alchemy2u
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We have had a very lengthy discussion about how overrated is Gonzaga in another thread about a year ago. If you actually look at the details in the games they play every year, it would be virtually impossible for Gonzaga not to make the tournament every year (that explains the high winning percentage). And since they win so many weak games, with one of two P5 games thrown in, they usually have a very high ranking and thus a high seed in the tournament. That high seed gives them an easier path to the sweet sixteen. Thus, the hype is self-fulfilling in that their path to a winning record and the sweet sixteen is easier than the typical P5 school.These recruiting rankings for Gonzaga aren't very accurate because many of the recruiting services until recently didn't do a good job of taking into account international players & Gonzaga has also done an excellent job on the transfer market as well. Right now they are doing much better with getting top domestic talent which likely is an effect of their title game appearance a few years back. They put quite a few guys in the NBA for not getting big time classes...all of these guys In the last 10 years have had some NBA roster time:
Domantas Sabonis, Brandon Clarke, Rui Hachimura, Kelly Olynyk, Zach Collins, Zach Norvell Jr, Nigel Williams-Goss, Kyle Wiltjer, Elias Harris, Robert Sacre
Along with others from their current roster that will have an nba career. Over the last 5-10 years Gonzaga is certainly a top 10 program.
The key to their success was in having the best recruiter of European players. Once you are able to pass a few of those players onto the NBA, then the pipeline get stronger. It was an excellent strategy for Gonzaga. It has finally paid off in the last year or two where they are finally attracting good US players (Suggs being the best). I even started a thread admitting that Gonzaga was a finally good team.
But seriously, walk through the Gonzaga schedule going back about 10-15 years and see how few good teams that they played or beat each year. It is much less than a B1G team. Most years they would have finished way down the pack in the B1G. The B1G is a very good basketball conference and the quality of opponents that each teams sees each year is much higher than in many other conferences (there is a reason that the B1G send 7-9 teams to the tournament every year).