Yes, it's time to talk about Gonzaga
No, they probably won't miss the Tournament
It’s true: we have reached escape velocity on Bubble Gonzaga talk. It’s been a while, as in literally last year, so people perhaps aren’t totally used to how normal this all was not that long ago. Circa 2015-16, a fairly hyped Zags team stumbled about the season, getting swept (!) by Saint Mary’s and necessitating a late-game run just to win the WCC Tournament. Or 2010-11, where Gonzaga started out 12-8, lost three in a row in WCC play, and then had to win the WCC Tournament to make the field.
It has happened before, and it happens on occasion. It’s part of a 25-hopefully-going-on-26 year run of Gonzaga appearing in every NCAA Tournament, with only Michigan State (26 with 27 incoming) and Kansas (about to be 35) exceeding their streak. They’re a March staple. They’re 12th in NET, 12th in KenPom, 17th in Torvik, and if we seeded the field by how good the teams actually are efficiency-wise, they’d be on the 4 line.
They are not, because they’ve got some problems. Here’s their results against Quadrant 1 opposition this year.
Using a variety of tools, you can make the case that Gonzaga is in Actual Real Trouble this time. At EvanMiya, Gonzaga’s resume ranks 47th best in the nation, which roughly translates to Last Team In/First Team Out material. By Wins Above Bubble, Gonzaga ranks 48th. KPI: 37th. Strength of Record: 52nd. These are the rankings that you generally see from an Ohio State or a Texas, not a Gonzaga.
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Maybe everyone is right and this really is the end of a remarkable 26-year (including COVID) run for Gonzaga, one that spanned five presidents but only two D’Angelo albums. Alternately, maybe we can look at the most predictive metric of all: KenPom, which has Gonzaga 11th this morning. We can also look at KenPom’s history on this date, looking back all the way to 1997.
Over the last 16 Tournaments (2008-2024), we’ve had 320 teams rank in the top 20 of KenPom on February. 318 of them made the Tournament. Only two - 2022-23 Rutgers (#14) and 2017-18 Saint Mary’s (also #14) - ended up missing the field entirely. Even going back further, we have scant few examples. Only eight out of a possible 540 teams ended up missing the Tournament, and as we’ve grown to lean on analytics more and more over the years, the rate of these misses has predictably dropped.
Still, we have to answer the elephant in the room: why, exactly, is Gonzaga so high in the predictive metrics? The gap between their resume and their metrics-driven performance is so large that many a person cannot comprehend it. They’re Inverse Memphis, which is a team with awful metrics but arguably a top-15 resume. Why? Well, pretty simple: they cannot buy a win in a close game.
2024-25 Gonzaga is a stunning 0-7 in games decided in overtime or by six points or less in regulation. None of these losses are bad, especially with Santa Clara surging somewhat, but considering Gonzaga’s record in games decided by two or fewer possessions the previous five seasons was 19-8, it’s a stunning reversal of fortune. Only San Diego and Bellarmine, two teams with far worse records and metrics than the Zags, are also 0-7 in these close games.
Now, is this some sort of failing on Gonzaga’s part? Possibly. Gonzaga averaged about 5-6 close games per season from 2019-20 through 2023-24; already being at 7 is a little worse than expected. On the other, you can make a real case that Gonzaga’s simply been really unlucky this year. Here are a few stats for your consideration.
In the final eight minutes of games with a single-digit scoring margin (i.e., -9 to +9), Gonzaga:
Shoots 23.8% from 3 (36.7% otherwise).
Opponents shoot 79.5% from the free throw line (71.1% otherwise).
In the final five minutes, opponents shoot 50% on midrange jumpers (38.1% otherwise).
I mean…that’s pretty bad luck! And that doesn’t even cover the full-game stats. In these seven close losses, Gonzaga has shot 30.4% from deep (35.2% baseline 3PT) while opponents have shot 36.8% (29.9% baseline). Those are huge differentials, almost a full 11% swing from their full-season numbers, that can help us see why the Zags haven’t managed to squeak even one of these out.
A case-by-case look tells us a lot, too:
Lost 86-78 (overtime) to West Virginia in a game where the Mountaineers shot 23-26 from the free throw line, their best FT% on 25+ attempts since February 2022.
Shot 6-27 (22.2%) on threes against Kentucky in a one-point overtime loss, their third-worst output of the season. (Includes 4-20 on largely open catch-and-shoot threes when they normally shoot 36%, or about 7-20.)
Lost 77-71 to UConn in a game where UConn shot 18-21 from the free throw line despite shooting 5-24 on threes. (This one stands out less to me because Gonzaga got beat on the boards and had more turnovers.)
Lost 65-62 to UCLA in a game where UCLA shot 12-24 from three. Outside of this game, UCLA has shot 33.4% from three this season.
Lost 97-89 (overtime) to Oregon State. Oregon State shot 8-13 on midrange jumpers. Oof!
Lost 103-99 two days later to Santa Clara as SCU shot 18-38 from three. Synergy’s expected hit rate in this game, based on shot location and openness: 12-38.
Lost 62-58 to Saint Mary’s after shooting 3-17 from three to SMC’s 9-25. It was one of Gonzaga’s *six* times shooting 20% or worse from three in the last five seasons.
I don’t know, dude. I don’t look at this like some moral failing of Gonzaga’s to prevent Oregon State from shooting 62% on bad shots, letting WVU put up their best FT% in three seasons, or experiencing a game where a UCLA team that shot a combined 6-48 in a two-game stretch shot 50% from deep. I think that this is largely a really, really bad run of luck for a team that has experienced somewhat good fortune in years prior.
In the Burner Ball Discord, which I am a member of for all of a few bucks a month, there’s a guy who requested I refer to him by his username, thebluechicken_4, who does a college basketball version of Bill Connelly’s Postgame Win Expectancy model. Basically, you take key predictive aspects of the boxscore, toss them into a historical blender, and it spits back out how likely or unlikely it is that you went on to win this game. Connelly’s metric has been amazing for how I view luck in a football context; Mr. Chicken’s is the same for basketball.
I bring this up because he’s got the following postgame win expectancies for Gonzaga’s close losses.
West Virginia: 47.4% odds of winning
Kentucky: 79%
UConn: 23.3%
UCLA: 53.9%
Oregon State: 72.4%
Santa Clara: 77.3%
Saint Mary’s: 46.7%
Now, as you’ll notice, only four of these grade out as being more likely to be wins than losses. That’s still a giant gap from 0-7 to 4-3 in close games. One way you can visualize this is using Torvik’s TeamCast pages; even just flipping the Kentucky, Oregon State, and Santa Clara results to get Gonzaga to 20-4 instead of 17-7 does serious wonders for their resume.
We’d be talking about Gonzaga very differently at 20-4, 10-1 WCC, and all it would take was some better close-game luck. Sure, it might still be in the form of viewing them on the 4 or 5 seed line, but that’s worlds apart from the bubble talk they find themselves in now. Most important is this: based on those postgame odds, Gonzaga had a 0.1% shot of going 0-7 in these games. The 1-in-1,000 shot hit. It’s an annoying thing to say, but sometimes:
I’m aware this is a results-based business, of course. But viewing it from results only does obscure our view of this a decent bit. Think of it in this fashion: Gonzaga is 17-7, yes, but they’re 11th in KenPom. Why? A team’s Net Rating (per 100 possessions) is adjusted to the schedule they’ve faced. Against a schedule like Gonzaga’s, with an average Net Rating of +5.47, the 40th-best team in the sport would be expected to have roughly a +8.1 per-game scoring margin. Gonzaga’s adjusted scoring margin, with garbage time removed, sits at about +14.3.
If we flipped those three results and gave Gonzaga all of 16 extra points to go 3-4 in close games, it would change things so much for them that they’d go from 11th in KenPom to…10th. One whole spot upwards. But if they were 20-4 with wins over Baylor, San Diego State, and Kentucky, fewer people would be so baffled by their ranking of 10th.
Of the two actual modern examples for teams that missed the Tournament, you can probably rule out 2022-23 Rutgers, who was 16-7 (8-4 B1G) but obviously played a tougher schedule than Gonzaga is likely to play. Honestly, you may be able to rule out 2017-18 Saint Mary’s as well. At this time of the season, they were 23-2, 12-0 in WCC play and would very likely make the Tournament now (as a 10 seed). Remember: they still used dumb old RPI then, not NET or WAB or any other preferred acronym.
Really, there aren’t many great comparisons for Gonzaga as they stand. A Torvik scan of similar resumes turns up a lot of P5s that got in as at-larges, with the only miss being 2009 San Diego State. Only the top five of these look similar based on Gonzaga’s current resume.
Note something here, friends: all of those teams made the Tournament. And that’s today, which we can reasonably interpret as the worst Gonzaga’s resume is likely to be all season. A more forward-looking item brings up more reasonable contemporaries.
The average simulation going forward probably results in Gonzaga being around an 8 or 9 seed. Reasonable enough. But it’s also plausible that close-game luck swings back Gonzaga’s way, they finish 6-1 or 7-0 in the regular season, they go on to rule the day in the WCC Tournament once again, and they’re a 5 seed on Selection Sunday. Again.
After all, we had this exact same discussion this time last year, wondering if Gonzaga’s Tournament streak (and Sweet Sixteen streak, by extension) would stay afloat. They ended up a 5 seed. Is it that insane that they do the exact same thing this year? Based on history, not really. Given that 76 of the 81 teams ranked 10th-12th since 1997 ended up a 6 seed or better, maybe Gonzaga just follows the same path they usually do.