2024-25 Conference Previews: WCC

the Gonzaga league, sponsored by Saint Mary's

Hello! As laid out in the season preview for this newsletter, we’re changing up preview season a little. Previews will be released in alphabetical order, but somewhat differently than usual: one P5 a day, one two-bid(ish) conference a day, and one grab bag of one-bid leagues a day. One of each will be free for all to read. This one is a paid piece, and there’s a link to sign up below.

You can find all of these in the 2024-25 previews section of this website. On with the show.

West Coast Conference

Tier 1

1. Gonzaga

Tier 2

2. Saint Mary’s

Tier 3

3. Washington State

4. San Francisco

5. Santa Clara

Tier 4

6. Loyola Marymount

7. Oregon State

8. Pepperdine

Tier 5

9. Pacific

10. Portland

11. San Diego

For an astonishing 14 straight seasons, Gonzaga has been the best team in this conference, per KenPom. Also, they’ve been the best team for 26 of the last 27 years. Such a level of dominance is not something we’ve seen in Division I in any of the main sports, at least that I am aware of. The closest you can get to a somewhat direct comparison is calling Gonzaga the Bayern Munich of American sports. Bayern won 11 straight Bundesliga titles from 2013 through 2023 and have won 18 of the last 26. Even so, in terms of conference tournaments, Gonzaga’s been the WCC champ 20 of the last 26 tries. It is indeed unfair.

As such, I would imagine a large majority of the other ten teams in this league are celebrating Gonzaga’s plan to ditch the WCC for the Zombie Pac-12 in 2026. Saint Mary’s has had their best run in school history, garnering three straight 5 seeds, and it might as well be an afterthought because Gonzaga is a yearly top-five team. Heck, San Francisco has had their most successful extended run of play in almost 50 years, and barely anyone outside of college basketball diehards is aware.

More than any other conference in any other sport, this is fully and completely centered around one program. What happens to this league after that one program departs is deeply fascinating, but we have two years until we have to accept that reality. Until then, we have one title contender, one likely NCAA Tournament team, and a wide range of groups that want to play spoiler any way they can.

This conference is included in the Next Five category as a rare rising tide lifts all boats deal. Gonzaga’s rise has made the conference as a whole far better. 15 years ago the WCC consistently ranked as somewhere around the 12th-14th best conference and had never finished top 10 at KenPom. Since 2013, it’s finished 8th or 9th in seven of 11 tries. For six straight years, it’s been at least a two-bid league. It should be again this year, even if the script will be functionally the exact same. After all, the Bundesliga still produces interesting stories even when Bayern rules the roost.

As is standard, Gonzaga will receive its own tier. There’s just one team and one program in the WCC that enters every season with legitimate dreams of winning the national championship. This winter will be no different, as the Zags are yet again a consensus top-six team and will have legitimate disappointment if they can’t pay it off with at least the program’s third Final Four run in eight years. Such are the expectations when you’re the only preseason Top 25 team to return more than 70% of your 2023-24 points.

Those with some form of memory recall may note that it was far from guaranteed to be this way. Last year, Gonzaga stumbled through their non-con, lost to every Tier 1 opponent on the schedule, and lost a road game to Santa Clara in mid-January. At 11-5 and with a loss to a Santa Clara program they last lost to when Brett Favre was an active NFL quarterback, things appeared dire for their standards. Torvik’s Tourneycast gave Gonzaga just a 64% chance of making the Tournament and a 43% chance of getting in as an at-large.

At that point, it felt like Gonzaga’s unreal streak of 24 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances was in serious jeopardy. All they did the rest of the way was go 14-2, beat Kentucky and Saint Mary’s on the road, and get a 5 seed en route to their ninth straight Sweet Sixteen appearance. Whether people want to admit it or not, and many strongly prefer not to, this is the most important and strongest year-over-year program of the last decade. All they’re missing is the trophy.

Four members of the starting five are back. So are the top two bench players. That should be enough given Gonzaga’s reputation of quality development, and yet it’s not, because they added the best offensive player not on a top-three WCC squad, one of the two good starters on Arkansas last year, and one of the nation’s best freshman defenders from the WAC. There are nine players here with starting experience, and that doesn’t include adding a future star from Colgate (Braeden Smith, apparently redshirting) or poor Steele Venters, a very good piece for 2022-23 Eastern Washington who’s injured yet again.

So: welcome to a season where Gonzaga is staring down having at least the two best players in the conference and no fewer than five of the ten best. The most important piece here could be three different guys, but the engine-runner is Ryan Nembhard, a point guard that literally never leaves the floor. Against top-50 opponents last year, Nembhard played 318 of a possible 320 minutes. His best ability might just be availability. Short of that, you have a PG that has shot 43% from 3 in conference play the last two seasons and seems to adore tough shots as a feature, not a bug.

Advanced stats are split on Nembhard because he’s a plus shot-maker that takes a lot of low-quality shots. He’s never graded out particularly well defensively, largely because of the availability aspect. He’s simply not an aggressive perimeter defender by much of any stretch of the term. 33% from three for his career isn’t elite, either, and frankly a career 1.5:1 A:TO ratio isn’t that great. But in terms of overall team impact, he probably should be #1. This is a point guard that never, ever, ever leaves the floor. That matters!

Also, as soon as the calendar flipped to January, Nembhard seemed to figure something out in his new role after transferring from Creighton.

• Nembhard, November/December (12 games): 104 ORtg on 23% USG, 42% eFG% (49% 2PT, 15% 3PT), 28% Assist%, 19% TO%, +3.3 RAPM

• Nembhard, rest of season (22 games): 123 ORtg on 22% USG, 54% eFG% (50% 2PT, 42% 3PT), 30% Assist%, 17% TO%, +8.7 RAPM

The Nembhard from non-conference play is a spotty, sometimes effective player. The Nembhard over the final three months was arguably a top-50 player in America. If the truth is closer to the latter, Gonzaga becomes that much scarier. If it’s somewhere in the middle, they still have an elite frontcourt to lean on, led by Graham Ike and Ben Gregg. Ike you know already: a post-up monster who’s done it at Wyoming and at Gonzaga. He’s one of my favorite players of the last decade, if I’m being honest; just a guy that knows his exact role and does it perfectly every time it’s needed. Among 459 players with 450+ possessions last year, per Synergy, Ike was 12th in shots made above expectation.

I mean, look at the player comps for Ike here:

If you’re old enough to remember Tai Wesley, that is high praise. Gregg requires more explanation, because to the average eye 9 PPG/5.7 RPG doesn’t pop. What Gregg does for Gonzaga is pretty huge, though, especially at 6’10”. Here’s a full list of players 6’9” or taller last year that shot 35% or higher from three on 50+ attempts, had a Steal% and Block% of 2% or higher, and had an A:TO ratio of 1.3 or better.

The top two there are guys getting serious talks as All-Americans. The third is Gregg, who is borderline anonymous unless you watch Gonzaga a lot. When Gregg and Ike were paired last year, Gonzaga outscored opponents by 34.1 points per 100 possessions, adjusted for schedule. They shot 59% from two, 40% from three, and posted a +9.9 rebound margin per 100. You can actually see Gonzaga’s season turn based on where Mark Few began using Gregg and Ike together more frequently versus the theoretically-superior Anton Watson/Ike pairing.

It speaks to how terrifying this team could be that we’ve discussed three players and none of them are Nolan Hickman, Nembhard’s backcourt running mate. Hickman shot 41% from three last year and 46% in conference play; starting from the Kentucky game on February 10, he averaged 15.8 PPG on 56% 2PT/48% 3PT/96% FT. As a secondary to Nembhard’s primary he’s absurdly efficient and should be Gonzaga’s leading perimeter threat again.

Those are the four locked-in starters. You’ll need a fifth, likely at SF, where the leading contenders are any of Michael Ajayi (via Pepperdine), Khalif Battle (via Arkansas), or returner Dusty Stromer. I’d argue for Stromer as the best defender, Battle as the best scoring threat, but perhaps Ajayi as the best mix of the two. They are three completely different players, too. Ajayi is the slasher who takes a lot of midrange jumpers but hits them; Battle an on-ball wing that isn’t as good a shooter but is elite at foul drawing; Stromer a pure 3-and-D guy that hit 37% of his threes last year.

This is a loaded, loaded basketball team, especially for this league. I didn’t even touch on Braden Huff, a backup forward that I thought was utterly fantastic on offense last season (+0.25 in Synergy’s Shot Making metric, top-30 nationally among 2,073 qualifying players) even if he might suck defensively. Or Emmanuel Innocenti, an openly bad offensive player who is an absolute demon on defense. At minimum, this team has seven starters and two legitimate plus bench options. Barring some shortcomings I’m not seeing, this is the best offense in basketball. If they can find a top-25 defense to pair with it they might win it all.