How would Gonzaga fare in the Big 12? Let’s hear from a couple of potential future rivals

DENVER, COLORADO - MARCH 17: Julian Strawther #0 of the Gonzaga Bulldogs shoots the ball against Walter Ellis #55 and Gabe McGlothan #30 of the Grand Canyon Antelopes during the second half in the first round of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament at Ball Arena on March 17, 2023 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
By Brian Hamilton
Mar 19, 2023

DENVER — It’s Friday night inside Club Lexus, the luxury lounge-turned-media headquarters at Ball Arena, and the commissioners are talking. There is Brett Yormark, seven months into running the Big 12, standing next to a table and armed with a portfolio. At the table sits Stu Jackson, the freshly appointed head honcho of the West Coast Conference. What they’re saying is unclear. Maybe pleasantries about their teams competing at this NCAA Tournament site. Maybe something about Jackson just getting started on the job.

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These are the simplest explanations. But these are not times for simple explanations. Gonzaga, possibly up for grabs in the next iteration of realignment, is playing here. The two relevant commissioners in one spot. Put on the tinfoil hat. There are no coincidences, man. The truth is out there if you just know where to look.

What if history will note there were three Big 12 teams in the building on this night: two officially, and another one on its way?

“Our conference is considered the best in the country,” TCU coach Jamie Dixon says the next afternoon, noting that no one’s going to call him on such matters, which we’ll believe when we see the phone records. “Certainly, they would add something in that regard.”

That’s probably beyond doubt, given that Gonzaga has so far lost 23 games in the past seven years combined. It’s more interesting to wonder what the Zags would be getting themselves into. It’s more interesting to ponder how they’d handle the conference-switch culture shock and how they’d survive and advance in the Big 12, if they do either. The imagination runs wild.

go-deeper

GO DEEPER

Big 12 continuing to explore 'every possibility' to add new members

Good thing two Big 12 teams are here to ask about that.

“They’re a hell of a basketball team and organization,” says Baylor forward Caleb Lohner, who spent his two previous seasons at BYU and who can therefore connect these dots as well as anyone. “From my experience playing them, I don’t see why they couldn’t be (successful). They’ve shown it year in and year out, especially with their nonconference schedules and the way they’ve been able to execute in the postseason. The WCC is a good basketball league. But when you play Gonzaga, it was a whole other level.”

A word about Gonzaga: It is good at basketball against anyone. The Bulldogs have the most men’s NCAA Tournament wins (18) since 2017. They’ve won seven of 11 games against Big 12 teams across all competitions since 2017-18. The body of work suggests a move to any power league isn’t stepping on thin branches covering a deep pit.

Mark Few’s presence at Gonzaga allows for the program to be bullish about a future conference move. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

Not to mention Gonzaga acts like a men’s basketball power program already. There’s not much leveling-up in resources or facilities to do. It reported $11.9 million in men’s hoops expenses in 2021-22, per U.S. Department of Education data. Baylor spent $13.3 million and TCU spent $12.6 million, if we go by the teams occupying locker-room space at Ball Arena this weekend. “I don’t think you have to go dollar for dollar,” Gonzaga athletics director Chris Standiford says, just before heading back to the team hotel Saturday. “There’s an old real estate analogy that even coach (Mark) Few told me once — we don’t have to have the nicest house in the neighborhood. But we gotta live in the neighborhood, to be able to compete. That’s the mentality, to make sure there’s not a gap that you can’t overcome.”

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Acting like a power-league program is nevertheless different than being a power-league program. That Big 12 life is not easy.

No one in the Baylor and TCU locker rooms, anyway, expects the Gonzaga talent level to dip. They do anticipate that talent would have to adjust to some things Gonzaga teams haven’t faced before, nightly, for two or three months running. “Physicality, the pace, the talent level — anything you can expect as a player, you’re going to see in the Big 12,” TCU forward JaKobe Coles says. Likewise, the Zags were No. 1 in adjusted offensive efficiency as of Saturday morning, per KenPom.com, but no one talks about offense when they talk about the demands of the Big 12. And Gonzaga’s adjusted defensive efficiency (99.5) would rank last among Big 12 teams in 2022-23.

“You can’t be in our conference and be good without playing defense,” TCU guard Mike Miles Jr. says.

Baylor guard Adam Flagler, having gone bell-to-bell with Gonzaga on multiple occasions, notes the flip side of the dynamic: Maybe those Big 12 defenses help the Zags in the end. “It’ll only make them better,” Flagler says. “Them being so elite offensively, you’re going against the best of the best defensively. No way you can go but up at that point.”

John Jakus is Baylor’s associate head coach. He also spent three seasons as Gonzaga’s director of operations. When he stands outside the Bears’ locker room on Saturday and gets to thinking about this hypothetical realignment quake, he identifies four markers that suggest Gonzaga can do this, without falling short of what Gonzaga is expected to be.

The Zags, for one, are the pro team in town. (“The support is actually much bigger than people think,” Jakus says.) Two, Mark Few, is the iconic constant. (“If they’re going to do it, they’re going to have to do it while he’s there.”) Three, Gonzaga gets players, signing eight four- and five-star recruits in the last four cycles. (“If you can recruit, you can function in any league.”) And, last, he asks: If USC and UCLA are Big Ten teams, why can’t the Zags fly to Texas for road games?

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Having been on both sides of this fence, Jakus is sanguine. Optimistic. And also realistic enough to concede Gonzaga won’t know what the Big 12 demands until it’s trying to meet those demands in real time. “My first year at Baylor, I was woken up,” Jakus says. “It’s not, can you beat somebody once? It’s can you go to Kansas, lose, turn around on Monday, and play a top-10 game at home? There’s this emotional basketball wear on you that you don’t have if you play them once. If they’re going to go play at Kansas on Saturday and fly back to Spokane and Texas comes to Spokane on Monday — all those little things with 18-to-22-year-olds behind the scenes that people don’t see, they can cause you to lose a game. Emotion can cause you to lose a game.

“Can that staff work their way through it? Of course they can. They’re as good as anybody in the country dealing with 18-to-22-year-olds. But you’re still dealing with it. To do that for 18-to-20 games? Maybe their record won’t be as good in the Big 12. It’s not going to be bad, I can tell you that. But you can’t measure the emotional wear of a Big 12 season until you go through it.”

This is mostly where everyone winds up, as they sort through the hypothetical. Gonzaga won’t be bad. But Gonzaga — or maybe more specifically the people who root for Gonzaga — must grow accustomed to not being the best every single season. Life without hegemony.

“They’ll be able to come in and make an impact for sure,” Coles says, “but I don’t think they’ll ever dominate as much as they did in the West Coast Conference.”

The administrators pondering Gonzaga’s options understand this. They realize, if the school makes any moves, some gloss might chip off the win-loss record.

Fans might wince at the prospect, but the tradeoff in that scenario is long-term stability and essentially guaranteeing that Gonzaga players can perform on the biggest stage for months at a time, and not just because Few and his staff can schedule aggressively before Christmas. “We’ve been able to survive and prosper in the environment where we’ve been, how we’ve been doing it,” Standiford says. “But we can’t be naive to how much is changing around us, and (we have to) be prepared to (discern) that path forward.”

As Gonzaga’s athletic director hastens to note, there’s no change for the sake of change. There must be a purpose behind whatever the school decides to do.

If the choice is life in the Big 12, the purpose is clear: learn to live in men’s college basketball the hard way.

“We love Gonzaga,” Flagler says. “Unless we’re on the court with them.”

(Photo of Julian Strawther: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

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Brian Hamilton

Brian Hamilton joined The Athletic as a senior writer after three-plus years as a national college reporter for Sports Illustrated. Previously, he spent eight years at the Chicago Tribune, covering everything from Notre Dame to the Stanley Cup Final to the Olympics. Follow Brian on Twitter @_Brian_Hamilton