How Gonzaga turned its season around with one win and Personal Growth Mondays

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SALT LAKE CITY — Nolan Hickman tried to tune out the noise. So did Ryan Nembhard. And so did Graham Ike and the rest of the Gonzaga Bulldogs.

The coaches and administrators can tell you to put down your phone. You can be told to not pay attention until time ends. But this is the social media era, where multiple platforms exist with a 24/7 cycle. Gonzaga is a disciplined and well-run unit. It’s the reason the No. 5 seed Bulldogs are still alive in the NCAA Tournament and have a date with top-seeded Purdue in Friday night’s Sweet 16. But, when you’re dealing with teenagers and young men, at some point, they are going to hear the naysayers.

“They said we were on the bubble and that we weren’t the same Gonzaga that we had been,” Ike said. “We try our best to ignore it, because we know what we have inside the walls. But sometimes, it’s hard to do.”

The Gonzaga we saw last weekend thrived on both ends of the court. The Gonzaga we saw last weekend in the first and second round overwhelmed McNeese State and Kansas with a team that played as five, shot the lights out, proved to be unyielding defensively and generally turned in one of the best collective performances of the weekend.

But that wasn’t Gonzaga in November, or December, or even January. There were times when the Bulldogs looked disjointed. There were times they looked like they lacked the firepower and the overall talent to make their 25th straight NCAA Tournament, let alone mount a run in March. But, on Friday night, the Zags will be in their ninth consecutive Sweet 16, and by the way they are playing, have as good a chance as any at advancing even deeper into the tournament. They will do so because you can’t measure resiliency.

“What’s important is that it took us some time to gel and to mesh as a unit,” Hickman said. “There was always going to be a time where we needed to integrate a lot of new pieces into our roster. We heard a lot of what was being said about us, but we just tried to tune it out and keep playing.”

𝘿𝙪𝙗 𝘾𝙖𝙢: 9 Straight Sweet 16s Edition 🎊 pic.twitter.com/0kI7mf700W

— Gonzaga Basketball (@ZagMBB) March 23, 2024

This hasn’t been a traditional Gonzaga team in the sense of being able to consistently overpower teams. Not with former stars like Andrew Nembhard and Chet Holmgren now playing in the NBA, and not with Drew Timme no longer wearing the uniform. In a lot of ways, this has been one of Mark Few’s best jobs. Today, we see Ryan Nembhard as one of the best point guards in the country. We saw Ike dominate Kansas star Hunter Dickinson last weekend in the second round. We’ve seen the all-around brilliance of Anton Watson and the emergence of people like Ben Gregg.

It all took some time to put together, to the point where the Bulldogs were dangerously close to the NCAA Tournament bubble, when usually conference play was just a stopgap until they could get to March. But this edition of Gonzaga suffered some very un-Gonzaga-like defeats. There was Washington in December. There was Santa Clara in January during conference play. And there weren’t any wins before conference to balance the resume. Losses to Purdue and UConn and San Diego State weren’t bad in a vacuum. But wins over Syracuse, UCLA and USC ended up aging poorly.

Gonzaga looked up in the middle of January and found itself without a major win on its tournament resume. That was a problem, and the season from there became a race to find a way to deal with it. But at that time, the outside noise had kicked in, in earnest. In short, the alarm bells were sounding, some founded and others unfounded.

“The concern level from within wasn’t as high,” Few said. “We just said, hey, listen, if we don’t get going and playing better on both ends of the floor and figure this thing out, then (the NCAA Tournament is) probably not going to happen. We knew that we had to figure this thing out, and we did it in probably the hardest of ways.”

Few is alluding to what turned out to be the turning point of the season, and the last gasp the Zags had of finding a marquee win outside of the West Coast Conference. And that was significant because the only shot at a marquee win inside of league play was Saint Mary’s, and Gonzaga had already lost to the Gaels once by that point. The Feb. 10 win at Kentucky, inside of hallowed Rupp Arena, served as the message to Gonzaga that it was capable of playing with one of the best teams in the country, and doing so in hostile territory.

The 89-85 win was valuable because of the victory, in and of itself. But it was how Gonzaga won that proved to be most valuable. The Bulldogs had to survive multiple Kentucky runs. They had to survive Ike fouling out. They had to get important minutes and shots from people like Gregg. They had had to play at differing tempos. And in the end, they survived one of the most talented teams in the country.

Of course, that was the one win that solidified the tournament resume. But it was so much more than that. It provided a shot of confidence and a shot of swagger that the team really needed, a swagger that we see now every time they get on the floor.

“We went on the road and won at Rupp, and that’s not an easy place to do that,” Few said. “And then we won at Saint Mary’s. And San Francisco, I think, is a heck of a team. I think they were good enough to play in this tournament. For us to beat that team three times was also quite a feat. So we knew we had to finish strong, and I think we did that. We’ve always just impressed upon them that we know how to win. Winning isn’t new to us.”

Personal Growth Monday served as a harbinger of the win at Kentucky.

Gonzaga had just lost to Saint Mary’s by a possession on its home floor. The team was bummed. The outside noise was louder than ever. But Personal Growth Monday is a weekly session headed by trainer Travis Knight and assistant coach and former player JP Batista, one that players attend weekly. It’s a space for the players to connect off the floor, talk to each other, voice concerns, and to just talk about goals for the season and how to get there.

Knight regularly shows the team videos, in an effort to improve communication. On this Monday, the message was clear: keep going. Keep playing and the results will come.

“We knew that we had to keep chopping wood,” Ike said. “We were doing the right things, and we knew that if we kept doing it, the results would eventually start to show.”

What Gonzaga knew and Few always suspected was that this team would take some time. Nembhard, as good as he was at Creighton before he transferred in, was new to the system. Ike came in from Wyoming, where he was one of the best bigs in the Mountain West Conference. But, still, the system would be new and there would be a significant jump for him in nonconference competition. Hickman was going from role player to main role. Gregg was being inserted into the rotation for the first time in his career. Watson was the only starter who had relatively been in the same role a year ago.

The transfer portal can get you a lot of talent quickly, but it can’t build chemistry and it can’t fake continuity. The only way that can come is by getting out on the floor and playing. Nembhard and Ike spoke last weekend of their time over the summer in workouts, but nothing really can prepare you for the real thing. And the Bulldogs never exactly ease into their schedule.

The culture of Gonzaga has always been omnipresent, however. And in this season, trying in so many ways, it was the culture that got them through adversity, and is the reason why Gonzaga earned another shot at Purdue.

“At the end of the day this is a wonderful group,” Hickman said. “It’s just family all around and the culture we have is undefeated. Every single day we come to practice knowing that we’re just trying to get better and that we have a lot of basketball ahead of us.”

When this Bulldogs team does see Purdue, it will be a different team than the one that fell by 10 on Nov. 20 in the Maui Invitational. Gonzaga was so good in the opening rounds because of its ability to move the basketball, which has improved throughout the season. The Bulldogs shot the ball so well because the quality of their shots was so good. And they defended so well because they have seen almost every style of play this season. It’s why they were able to overwhelm McNeese State, a small and athletic team, but then two days later take down a bigger Kansas team in the second round.

And that versatility is the reason why they are in the midst of a Sweet 16 streak that will seemingly never end.

(Top photo of Ryan Nembhard: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)