and exited five times each . . . Ohio State ended the Zags’ season in the NCAA second round.
2013: (21) . . . this club was relatively unheralded early, but got all the way to No. 1 early in March and held that ranking three weeks before ouster against Wichita State in the NCAA second round.
2014: (15) … was only twice in polls after the New Year and out by March, when it fell badly to top-seeded Arizona in the NCAA second round.
2015: (13) . . . with only an overtime loss at Arizona in December, Zags shot all the way to No. 2 on Feb. 2, then followed with a defeat to BYU on Senior Night . . . ended a 35-3 season with an Elite Eight loss to Duke.
2016: (9 ) . . . after Przemek Karnowski injury, fell out of the polls by mid-December, and only bobbed back into them once at No. 25 . . . then assembled a surprise March run that ended with a heartbreaking loss to Syracuse in the Sweet 16.
2017: (14) . . . with victories over Florida and Iowa State and a title in the AdvoCare Invitational in Orlando, Zags shot to No. 1 for the second time in school history by Jan. 30 . . . they went undefeated all the way to Feb. 25 before their first loss – another Senior Night setback against BYU – then began a watershed March run all the way to the NCAA title game, ending with a loss to North Carolina.
2018: (18) . . . Zags got as high as No. 6 in a 32-5 season, including a decisive loss to eventual champ Villanova in New York in early December . . . they made their fourth straight Sweet 16 before a season-ending loss to Florida State.
Gonzaga’s breakthrough to the NCAA basketball championship game two years ago not only put the Zags in a new and celestial territory, it changed the way people look at them. So, as they assembled pieces for the 2018-19 season and began drawing consensus preseason top-five acclaim nationally, I found myself switching the operative question from, “What’s it going to take for them to make the Final Four?” to “What would keep them from doing it?”
Soon after, Killian Tillie went down with a stress fracture of the ankle, reminding us that the best-laid plans can go poof at the blink of a bone scan. Tillie is expected to be out until about the end of December, which is both good news and bad. If healthy, he’ll have plenty of time to be re-integrated into the lineup before the rigors of March. But he’s going to miss the games that will say a lot about the Zags’ positioning in the NCAA tournament bracket.
With the season starting next week, some notions about what Tillie’s injury means:
First, and Zag fans might want to knock wood at this, but the program has been relatively fortunate over the years at not sustaining a season-torpedoing succession of injuries. Yes, there have been severe setbacks in the 20-year run of NCAA tournaments, from Mike Nilson’s achilles tear in 2000 to Przemek Karnowski’s back injury in 2015-16, and in between, Kevin Pangos’ season-long ordeal with turf toe in 2013-14. (And for one, brutal half, Gary Bell Jr.’s ankle that denied him at the break of the Wichita State apocalypse in 2013.)
Tillie, in fact, has had it about as bad as anybody in a Zag uniform. He missed 10 games two years ago leading into the WCC tournament with a severe ankle sprain, and a hip problem took him out of GU’s Sweet 16 matchup against Florida State last season. Now this.
First thing I thought of when Tillie’s injury news broke? Corey Kispert. Not because he’s a facsimile of Tillie – he’s 6-6, not 6-10, and is a swingman, not a stretch-four – but because the trickle-down from Tillie’s injury means Kispert will get more key minutes, and let’s not forget, Kispert was playing well enough at the beginning of his freshman season to be a starter at the three spot. Indications are, he’s had a stellar fall camp. Freshman big Filip Petrusev more closely mirrors Tillie’s skills, but I’d look for Kispert to emerge.
Let’s consider the NCAA bracket implications from Tillie’s injury. As always, the basketball committee will give lip service to how a team has fared with and without the injured player. The problem here for Gonzaga is pretty simple: If Tillie indeed doesn’t return until after the real bullets have been fired in November and December, it’s going to be difficult to assess the Zags with him, because the WCC schedule is so forgiving.
Say they blow through the WCC schedule with one loss. It’s going to be easy for skeptics to write that off to a soft conference.
Some struggles before the New Year wouldn’t be a deal-breaker in March, but surely the potential is there to drop a seed line or more because of some heavyweight losses.
So let’s look at it like this: I see six big-time challenges on the schedule in November and December. (OK, this is entirely unscientific, subject to breakthroughs by other teams and breakdowns by the Zags, but hear me out.) Those would be the latter two games at the Maui Invitational (against either Arizona or Iowa State and whatever the final day brings – possibly Duke); at Creighton Dec. 1; Washington Dec. 5; Tennessee in Phoenix Dec. 9; and at North Carolina Dec. 15.
I’d set an over/under on wins for that six-pack at 3.5. (Among other things, the challenge of Gonzaga's final day in Maui will depend heavily on its results the first two days.) So in my mind, if the Zags can squeeze four victories from that half-dozen, it would be a triumph coming out of pre-conference play. And assuming no other missteps, that would curb the March-bracket damage from Tillie’s absence to one seed line – if that.
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