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Gonzaga Basketball

Washington Post’s John Feinstein on Mark Few, Zags

Gonzaga coach Mark Few consoles guard Nigel Wiliams-Goss in the final seconds against North Carolina, Mon., April 3, 2017, in the NCAA championship game, in Glendale, Ariz. (Dan Pelle / The Spokesman-Review)
By John Feinstein Washington Post

Many college basketball coaches who reach their first Final Four don’t truly understand the magnitude of what they’ve accomplished until later.

Years ago, the late, great Al McGuire said it hit him walking onto the court to coach Marquette in the national championship game in 1974. “It occurred to me when I looked around that, win or lose, I’d reached the pinnacle of my profession,” he said. “When I got older, I tried to explain it to other coaches. I’m not sure that many understood it.”

One coach McGuire lectured was Mike Krzyzewski, after he had reached his first Final Four at Duke in 1986. “He said to me, ‘Savor this week, because you never know if it will happen again,’ ” Krzyzewski said. “I tried to do that but the week was so hectic, I really couldn’t. Fortunately, I’ve had a few more opportunities (12 in all) to go back. But I didn’t get it back then.”

Mark Few knew right away. Almost from the moment his Gonzaga team beat Xavier last March to make the Final Four in Phoenix, he began planning for a special week.

“It had been a long ride to get there,” he said earlier this week. “We’d had teams that I thought were good enough that didn’t get there. When we did get there, I wanted as many people as possible who had been part of the ride to get to enjoy it.”

Few didn’t stop at getting people tickets. He invited family and friends dating from his days growing up in Creswell, Oregon (pop. 5,292) and anybody who had ever played at Gonzaga. John Stockton, who graduated in 1984, was invited, as was Stockton’s son David, who graduated in 2014.

Old coaching friends also got personal invitations. Among them was Maryland’s Mark Turgeon, who often shared a room with Few on the recruiting road in the 1990s, when Turgeon was at Oregon.

“Gonzaga didn’t have any budget back then,” Turgeon said. “I’d rent a car and Mark would ride with me. I’d get a hotel room, and if we couldn’t get two beds, he’d sleep on the floor. We hung out with a bunch of other young coaches (among them Jamie Dixon, Mark Gottfried and Tad Boyle). We called ourselves the Brat Pack.

“What I remember most about Mark though was his confidence. He’d say to me, ‘Why should UCLA get all the good players? Why can’t we get some of them at Gonzaga?’ Turned out he knew what he was talking about.”

Few wanted his pals to understand how far they’d all come since the Brat Pack days. “I wanted to relive those days when we sat up in the nosebleed seats as assistant coaches and left at halftime because we couldn’t see a thing,” Few said, laughing. “It was fun to share it with them.”

As it was with the ex-players.

The day before the national semifinals all the Gonzaga alums, about 100 of them, were invited to the team’s evening film session at the team hotel. “We had them all waiting outside the room for a while,” Few said. “None of our current players knew anything about it. When the old guys walked into the room all our players stood up and applauded.”

“Our video guy had put together a highlight tape, not the kind we usually have for the team showing them making good plays, but for the alums. We had John Stockton throwing passes wearing those old-fashioned shorts. Everyone was whooping and hollering. Then, when it was over, all the ex-players lined up in a gantlet for the guys to walk through and shake everybody’s hand.

“Honestly, it was something I’ll remember the rest of my life. It was amazing.”

Gonzaga beat South Carolina in the semifinals before losing in heartbreaking fashion to North Carolina in the championship game. Now, almost a year later the Bulldogs are 19-4 and Few is dealing with “year after” issues.

“We definitely set a high bar here,” he said. “When we lost to Saint Mary’s I think a lot of people flipped out a little bit. I mean, they’re very good and it was a really good game decided at the very end. But last year we didn’t lose a game until the end of the regular season. You can’t expect that every season, especially when you lose two guys early to the NBA draft. I still think this group will be pretty good before it’s all over, but it’s human nature for expectations to get a little bit high at times.”

That bar is understandable given what Gonzaga has accomplished in Few’s 19 seasons. His teams have never missed an NCAA Tournament, a streak almost certain to continue this March. They have been to at least the Sweet 16 on seven occasions; at least the Elite Eight twice; and, last year, the title game. This from a program that was a middling midmajor for years until Dan Monson, with Few as his No. 1 assistant, took it to the Elite Eight in 1999.

And Few has never left. Early on, big-time programs came calling almost every year, trying to recruit the hot new coach on the block. Few was never seriously tempted because he loves where he lives and loves his life and lifestyle.

“A lot of coaches need to feel wanted by other programs,” said Gary Williams, another close friend. “It’s why a lot of us move around. Mark’s always had the self-confidence to not need that. It’s also why he’s been a good recruiter. He’s not flamboyant. It’s never about him, it’s about the players, which is something players love. They notice.”

Gonzaga is no longer a midmajor, and Few is one of college basketball’s star coaches. Gonzaga has been ranked No. 1 and been a No. 1 seed twice – including last season, when it was 32-1 on Selection Sunday. The last five seasons, the Zags have averaged 32 wins. No wonder four losses in January feels like Armageddon.

Few would rather be 23-0 than 19-4 but understands that he has a team that lost four of its top five scorers from last season. Few knew that seniors Przemek Karnowski and Jordan Matthews would be departing but was caught a little off-guard when both Nigel Williams-Goss and 7-foot freshman center Zach Collins left early.

“I understood it,” he said. “But I honestly thought Nigel had a chance to be the face of college basketball this season: a senior who was the best player on a good team. Zach actually surprised me less because he’d come on so strong in March.” He paused. “I still wonder what would have happened in the championship game if he hadn’t gotten into foul trouble.”

Collins fouled out after playing 14 minutes in the title game; a game that was largely taken over by the officials, who called 44 fouls and had the big men from both teams in foul trouble all night.

“If you’d gone to all the big guys before the game and said, ‘Hey, we’re calling nothing tonight, just play,’ they’d have said, ‘We’re good,’ ” Few said. “Instead it felt like they called everything and kind of took the game away from the players. That was disappointing.”

Few is pretty much over it now. He is able to understand how much he and his players have accomplished, not just last season, but in the last two decades. As Williams pointed out, it isn’t about the adulation for him.

“My best moments in the offseason came when I was fly-fishing, by myself,” Few said. “I just kind of stood there or and thought, ‘Wow, I’m from Creswell, Oregon, I coach at Gonzaga and look where I got to be.’ It was a very cool feeling.

”My dad (a minister) has been at the same church for 52 years. I’ve been at Gonzaga for 28 years. I guess I’m more like him than I ever knew.“

Clearly Norm Few – known to all in his church as Pastor Norm – did a lot of things right. Like father, like son.