Nigel Williams-Goss: “Coming to Gonzaga was the best decision I could’ve made”
Turns out Gonzaga guard Nigel Williams-Goss is as skilled with a pen as he is with a basketball.
The junior guard, averaging nearly 17 points per game for the No. 2 ranked-Gonzaga Bulldogs, wrote a column recently for the website, The Players’ Tribune, headlined “Where My Zags At?” In it, Williams-Goss shares the ups and downs (notably, the loss to BYU) he’s endured since transferring from the University of Washington in the spring of 2015. He talks of goals, making friends and the joy of Kraziness in the Kennel.
“I don’t know if culture shock is the right way to say it, but transferring to Gonzaga was a big change for me. I didn’t really know any other students outside of my teammates.”
A psychology major, he also examines Coach Mark Few, from the fiery side that has led to 18 straight NCAA trips (19 if you count the 1998-99 season when he was GU’s top assistant), to a warmer side that shows up in the form of the coach’s kids and his German shepherd Stella, frequent visitors at practice.
“Coach Few has a lot of different sides to his personality. He’s a family man. He’s ultracompetitive. … At the same time, he also has sharp sense of humor — bordering on sarcastic — that caught me off guard at first.”
In the end, he talks of the struggles past Gonzaga teams have had in attempting to reach the Final Four, most notably the Adam Morrison-led squad that lost a heartbreaker to UCLA in the 2006 Sweet 16. And he offers them a thank-you:
“All the former Zags who paved the way — we owe them. Now it’s time to finish what they started.”