As a kid in the Midwest, my very first brush with college basketball was with the Ohio State Buckeyes, with Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek and Larry Siegfried and Mel Nowell. I believed they hung the moon. They beat everybody, usually badly. And when it came to the 1961 national-championship game an...

The question for Mark Few curled out of Rece Davis’ mouth, needing to be asked yet somehow the uninvited guest at your party. “Would it be a disappointment,” posed Davis Sunday on ESPN, “if you don’t win the national championship?” Few parried the question, leaving us to debate nuance. Of course it...

Far beneath the surface of anything that really matters in college hoops is the relationship between Oregon and Gonzaga. The Zags’ Mark Few, of course, is an Oregon grad, and at least during much of Gonzaga’s prominent years, hasn’t been a proponent of scheduling his alma mater. At times, the Ducks...

This being the era of hot takes, we'll take the bait. Those Zags: If only they could shoot. Hot enough for you? OK, there’s supposed to be a kernel of truth in the hottest of hot takes, and we’re taking some liberties here. But, even as Gonzaga leads the nation in field-goal percentage at .554, the...

The conversation began with the obligatory smack chatter. “I haven’t watched you play a whole game,” Ray Giacoletti said over the phone to Mark Few following Gonzaga’s beatdown of Brigham Young earlier this month. “Holy s---.” “Well, whatya been doing?” Few challenged. “What the hell you think I’ve...

Heard a TV announcer the other night note that Gonzaga was No. 4 in the nation in shooting percentage. Which elicited nothing much more than a “Meh.” After all, two recent Zag squads – the 2019 Elite Eight team eliminated by Texas Tech, and the 2015 team ousted by Duke in the round of eight – led t...

About the time Gonzaga had rained its 10th trey in the first half against Iowa the other day in South Dakota, Mark Titus of FoxSports tweeted this: “With respect to Baylor, I’m ready to officially declare this a Gonzaga-versus-the-field season.” Dana O’Neil of The Athletic chimed in: “Not as good d...

Saturday, Dec. 12 was going to be the day Gonzaga renewed its basketball series with Washington. But that was back about a jillion months ago (seemingly), and several permutations of the ever-evolving basketball schedule. Of course, that game was a fall casualty to Pac-12 dictates. And as it turns ...

Saturday, Dec. 12 was going to be the day Gonzaga renewed its basketball series with Washington. But that was back about a jillion months ago (seemingly), and several permutations of the ever-evolving basketball schedule. Of course, that game was a fall casualty to Pac-12 dictates. And as it turns ...

With a wing and a prayer, and maybe a rabbit’s foot and a stray four-leaf clover, Gonzaga launches its college basketball season this week. Not that luck is typically in the Zags’ playbook, but it’s 2020, and, well, you may have noticed, things are a little different. The Zags, of course, open Thur...