How many ncaa basketball championships has gonzaga won

How Many NCAA Basketball Championships Does Gonzaga Have?

Gonzaga might not be on the same level as Duke or North Carolina when it comes to name recognition in men’s college basketball, but it has a rich history of great teams and great talent. As such, one might expect the team to be loaded with championships throughout its history. This is not the case. Despite its history, Gonzaga is yet to win an NCAA Championship.

This could be the year that everything changes, and if it does, several generations of players will breathe a sigh of relief.

Gonzaga really hasn’t won a college basketball championship? 

View this post on Instagram

Sometimes, you just gotta GRIND. IT. OUT. ?? #PhotoOfTheNight #UnitedWeZag

A post shared by Gonzaga Men's Basketball (@zagmbb) on Feb 20, 2020 at 10:08pm PST

Gonzaga’s basketball team has been around in its current form since the early ’50s. From there, however, it took nearly 40 years for the team to become the perennial contender for March Madness that it is today. Dan Fitzgerald, who took over the team in 1985, finally brought the team to the NCAA tournament a decade later when they lost in the first round. 

The team would make it again in 1999 under Dan Monson, but lost in the Regional Final. After that year, however, the team brought in a new head coach in Mark Few. Few has remained with the team ever since. Under his tutelage, Gonzaga went from occasional Cinderella team who made it into the tournament to a perennial competitor in the March festivities. 

Gonzaga has been in and out of the AP’s top rankings throughout Few’s tenure, with his 2013 team reaching number one before a third-round exit in that year’s tournament. It’s hard to win a championship in any league, but with more than 60 teams competing every year in March Madness, it’s even harder to do so in college basketball. 

Despite the lack of championships, however, Few’s tree of NBA talent shows that he knows how to develop young players into professional athletes.  

Which NBA players went to Gonzaga? 

Only two players made it into the NBA out of Gonzaga before Few’s tenure. The first was an ironically-named big man, Mike Champion, who played in two games for the Seattle Supersonics and never played a game. The second player, John Stockton, rose from the obscurity that was Gonzaga in 1984 to become the 16th pick in the 1984 NBA Draft and one of the best point guards in the history of the NBA. Stockton’s son, David, also played for the school.

Under Few, the NBA output of Gonzaga has grown dramatically. In his earliest days, Ronny Turiaf, Richie Frahm, and Adam Morrison all made it into the NBA after their successful run at the school. Miami Heat center Kelly Olynyk put the Zags on his back before making his name in the NBA, while All-Star Domantas Sabonis got his start at the school before following his father to the NBA. 

Zach Collins, Rui Hachimura, Johnathan Williams, and Brandon Clarke all played under Few before their current NBA careers. In fact, one-third of the Gonzaga players who made it into the NBA are currently on NBA rosters. If this year’s team keeps it up, that number could grow, too. 

Will this year’s team finally do it? 

View this post on Instagram

Tonight’s theme. ? #PhotoOfTheNight #UnitedWeZag

A post shared by Gonzaga Men's Basketball (@zagmbb) on Jan 16, 2020 at 10:15pm PST

Gonzaga might just have its best team ever on the court today. At 27-2 through their first 29 games, the Zags might have enough to finally get Few and an entire flock of alumni their long-awaited championship. Led by the trio of Filip Petrusev, Corey Kispert, and Killian Tillie, the Zags are dominating nearly every opponent, and the team’s balanced approach at games is stifling other teams. 

If there’s one thing that Few knows, it is that there are no guarantees in college basketball. Despite this, he is constantly recruiting top-tier talent from across the world and helped put Gonzaga basketball on the map. If he retired tomorrow, nobody could question Few’s commitment to winning despite a lack of results.

However, with a deep roster full of players who are fully bought into Few’s system, what better time to finally break the spell and win Few an NCAA Championship?

National Championship or.

I am a fan of the Seattle Mariners, as much as one can be a fan of the Seattle Mariners. As most people know by now, the Mariners are currently riding the longest streak of futility in professional sports, having missed the postseason for the past 21 years.

If you ask me what denotes a successful season for the Seattle Mariners, my reply isn’t even a postseason appearance. It starts at meaningful baseball in September. That is where the standards begin. The floor is in the flooded, unfinished basement and the ceiling is the first story of the dilapidated building.

On the other side of my sports fandom, I have the Gonzaga Bulldogs. As we are all aware, the Zags have made the NCAA Tournament every year since 1999. Throughout many of those years, they were just one of 64 teams, with no real hope to meaningfully expect a deep run.

In the past few years, that has changed. The Zags have made two national championships in the last five years (four tournaments). Since 2015, their earliest exits have been the Sweet 16 in 2016 and 2018. After that, it is two Elite Eight appearances. These numbers could be even higher if the 2020 Tournament happened.

Gonzaga opened the preseason as the No. 1 ranked team in the country. They will finish the regular season as the No. 1 ranked team in the country. The lowest they dropped in the AP Polls was No. 5. They have been either the No. 1 or No. 2 team in the country as measured by KenPom the entire year. The Zags are the title favorite and just look at these odds to make the Final Four!

By all accounts, anything less than a Final Four is a disappointment, strictly from expectations—and one could arguably extend that to a national championship, just as easily as one can argue that is not the case.

Success is a weird thing in American sports. Just ask the Seattle Mariners. That record-setting 116 wins season looks great on paper, but its luster and shine were diminished because they were steamrolled by the New York Yankees in the playoffs.

In America, success isn’t necessarily tied to the total number of wins, or if you are the team that “finished on top of the table.” Success is tied to the number of trophies on the fireplace mantle, the number of banners hanging in the arena, the number of times you cut the nets down.

That is why I think the question of whether or not the season is a success if the Zags don’t win it all is an actual interesting question.

For me, personally, I think it is unfair to put national championship or bust expectations on Gonzaga because the NCAA Tournament is a grind unlike most other sports. There is so much that has to go right to make the championship game that even the best teams throughout the years will fail in their endeavors.

Just ask all the No. 1 seeds in 2011. The Connecticut Huskies, a three seed who finished 9-9 in Big East play that season won that year. Not a single soul would consider UConn the best team throughout the entire season, but they were the best squad when it mattered.

March Madness has so much chaos, it is almost unfair to place the burden of the championship, the thing we all desire so much, as our baseline expectations.

On the other hand, the Gonzaga Bulldogs are not the Seattle Mariners. There are actual expectations here that come with the team’s success. At some point, the Gonzaga Bulldogs have to break through and win that national championship. No one remembers the Buffalo Bills success in the early 1990s outside of the fact they lost each Super Bowl. Second place is the first loser in American sports.

I think “failure” in the question is a bit strong. But something so binary as a win or a loss rarely allows for nuance in the language. To a certain extent, depending on what your personal expectations are, when the dust settles and the season is over, it either will be a success or it will not.

For successful teams, such as Gonzaga, those expectations get placed higher and higher every year. There are only so many times a team can make the national championship before finally cresting that ledge becomes more of a requirement than a dream. It is a rather privileged place to exist in the realm of sports, but Gonzaga fans are privileged in that they have watched one of the more unique stories in sports evolve into a consistent Final Four threat.

NCAA. Final four. The final. Baylor Defeats Gonzaga to Win Championship - Basketball

The final game of the 2020/21 NCAA Championship took place in Indianapolis today. Baylor inflicted the first defeat of the season (86:70) on Gonzaga and became the champion for the first time in history.

NCAA

Final four

Final

Bailor - Gonzaga - 86:70 (47:37, 39:33)

BAILOR : Batler (22 + 7 programs), Tig (Tig (Tig) 19), Mitchell (15 + 6 rebounds + 5 assists), Flagler (13).

GONZAGA : Suggs (22), Timm (12 + 5 rebounds), Kispert (12).

April 6, . 5.20

NOTE : the start time of the match is Moscow.

This night, another Russian basketball player can become an NCAA champion. What do we know about Pavel Zakharov?

NCAA semi-finals - the peak of insanity: a life-saving shot eclipsed by an ultra-long shot under the siren. Lebron says it's one of the top 9 games0006