Behind elite frontcourt, Gonzaga eyes national title

Kyle Wiltjer’s dreams are haunted.

In Gonzaga’s Elite Eight showdown against eventual national champion Duke, his point-blank layup would have tied the score at 53. And he missed it. The momentum was in Gonzaga’s favor, but the Blue Devils quickly took it back, ending the game on a 13-1 run en route to finishing the Bulldogs’ season.

“We were that close to the Final Four,” says Wiltjer, a second-team All-America selection last season. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it all offseason, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hungry to be better than we were last year.”

That’s an interesting proposal: Be better than a team that finished 35-3 and fared better in the NCAA tournament than any other star-studded roster that Mark Few has coached since taking over in Spokane.

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Wiltjer didn’t stop there.

“We want to win the national championship,” says Wiltjer, who averaged 16.8 points and 6.2 rebounds a game last season. “I know people don’t associate us with the Dukes or Kentuckys of college basketball, but we’re fine proving people wrong. We’re fine being underdogs.”

Underdog is the exact identity this program was tied to for so long, reaching the Elite Eight in 1999 to epitomize the term Cinderella — a mid-major program defying odds against bigger programs to shock the nation. Before there was George Mason in 2006, Virginia Commonwealth in 2011 and Florida Gulf Coast in 2013, there was Gonzaga in ’99. Yet the Bulldogs have flipped the script as tournament mainstays, having made 17 consecutive trips.

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The blueprint to becoming a top-tier program, a perennial top-25 team that is growing toward being positioned for a No. 1 seed, is a product of the culture Few has fostered, focusing on player development and team chemistry. That has been bolstered by a non-conference schedule typically loaded with marquee matchups (Pittsburgh, UCLA and Arizona this season).

Still, the national criticism was that Gonzaga played in a weak league, the West Coast Conference, and — at least up until last season — underachieved in the tournament.

“When I hear people talk outside of our organization and say, ‘Hey, Gonzaga hasn’t broken through,’ it’s like, ‘If you’re not involved with the process there’s a lot of ignorance with that statement,’” Few says. “The NCAA tournament isn’t a seven-game series. It’s one bad night and you’re out. So we try to build the pieces to position ourselves to win those important games. Last year, we reached the Elite Eight. We were in position to go to the Final Four. We lost to the national champs. What more do you want?”

“We really take pride in being a big-time program,” adds Wiltjer, a former Kentucky player. “Those who downplay our conference schedule are silly. I played in the SEC, and the WCC isn’t far off of that. And here, we’re getting everyone’s best shot each night because these schools want to be the team to knock off Gonzaga.”

Perfect fit for program

When Few first saw Wiltjer in action as a frail high school player, he knew the skilled 6-10 forward was born to play in Gonzaga’s system.

“That’s why I recruited him so hard the first time,” Few says. “Then (John) Calipari makes one phone call and gets him.”

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Wiltjer won a national championship with Kentucky as a freshman, despite playing sparingly. He was the Southeastern Conference sixth man of the year as a sophomore but ultimately wanted to play to his full potential. And Gonzaga was the perfect fit for that. In his redshirt season, he built his body, following a Kelly Olynyk-like regimen, to do more than just shoot three-pointers in Few’s system. When he took the floor last season, his versatility — scoring on the low block and from the perimeter — became the Zags’ most dangerous weapon. That will be the case again in 2015-16.

“Do I think he can be the best player in the country? Heck yeah,” Few says. “I don’t think there is a guy in college basketball who can score as easy as him.”

Wiltjer returns alongside blossoming sophomore Domantas Sabonis (9.7 points, 7.1 rebounds a game) and 7-footer Przemek Karnowski (10.9 points, 5.8 rebounds). Few expects to play all three bigs on the court at the same time in spurts, with Wiltjer playing small forward. Together, they form one of the best frontcourts in the country. The trio combined to shoot 59.4% from the floor last season, helping Gonzaga lead the nation in shooting percentage (52%) as a team. All three bypassed declaring for the NBA draft.

Wiltjer remains the face of a Gonzaga team with high expectations, but Sabonis appears poised to take off as a sophomore and offers a form of physicality that can become the Bulldogs’ backbone. The 6-10 big man, son of former NBA star Arvydas Sabonis, improved every game last season, according to Few.

“He’s a beast,” Wiltjer says of Sabonis, who played for Lithuania this offseason in the European Basketball Championship. “He was just getting started last year. He’s ready to be unleashed now.”

Questions in backcourt

Though the frontcourt has the potential to be virtually unstoppable, the backcourt has holes to fill. The exits of two four-year starters, WCC player of the year Kevin Pangos and WCC defensive player of the year Gary Bell Jr., present a void in more than just the stat sheet.

“Don’t get me wrong, we’ll miss their production on the court, but it’s the stuff off the court that impacted the team the most,” Few says. “They were remarkably consistent with their mind-set. They never had a bad practice in four years. …

“All your teams change. This will be one of those years where our staff has to assert more leadership because we basically had extra coaches on the court last year.”

Guard Josh Perkins, who saw his first season of college basketball get cut way short with a broken jaw, inherits Pangos’ role as a floor leader, and his freshman-to-sophomore leap will need to be a big one for this Gonzaga team to come close to replicating the success of last season.

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“I understand there’s pressure in the backcourt,” Perkins says. “Kevin and Gary left a legacy. They were like big brothers to me. But I think what they instilled can stay. Hopefully I learned enough from them to keep us going. … In reality, my job is simple: Get the best frontcourt in the nation the ball.”

Perkins and fellow sophomore Silas Melson will take on much larger roles. The same goes for seniors Kyle Dranginis and Eric McClellan.

Dranginis has been in the program for five years and provides a needed dose of leadership, while McClellan, a Vanderbilt transfer who averaged 14.3 points a game in 2013-14, will get a chance to come into his own.

At face value, it appears as if the star power in the backcourt will have to wait a season, as Washington transfer Nigel Williams-Goss and Missouri transfer Jonathan Williams III must sit out a year, per NCAA rules.

But Few thinks the group taking the court this season is more than capable.

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“I think you could look at our backcourt and immediately think, ‘weakness.’ But that’s because our frontcourt is so amazing and our guards last year were so great,” Few says. “That doesn’t mean this group is no good. The athleticism will be better. Our guards have a lot of physical gifts. Hopefully we can capture those and develop on the mental side.”

A key ingredient to the success of last year’s team was depth. That won’t be the case in 2015-16, when the Bulldogs only have nine scholarship players. Still, optimism remains high, at least outside Gonzaga’s locker room. At the beginning of last season, Few scoffed when asked if he thought he had his best team ever at Gonzaga. He’s taking a similar stance now.

“Anybody can talk this time of year,” Few says. “Teams that don’t go to the NCAA tournament are talking. Teams that don’t win championships are talking. Our guys understand it’s a process. You can’t wiggle your nose and win a championship.”

Of course not. That’d be too much of a Cinderella story.

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