‘We’ve all grown up with it.’ Gonzaga’s Mark Few among those ‘disappointed’ in demise of Pac-12

SEATTLE – Mark Few made an appearance Dec. 1 at the Pac-12 football championship game between Washington and Oregon in Las Vegas.

No, the Gonzaga coach wasn’t actually in attendance watching from one of the 65,000 seats at Allegiant Stadium, but throughout the game a videoboard series displayed the names and photos of prominent alumni from the participating schools. Few, a 1987 graduate of Oregon, got a brief spot on the videoboard in the fourth quarter.

The Creswell, Oregon, native grew up in Pac-12 country and got his education from a Pac-12 school when the conference consisted of just eight members. Few’s Gonzaga program has rich history with the conference as well, routinely facing Pac-12 schools over the past 25 years, be it deep in the NCAA Tournament, during competitive multiteam events or annual rivalry games such as Saturday’s against Washington.

The Zags lost to Washington 78-73 at Seattle’s Alaska Airlines Arena in the 62nd and potentially last meeting between a Few-coached Gonzaga team and current member of the Pac-12, with 10 of the 12 schools breaking away from the conference following the 2023-24 academic year.

Gonzaga’s current series against Washington will continue for two more years, but when the Huskies visit the Kennel next season, they won’t have a Pac-12 emblem sewn onto their jerseys. And when the Bulldogs return to Seattle in 2025-26, it’ll be a Big Ten logo painted on UW’s court, replacing the Pac-12/10/8 ones that previously existed for more than a century.

The Pac-12’s erosion – a somewhat abrupt development that began in summer 2022 when USC and UCLA announced departures to the Big Ten – has been a tough story to swallow for fans who’ve grown up with the conference.

That includes the native Oregonian who’s become college basketball’s active leader in career winning percentage over 25 years coaching at Gonzaga.

“I think everybody across the whole scope of college athletics is really disappointed in it,” Few said earlier this week. “Whether you’re on the East Coast or obviously on the West Coast it really hits home. We’ve all grown up with it, all of us who’ve lived out here.”

Barring a matchup in the NCAA Tournament – there have been eight such games under Few, so don’t rule it out – the Zags will close this chapter against the Pac-12 having won 16 of their past 17 games dating back to a 2016 NCAA Tournament game against Utah. The Huskies spoiled GU’s chances of a 17-game win streak against the Pac-12 with Saturday’s upset win.

Gonzaga boasts a 46-16 record against the Pac-12 under Few, beating nine ranked Pac-12 teams during the 17-game win streak. That includes a pair of road/neutral wins over top-20 Arizona teams, a 73-72 overtime thriller against Oregon at the Battle 4 Atlantis and, not to be forgotten, a somewhat unplanned four-year series against UCLA, featuring two games at the NCAA Tournament and one at the recent Maui Invitational.

The Zags have had their triumphs, but also had three seasons ended by Pac-12 teams, losing to Arizona in the 2003 and 2014 NCAA tournaments, and famously surrendering a late double-digit lead before falling to UCLA in a 2006 Sweet 16 game.

Saturday’s contest between seventh-ranked Gonzaga and unranked Washington didn’t come with a great deal of pregame hype but, like many of the other Pac-12 showdowns, it delivered its share of on-floor theatrics. There was also a nostalgic component to the 50th meeting between the Bulldogs and Huskies.

Few’s program isn’t directly impacted by the Pac-12’s disintegration, at least not in any discernible way and not in the immediate future. The Bulldogs still have two more games against UW on the books and could re-up with another series when the current one ends. Gonzaga could meet up with Arizona in next year’s Battle 4 Atlantis and recent history suggests the Bulldogs and Bruins will find a way to link up again sometime soon. But Few and others who’ve grown up with the Pac-12 have found it hard to watch the conference’s demise – largely because they think it was preventable.

“They just never quite figured it out and a lot of mistakes were made,” Few said. “It probably could’ve been avoided, but it wasn’t and now everybody’s got to adjust to that.”