NCAA basketball

Zags Basketball Insiders Jim Meehan and Richard Fox returned for their fifth season on Monday, looking at lineup possibilities while offering up some concerns and predictions for the season.

Tyon Grant-Foster, whose eligibility was in doubt until a Spokane judge ruled in his favor last Monday at a preliminary injunction hearing, quickly moved into the starting lineup and had a strong debut.

For awhile in the first half, Gonzaga’s bench was hanging close to the starters in the scoring column and helped the Zags break open a tight game through the first 12 minutes.

Graham Ike was named to another preseason watch list hours before Gonzaga’s 2025-26 season tipped off at McCarthey Athletic Center.

PULLMAN – When he started talking about his Washington State team’s first game of the season, an exhibition victory over visiting New Mexico last month, coach David Riley mentioned something different first.

After securing four commitments last month, Gonzaga continues to make headway with some of the top high school prospects in the country.

College basketball exhibition games are generally nothing more than an opportunity for players to put the uniform on for the first time without the weight of an outcome.

If the seven- to eight-month period that constitutes college basketball’s offseason feels like an eternity, try putting yourself in the shoes of Gonzaga’s Steele Venters, Braeden Smith and Jalen Warley.

Mark Few suggested he hadn’t cracked open a scouting report for Gonzaga’s first regular-season opponent after the team’s exhibition game against Western Oregon.

They may not have been putting Expo marker to dry-erase board just yet, but Gonzaga coaches probably began mulling potential lineups and rotations once the 2025-26 roster began taking shape in April and May.

Any scouting report for Gonzaga in 2025-26 will begin with those two – likely Ike at the top and Huff occupying a space right below. There won’t be many ways around, over or through the Zags’ prolific frontcourt duo this season, and even if you are prepared for the multitude of duck-ins, short rolls and two-man actions, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to shut down the entire operation.

The Zags will say goodbye to the WCC at the end of this season, joining the newly reconfigured Pacific-12 Conference. It should be a fond farewell, as the WCC has served them well. So well, in fact, that a consensus exists among three former Zags – from periods before and after and during the move out of the Big Sky: All agree, Gonzaga could never have reached its current elite status without first making that conference shift in 1979.

When Gonzaga received an invitation to join the West Coast Athletic Conference (WCAC) in Sept. 1978, it received a nine-paragraph, no-byline article at the bottom of The Spokesman-Review’s sports page.

One thing that can’t be argued: this is the most unpredictable Gonzaga team in years, which also makes it one of the most intriguing.

As the Gonzaga men’s basketball team heads into the 2025 season, with a goodly number of unknown elements – like almost every other team – we’ll just settle on some ball-park assessments rather than an unfounded prediction.

The West Coast Conference will be hard to recognize this time next year and may not look all that familiar this fall, even to its most dedicated followers.

It’s been said that the root of a basketball team’s success – whether high school, college or professional – begins at point guard and post. If that’s true, then the Gonzaga women are in good hands.

If the Gonzaga women’s basketball team faced the possibility of taking a step back, it would seem that it could happen in the 2025-26 season. The Bulldogs are embracing the most turnover in coach Lisa Fortier’s career. More than half the team is new – including four transfers and three freshmen.