The word on the street in college basketball, 2019-20, is that there are no great teams, only some good ones. It’s not breaking news that Gonzaga seems to be one of those, but it is slightly startling to see GU among the teams at the forefront of the discourse this season. Winning, of course, is ha...

On KJR 950 in Seattle this morning, host Chuck Powell weighed in on the Gonzaga-Washington game Sunday, and the progress Washington’s young team will likely make. “If they played later in the season,” Powell said, “the Huskies would win by 10 or more.” Hmm, well. Powell is insightful and imaginativ...

So I was rooting through a disorganized bookcase recently and happened upon a Seattle newspaper from October, 2009. A piece had to do with the then-truncated Gonzaga-Washington basketball series, and the UW’s proposal to renew it over three seasons at KeyArena. I got wistful. The column detailed ho...

Or, you could title this: “Now The Lifting Gets Really Heavy.” Spokane Arena in March plays host for the sixth time to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament first and second rounds, and although nobody is saying it, a reasonable goal for Gonzaga ought to be getting there. It takes a protected seed i...

Gonzaga may or may not play Oregon this week in the Battle 4 Atlantis. It depends on whether the Zags can vanquish Southern Miss (2-3), which seems likely, and whether 11th-ranked Oregon has an answer for 13th-rated Seton Hall, which is iffy. Gonzaga and Oregon. For two teams that have achieved con...

With about seven minutes gone in Gonzaga’s game at Texas A&M Friday night, I got a text message that had frown wrinkles. The Zags had come out flat, it said. The chemistry wasn’t quite there yet. True enough. In its first real test of 2019-20, the Zags fell behind 14-11. They looked disconnected. A...

So awhile back, I ran across an item related to University of Arizona hoops. Shockingly, it had nothing to do with indictments, depositions or taped phone conversations. It was a Wildcats all-villain team – you know, a writer’s cast of scofflaws who had foiled Arizona’s appointed mission to victory...

Already, on the subject of college athletics’ percolating name-image-and-likeness issue, Gonzaga occupied a position in the sporting landscape that was distinct, perhaps unique (much more on that later). Then this week, GU basketball coach Mark Few threw a spotlight onto the topic in his interview ...

Oumar Ballo, Gonzaga's 6-foot-10, 245-pound freshman center from Mali -- nicknamed "Baby Shaq" -- hasn't yet been declared eligible for the 2019-20 season, as the Zags and the NCAA assess his academic years prior to his enrollment at GU late this summer. "We're still working on that," GU athletic d...

A longtime friend has expressed to me his angst over the here-today-gone-tomorrow nature of college athletes, compared to, you know, the good old days. He’s a Cal guy who long ago appreciated the stability of a program that won the Bears an NCAA basketball championship in 1959. Guys came, they stay...