NCAA basketball

SALT LAKE CITY – The jokes started flying as soon as Dan Monson, running a few minutes behind schedule, sat down with Mark Few, Tommy Lloyd and their families at a Salt Lake City pizza joint Tuesday night.

OMAHA, Neb. – Myles Rice sees a future in which he knocks down a big 3-pointer in No. 7 Washington State’s NCAA Tournament matchup with No. 10 Drake on Thursday night. A timely 3-pointer that turns the tide, an emergence from the slump in which he’s mired.

SALT LAKE CITY – For the first time in five years, Drew Timme isn’t involved in the NCAA Tournament.

SALT LAKE CITY – Gonzaga’s return to Utah comes with conflicted emotions for Nolan Hickman.

SALT LAKE CITY – Donny Daniels hadn’t seen Przemek Karnowski since Gonzaga’s run to the national championship game at the 2017 Final Four in Glendale, Arizona.

There are two people, outside of Gonzaga’s fan base, that have been in the building for every one of Gonzaga’s 69 NCAA Tournament games. They were the last two around after the team’s watch party ended on Selection Sunday. That would be former athletic director Mike Roth and head coach Mark Few, an assistant on GU’s first NCAA Tournament foray in 1995 and the Elite Eight squad in 1999.

Both coaches cut to the chase analyzing the Gonzaga-McNeese State matchup. The fifth-seeded Zags start three bigs – “Look, their 3 man is bigger than our center. They're huge,” Cowboys coach Will Wade said – while the Southland Conference champions rely on speed and quickness with a smaller lineup.

McNeese State do-everything guard Shahada Wells, who likely occupies the first line on Gonzaga’s scouting report, has played a lot of college basketball at several career stops.

Like all teams preparing for NCAA Tournament openers, Gonzaga’s initial knowledge of UC Irvine was limited.

For basketball fans in Spokane, that one shining moment might be when you turned a profit on NCAA Tournament tickets.

Ahead of its first NCAA Tournament appearance in 16 years, the awards keep rolling in for Washington State.

PULLMAN – On one Sunday afternoon earlier this month, Kyle Smith flipped on his TV and checked out one of the first conference championship games of the season.

Because in the impermanent, turbulent environment that is contemporary college athletics, nobody knows who will stick around to coach and play in the old crimson and gray. So live it up. Your team has earned it and so have you.

Eastern Washington basketball star Cedric Coward and Mt. Spokane graduate Tyson Degenhart were each named to National Association of Basketball Coaches All-District teams on Tuesday.

Growing up in Spokane, Jacinta Buckley was all-in on Lewis and Clark High School, and she can readily rattle off some of the many star girls basketball players – names like Briann January, Katelan Redmon and Hayley Hendricksen – who helped build and sustain the Tigers’ legacy.

When the Gonzaga women’s basketball team has needed an extra presence inside, 6-foot-3 graduate forward Eliza Hollingsworth has more than answered the call. Hollingsworth’s game, though, is more than taking advantage of her size. The Melbourne, Australia, native has the best offensive range for the Zags.

SALT LAKE CITY – It’s where Gonzaga made its first appearance in the NCAA Tournament and where the Bulldogs will make their next, facing McNeese State on Thursday at the Delta Center.

Graham Ike may not have landed any individual awards from the West Coast Conference, but national media members apparently took note of what the Gonzaga junior did down the stretch of the regular season.

It’s been an interesting season for Gonzaga freshmen Dusty Stromer and Braden Huff. It’s all part of process of battling through adversity that every Zag in the rotation has experienced – either earlier in their careers, this season or more likely both.