As far as coach Mark Few is concerned, Gonzaga basketball would continue to be Gonzaga basketball even if the Bulldogs went the independent route.
But he said the major advantage to joining the reconstituted Pac-12 Conference in two years is the stability it gives the program that Few has turned into a national power.
Making such a move, Few said, didn’t come without a lot of internal discussion.
“I think we finally got to a point where we were comfortable and it fit us,” Few said at West Coast Conference media days. “It’s two years out, so I don’t want to get too crazy about it. I feel great today. It puts the university and the athletic department in a much more stable financial situation than we’ve had in the past. It was almost like we were salesmen having to make sales every year.”
The sixth-ranked Bulldogs, who were picked to win the WCC, will play two more years in the conference they have dominated, though Saint Mary’s is the reigning regular-season and tournament champion. Gonzaga, despite falling short in the WCC title after winning four in a row and 10 of the previous 11, made the Sweet 16 for the ninth year in a row. That’s the nation’s longest active streak.
Joining Gonzaga over the next two seasons in WCC are Oregon State and Washington State, two schools that kept some version of the Pac-12 alive.
Getting Gonzaga as a non-football member provides the new Pac-12 with a badly needed boost.
“Their brand is just as great in the last two decades as any of the brands that were in the Pac,” Oregon State coach Wayne Tinkle said. “It is neat that we’ve got a school in the Northwest not too far from us that carries a lot of weight nationally.”
Zags forward Ben Gregg grew up in Oregon watching Pac-12 After Dark, listening to the zaniness that was Bill Walton and seeing the Ducks play USC or Washington take on UCLA.
All four of those schools left for the Big Ten Conference, which precipitated the breakup of the Pac-12, leaving only the Beavers and Cougars behind. Both schools joined as temporary affiliate members for football in the Mountain West and all other sports in the WCC.
Soon they’ll be taking Gonzaga back with them.
Gregg is a senior, so he won’t be playing in the reconfigured Pac-12, but that doesn’t mean he was oblivious to the change.
“It’s a little bittersweet having to leave the WCC,” Gregg said. “A lot of history has been made for us and lot of great rivalries that started and continued to go on throughout the years. But at the same time, we’re going to join a great conference in the Pac-12. It’s something fresh, something new.”
Few said he didn’t see the move to the Pac-12 making much of a difference when it comes to recruiting, saying because the program competes on a national level, it attracts elite players regardless of conference affiliation.
He has the same feeling about scheduling, noting the Bulldogs play a demanding nonconference slate each season.
This season, for example, No. 8 Baylor and Arizona State will visit Spokane, Washington. Gonzaga also will play No. 23 Kentucky in Seattle, No. 3 and two-time defending national champion UConn in New York and No. 22 UCLA in the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. The Bulldogs also will participate in the Battle 4 Atlantis.
The conference schedule certainly isn’t as demanding, be it the WCC or what’s to come in the Pac-12.
“We’ve had a great run in the WCC,” Few said. “I’ve never really been that concerned with how that would impact our play. Look at our nonconference schedule. We’ve always made up a great competition schedule to be a No. 1 seed.”
Reflecting on Team USA
Few was an assistant coach on the gold medal-winning United States basketball team and said he would be thrilled to do it again.
“On a scale of one to 10, it was a 12,” Few said. “I think we were together 44 days and we didn’t have a bad day. That’s pretty rare in just any walk of life.”
