Let's Talk About Windows

If you are a fan of a mid-major basketball team, you have to accept the fact that you will probably never see your team win a championship. So, in a sense, you are accepting the fact that your team, the one you spend an inordinate amount of time cheering for and obsessing over, is destined to fail in some fashion at the end of the season. This is kind of a relief, actually, because that knowledge always exists in the back of our minds, so we can take joy in other accomplishments (beating the hell out of the University of Washington, for example, or making the tournament a bunch). We’ll never be Beyonce, but maybe if everything falls into place, for one magical year, we can be Nicki Minaj. Lorde? Whatever, you get it.

Elite schools reload and compete for titles. Mid-majors have down stretches (that can last, oh I don’t know, a decade or two) and eventually piece together an interesting roster. We are spoiled in that Gonzaga consistently attracts high level recruits (bolstered by our international pipelines), so we end up having these “interesting” teams more often than most. By “interesting,” I mean that they are good enough to play deep into the tournament and compete with/beat schools outside of the top 6. I’d say they generally happen every 2-4 years. Starting with the Morrison run, these are the teams I’m talking about:

·         2005-6: Adam Morrison, J.P. Batista, Derek Raivio, David Pendergraft, Sean Mallon, Errol Knight, etc. etc. A strong offensive team, top to bottom, and probably our program’s best/only shot at a title. (lost on some bullshit to UCLA in the Sweet Sixteen).

·         2008-9:  Jeremy Pargo, Demetri Goodson, Austin Daye, Josh Heytvelt, Matt Bouldin, Steven Gray, Micah Downs, Bob Sacre, hell, even Ira Brown. Our deepest team, and one that definitely had the talent to make the Final Four. (lost to an otherwordly North Carolina team in the Sweet Sixteen).

·         2012-13: Not that you need this list, but Kevin Pangos, Gary Bell jr.,Elias Harris, Kelly Olynyk, Sam Dower, and John Stockton’s kid. This team really came out of nowhere. NBA first rounders rarely take fanbases by surprise, but Olynyk’s development was both incredible and startling. The offense was efficient all season and, more importantly, our path to the Final Four was about as clear as it gets after Wichita State: La Salle and an Ohio State team that we took to the wire the year before (they lost Jared Sullinger, we gained a fully evolved Olynyk). Probably our program’s second best shot at a title, though I sincerely doubt we would have gotten past Louisville. (lost to Wichita State in the round of 32).

Notice the pattern? Every few years, we gather enough pieces to make a run. A couple seniors develop into good players and have a strong enough leadership presence to guide some dynamic freshmen throughout the season. The other pattern I see here is depth. A mix of upper and under-classmen to be sure, but solid players throughout the roster. Last year, it was increasingly obvious that Mark Few could not settle on a rotation that he liked, leaving a player like Gerard Coleman out in the proverbial cold, while a couple less dynamic but more consistent players like Drew Barham and Kyle Dranginis ended up taking quite a few minutes. Now, I enjoy Dranginis quite a bit, but if both he and Barham are major rotation players (14+ minutes a game), you probably aren’t going to beat, say, an extremely athletic team with an elite defense.

This year’s team, with the addition of Byron Wesley, is talented, deep, and experienced. As my friend Peter Halloran pointed out, we’re basically two-deep at every position. We have a collection of experienced players (Pangos, Bell, and Karnowski being the cornerstones), dynamic transfers (Wiltjer and Wesley), intriguing freshmen (Perkins, Melson, and Sabonis), and the now doomed-to-be-overlooked-but-still-useful group (Dranginis, Nunez, and Edwards). That’s 11 guys, and not a slouch among ‘em. I can’t speak to the conversations that are taking place in the locker room, but having such a perfect mix of senior leaders, experienced transfers and sophomores, combined with a dynamic class of recruits (all 3 of which I am certain will carve out roles for themselves, depth chart be damned)… well, it’s a luxury, and we should be excited about it.

Mid-majors are lucky if they make a deep run every few years. Mostly, the talent gap between the 5-8 schools that pass the title back and forth and the rest of the country is just too wide. You can beat that talent with experience, perhaps a collection of seniors that play well together, or you can hope to catch lightning in a bottle with a once in a generation recruit (i.e. Morrison). I feel like this year’s Gonzaga team has found a perfect balance between the two extremes. We’ve managed to mix talent and a fair amount of athleticism with tournament experience and a balanced offensive system. This is basically the best that a mid-major can hope for.

We’ll want to dodge several elite teams come tournament time, but right now, on paper, we are in the midst of a decently-sized window of opportunity. As we've seen, this window opens and closes every few years, but the confluence of talent and experience (and, perhaps, the exodus of key talented freshmen from last year’s teams) has given us another shot at a deep tournament run. The NCAA tournament is and always will be a crap-shoot that is mostly fun because it is chaotic and unpredictable, but there is every reason to believe that Gonzaga will finish this year both ranked in the top ten and with a riveting tournament run. It’d sure be nice to get another “Elite Eight” banner up in the McCarthey Center.