Gonzaga graduate assistant Jorge Sanz brings unique contributions to team

Blessed with a bushy black beard and a knack for the basketball court, Jorge Sanz has spent the 2018-19 basketball season patrolling Gonzaga’s basketball team.

As a graduate assistant, Sanz can be found behind the bench during games and hands-on with the players during practice.

“You have so many restrictions on who can work with players and who can’t,” GU assistant coach Tommy Lloyd said. “Graduate assistants can have their hands on players, so that is always a good thing. They get to help these guys get some extra work at night.

“We don’t have a huge staff, so there aren’t many voices, so these guys definitely are in on the conversations. It is really cool having a guy around that has some experience and has maybe seen some different stuff.”

Some of the “different stuff “would include growing up in Zaragoza, Spain, playing youth basketball for C.B. Zaragoza. Sanz came to the United States his senior year of high school to start for McKeesport High School in Pennsylvania. After realizing playing basketball wouldn’t make him any money, he went back to Spain and worked in the corporate world for about five years.

Sanz’s brother, sister and dad all played basketball in Spain – his dad even was involved with the Spanish Basketball Federation – and he essentially learned to walk on a basketball court.

“I really grew up in the gym, so when I stepped away from basketball, I felt that I missed basketball,” Sanz said. “So I don’t know what it is about the game, but I just felt that something was missing. I felt a little empty in that sense.”

Luckily for Sanz, basketball dragged itself back into his life, reviving the passion he had been missing. This time around, playing was out of the question and coaching was his preferred path. After talking with his girlfriend (who became his wife), they decided to make an adventure out of the experience, and they were off to the United States.

In 2010, Sanz found himself a job at Florida Atlantic University, a Division I school in Boca Raton, Florida. The Owls won the Sun Belt Conference regular-season title and advanced to the National Invitation Tournament for the first time in school history. He was through last season, having been the longest-tenured member of the program when he left.

Sanz was responsible for video operations before he was promoted to assistant coach in spring 2016. Two years later, he was wading through snow to get to practice in the Kennel to help coach the No. 1 team in the country.

“It is more the challenge, the strategy and not necessarily the X’s and O’s, but having a team behind you, it’s like a game, Sanz said. “The competition part of it, of course, I want to win. I want to help my team win. The nuances of seeing what this team is doing, what that team is doing and to figure it out like a puzzle, like a competitive puzzle of sorts.”

Sanz’s international flair helps mold more complete players. The Spaniard shares the bench alongside the coordinator of basketball analytics and video operations, Riccardo Fois, a native of Italy.

“For one, we love having a diverse staff, and obviously being from Europe’s great. I met (Sanz) a couple times recruiting European championships and truly liking him as a person, and he and I stayed in contact a bit and if he couldn’t find anything, he could always come up here and be a volunteer grad assistant for a year,” Lloyd said. “Promised him nothing and on his own, he did it.”

Graduate and student assistants are common for college basketball teams. Former Zags Rem Bakamus (Baylor) and Connor Griffin (Pepperdine) are entrenched in their graduate programs, and Adam Morrison was a student assistant at GU during the 2013 season.

“And your (goal) is to help them grow as coaches and develop in that sense and hope they get opportunities off of that,” Lloyd said. “But we also love them to contribute when they are here.”

“He is great to have around. He is one of those guys that is super, super hardworking,” GU head coach Mark Few said of Sanz. “He has a great feel for people and the guys love him and the staff loves him. It is just great to have a guy like that around. It is funny how we end up meeting all of these great people and they just end up here, almost like it is meant to be sometimes.”