NCAA basketball

It became clear this summer that the conferences didn’t see eye to eye.

With high stakes and a low margin for error, Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould decided she needed face time. Not the app version. The original version: face-to-face time.

Gonzaga’s home sellout streak should eclipse 300 games early this season, but the Bulldogs will unofficially play in front of their first capacity crowd Saturday at the annual Kraziness in the Kennel event.

Gonzaga’s schedule release on Wednesday didn’t reveal anything new in terms of opponents, dates or destinations, but viewing the Zags’ 13 nonconference opponents on one page may have given fans and college basketball purveyors a better sense of what Mark Few’s team is up against this season.

Eric McClellan, an entertaining follow on social media, recently posted snapshots of himself and John Jakus during a Florida Atlantic basketball practice wearing T-shirts reading: “Relationships over everything.” It’s not some random cookie-cutter slogan for the two.

The news Tuesday of Gonzaga’s looming arrival — the Zags will begin competition in 2026-27 — dramatically changes the perception of the reconstituted Pac-12.

Four former Gonzaga basketball players from across the spectrum of the program’s rise to national powerhouse gave the school high marks for its decision to join the Pac-12 Conference in 2026-27. The former Zags said the Pac-12 should represent a sizable step up in competition, beef up the home conference schedule, boost the school’s ability to generate revenue, including NIL, and better positions GU in the rapidly changing landscape of college athletics.

Gonzaga’s Mark Few has been named the recipient of the 2025 John R. Wooden Award’s “Legends of Coaching” Award.

Gonzaga was at the epicenter of the conference realignment world on Tuesday, formally joining the reconstructed Pac-12 Conference as its eighth member, and only nonfootball member. With its future secured, it could be a while before Gonzaga’s name resurfaces in conference realignment and expansion conversations – a drastic change from the past decade-plus, when the Spokane school and its powerhouse men’s basketball program were frequently in the middle of realignment rumors, courted by multiple conferences in different time zones.

In the high-stakes musical chairs game of conference realignment, the stripped-down Pac-12 landed a globally recognized jewel in Zags hoops, an anchor program in the region, and a long-standing national brand.

Not long after Gonzaga and its fledgling athletic department joined the West Coast Conference in 1979, the school’s longtime athletic director, Mike Roth, began hearing murmurs.

Whether the next move comes in 24 hours or 24 days, the conference needs a win. And there's only one school available that can offer a blowout victory.

More than half of the Gonzaga women’s basketball team is new – four by the transfer portal and three incoming freshmen.

It makes little sense to offer the Zags a full share of the Pac-12's annual revenue because they don't play football. But a partial share (in the $6 million-to-$8 million range, for example) might not constitute a significant increase from the West Coast Conference media distributions.

Gonzaga will get a tune-up game against a high-major program before diving into one of the country’s most challenging nonconference schedules.

The conference swung and missed on its targets in the American Athletic Conference

So many questions. But so much to like.

Gonzaga athletic director Chris Standiford didn’t mince words disputing a report on X that the Zags were leaving the West Coast Conference for the Pac-12. "That is not accurate reporting,” Standiford said.

Colby Brooks’ time with Gonzaga’s basketball program ended in March, but the former walk-on’s time in the West Coast Conference will resume this fall.