Mark Few won his 250th game as the head coach of Gonzaga last night with a not surprising 93-60 blowout of Loyola Marymount as the No. 23-ranked Bulldogs move to 5-0 in the WCC.While I'd like to talk about how well the Zags are playing, lets keep in mind they're playing some bad teams in the conference. Instead, I kind of want to reflect of Few's career to this point.
Here's a guy that has been at Gonzaga since being a graduate assistant, is one of only two coaches to take his team to the Sweet Sixteen in his first two seasons and a guy that looks like he's content with staying in Spokane no matter what major basketball program comes calling.
But do you consider him an Elite Coach? The Zags are the perfect fit for college basketball, they have a community behind them, a wonderful arena and a weak conference.
Is Few just in a good spot?
I'm not sure if I can sell him short, he's molded the Zags into a very consistent winner, however it's probably going to take a bigger stage for him to receive more respect. My only dig against him is Gonzaga's knack for getting knocked out early in the tournament in recent years.
Thoughts on that?
The mark of a great coach, especially one in Few's situation, should be how his team finishes a season.
ReplyDeleteThere was no doubt that Roy Williams was one of the best coaches in college basketball, even before he won a National Championship. At Kansas, and now at North Carolina, Williams played in two of the elite conferences in the sport and made several deep runs into March.
Few, on the other hand, coaches in the West Coast Conference, which saw three teams make the dance last season, but typically sees no better than two, and, until recently, one make it to the Dance. He has yet to take his team as far as Dan Monson did in 1998 and has had several NBA-caliber players (Dan Dickau, Blake Stepp, Ronny Turiaf and Adam Morrison) spend multiple years in the program. Not to knock the cast of the '98 squad, but Monson didn't have that luxury.
The talent pool has been constant since that run, being arguably as talented as any other north of UCLA and west of Kansas. Yet all Few has to show for it are a few Sweet 16 appearances and countless WCC Championship banners.
This year, Gonzaga entered as a top-10 team and about halfway through the season, just re-entered the top 25, after a string of losses to Arizona, Connecticut, Utah and... uh... Portland State, at home.
For the first time in a decade, Gonzaga is showing signs of life on the defensive end, though I'm sure that can be credited to former EWU coach Ray Giacoletti. Few had been top guy for eight years before Giacoletti arrived and all of a sudden, they're winning games on defense? Coincidence?
His in-game strategies are awful. Only at Gonzaga would the team's best one-on-one defender (Micah Downs) ride the pine during virtually the entire second half of a tight game against Arizona. Or a 7'5" behemoth play four minutes a game, even when the backup center goes down for an extended period of time.
There's no arguing that Few has been a part of some quality wins in his tenure (UNC in NYC stands out) as well as some exhilarating heartbreakers (Arizona, UCLA).
Overall, though, Few's success is ultimately the product of superior incoming talent to that of their conference foes and his inability to utilize his players as he should.
Excellent Write Up!
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