SPOKANE, Wash. — Illinois freshman Keaton Wagler scored 46 points. BYU freshman AJ Dybantsa had 43. Houston freshman Kingston Flemings finished with 42.
Saturday was an incredible day of college basketball — a reminder that I really do think we’re watching the best freshman class in the sport’s history. If you want a full recap, Matt Norlander and I discussed it for 83 minutes on the Eye On College Basketball podcast.
And now I’m stuck at Gonzaga.
A winter storm disrupting much of the country has made it impossible for me to get home to Memphis or back to work in New York. So here I am, stranded in Spokane after working the sideline for CBS Sports Network during Gonzaga’s 68-66 win over San Francisco on Saturday night — a result that pushed the Zags to 21-1 and up to No. 6 in Sunday morning’s CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings.
Which brings me to a story.
Sitting inside the McCarthey Athletic Center — The Kennel — watching a future Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame coach guide one of college basketball’s premier programs to yet another win — a part of what will likely be a 27th consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance, I couldn’t help but think about the first time I ever saw Gonzaga play.
I remember it clearly.
I was a senior at the University of Memphis, serving as sports editor of The Daily Helmsman. Like Saturday, I was sitting courtside — but it was November 1998, inside The Pyramid in downtown Memphis.
The Tigers were hosting Gonzaga.
I’d never heard of Gonzaga.
At the time, the small private school from the Pacific Northwest had made exactly one NCAA Tournament appearance and had never won a game there. That was the extent of my knowledge. Then Richie Frahm scored 37 points, Gonzaga beat Memphis 88-73 and nobody quite knew what to make of it.
Was Memphis bad? Was Gonzaga somehow great?
Turns out, the answer to both questions was yes.
Roughly three months later, Gonzaga won its first NCAA Tournament game. Then another. Then another — advancing all the way to the Elite Eight of the 1999 NCAA Tournament. The rest, as they say, is history.
I told this story to Mark Few late Saturday night.
He smiled.
Think about it this way: Imagine someone from the future dropped into The Pyramid just before tipoff on Nov. 16, 1998, and said, “You know that Gonzaga program from the West Coast Conference that’s never won an NCAA Tournament game? It’s about to make 26 straight NCAA Tournament appearances and play for the national championship twice.”
It would’ve sounded impossible.
And yet, that’s exactly what’s happened over the past 27 seasons — a streak that would already be at 27 straight tournament appearances if not for the 2020 event being canceled. It’s absurd. It’s remarkable. It’s one of the greatest stories in college sports history.
So being here this weekend, even unexpectedly, was pretty special — especially getting to tell that story again on The Mark Few Show after Gonzaga improved to 9-0 in the WCC.
I didn’t plan on getting stuck in Spokane. But seeing the Zags up close again was a reminder of just how far this program has come — and how, the first time around, none of us really had any idea what we were watching.
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Isaac Trotter
