X’s and O’s to A’s and B’s: Gonzaga adjusts on the fly for final exams, holiday schedule

When his Gonzaga playing career is over, senior guard Nolan Hickman presumably will miss his teammates, classmates, the campus, marquee games in memorable venues and wearing the Zags’ uniform.

Will he miss finals week?

“No, not at all,” Hickman said . “I can’t wait for this to be over, you know, the last of it. Down the home stretch.”

This segment of Gonzaga’s schedule is typical and atypical at the same time. It always is in December as the program juggles dead week last week, which precedes finals week this week and the fast-approaching Christmas holiday break.

The goal is trying to mix and match practice times to prepare for some of the biggest tests on the Zags’ nonconference schedule: Kentucky last Saturday, UConn on Saturday at Madison Square Garden in New York City and UCLA on Dec. 28 at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.

It’s not an easy task with 18 on the roster, including 13 scholarship players, with 18 class and finals schedules. The Zags usually practice in the afternoon, but that changed to late morning this week to avoid interfering with players’ finals schedule.

“That all comes from our academic coordinator, keeping track of their finals and the times that if we’re lucky we have a two-hour block that we can practice,” GU assistant coach Brian Michaelson said. “This week is very taxing on the guys, no question about it.

“We’re still going basketball-wise, still in a fairly normal routine, but this week there may be more study hall, studying more intensely and more time with tutors. This week is a draining week because there’s so much time and mental effort put into it.”

The eighth-ranked Zags (7-2) returned from the Bahamas in late November after three games in three days at the Battle 4 Atlantis. They had just one game last week, falling to Kentucky 90-89 in overtime in Seattle last Saturday. They have one game this week following the conclusion of finals.

They’ll entertain Nicholls and Bucknell next week before a short holiday break and a Dec. 28 showdown against No. 24 UCLA. So, after three games in three days on Paradise Island, the Zags will play just four games in 28 days.

Gonzaga played six games during roughly the same time period last season and in 2023, five in 2022 and five after its last trip to the Bahamas in the 2020 season.

Schedules were scrambled throughout the 2021 COVID season with GU playing nine games, including back-to-back home games against Northwestern State, between a win over Auburn on Nov. 27 and a victory over Virginia on Dec. 26.

“Next week with two games and no school at all, hopefully, it can be all basketball and then they can refresh mentally and physically with their families over Christmas,” Michaelson said.

The Zags generally take three to five days off over the holiday before holding their first post-Christmas practice.

Hickman, who had four final exams, said this mid- to late-December stretch with a limited number of games gives him a chance to “take a minute.

“It’s needed, not only just for me but my teammates. We’re constantly going, constantly at it and constantly on the floor. We have class and school and everything (else), too, especially this one week to get finals and everything done and get right back to it.”

Hickman said his conditioning level stays steady and he doesn’t get tired during the season, but he “may go (to the gym) late at night when I can’t get no sleep.”

Players’ approaches vary from additional gym time on their own to work on their games to getting away from the gym to give their bodies a break from the first one-third of the season.

“I feel like at Pepperdine I used to go, go, go, and not give myself any rest,” said senior forward Michael Ajayi, who played for the Waves last season. “So just getting a little more rest, get in the hot tub, cold tub after practice, get in those Normatec boots (to enhance blood circulation and reduce muscle soreness), stretching, eating right, those little things will help recovery wise.”

What do coaches focus on when games aren’t on the docket every few days?

Recruiting, of course, rarely takes days off. GU’s staff usually attends some of the prominent prep holiday tournaments that fall between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

As for this week, coaches are reviewing the Kentucky game, making the necessary adjustments and zeroing in on UConn.

“We just got done with Kentucky, so trying to make corrections from that one,” Michaelson said, “and then we have the pre-eminent program in college basketball the last two years. You’re in full team mode, not only opponents on the schedule but self-scouting.”

There will be hours spent evaluating pluses and minuses from the season’s first six weeks.

“It’s more about what did we do well against an opponent, what did we do poorly, what areas can we grow?” Michaelson said. “What areas have we been working on and it’s just not happening and do we need to cut bait? What areas are we pretty good but we haven’t worked on it in a little while?

“What lineups look best, what ones work, how can we help an individual player add this or that or maybe it’s an area of the floor we’re getting a bunch of shots. So it can be anything from individual players to lineups to what we’re doing on both sides of the ball.”

New wrinkles are possible, but “we’re always trying to tinker, whether it’s entirely new things or wrinkles to what we’re doing. You can never stay the same. You’re always striving to improve.”