Staying power: How ‘unfinished business’ lured Gonzaga’s four returning starters back to school for one last run

One by one, they filter into a team dining room adjacent to the court at McCarthey Athletic Center.

Ben Gregg takes a seat, followed by Ryan Nembhard and then Nolan Hickman. Five minutes later, Graham Ike finishes a photoshoot on the upper concourse of the Kennel and walks through the door, pulling up a chair next to Hickman.

Gonzaga fans know why it’s important to savor this scene – four starters from a second-weekend NCAA Tournament team returning a year later on account of “unfinished business.”

As an entity, college basketball should take the time to appreciate it, too.

“It’s like, if we’ve got another run at this, why not try to run it back and see what we can do?” Ike said. “It wasn’t really a thought about leaving or anything. … We already knew. Everybody’s still got eligibility, we’re not leaving.”

Gonzaga has been a college basketball anomaly for the better part of three decades, manufacturing an unlikely national powerhouse on a small Jesuit campus in the Pacific Northwest.

Mark Few’s program, targeting a 10th consecutive trip to the Sweet 16 and lots more in 2024-25, will be an anomaly in another sense this season when it takes the court with four of the five players who started for the Zags one year ago, along with two key reserves – Dusty Stromer and Braden Huff – who accounted for 35 of the team’s 46 bench points, and 76% of the total bench minutes during the NCAA Tournament.

Assembling a roster has become an all-encompassing endeavor for college basketball programs in 2024, starting as early as March and often bleeding into late August or early September. The final piece of Gonzaga’s 2023-24 roster, Pavle Stosic, arrived on campus with the fall semester already underway. On the other end of the spectrum, Gonzaga took the first step toward addressing the 2024-25 roster before the 2023-24 campaign concluded, picking up a commitment from Pepperdine’s Michael Ajayi on March 26, roughly 24 hours before the team flew to Detroit for the Sweet 16.

Ajayi is one of four incoming transfers, and one of five newcomers, but Gonzaga’s ability to retain six rotation players and seven total from last year’s roster made this rebuild relatively simple and straightforward, at least as rebuilds go in the modern college hoops climate.

“Unbelievable to retain six of the seven that played and obviously the one had no eligibility left is out of this world,” said Gonzaga assistant Brian Michaelson. “Retention is so important in college basketball and used to be quite common, but I think even we had a unique level of retention. To return whatever it was, 80% of statistics in today’s world is unheard of.”

It’s safe to assume virtually every program in the country would be thrilled with that number. In GU’s case, it’s slightly higher than 80% this season. Officially, the Zags are bringing back 81.4% of returning minutes from one year ago. That’s not the top percentage in the country, but it’s not far off either, ranking fifth out of 364 Division I teams, according to the analytics website run by Bart Torvik.

Per BartTorvik.com, nobody else occupying a spot in the preseason AP Top 25 returns more than 80% of its minutes, with No. 4 Houston as the next-closest at 77%. In total, 232 college basketball teams return less than 50% of returning minutes from last season, with eight returning fewer than 1%. Eight of Gonzaga’s 11 foes in the West Coast Conference bring back 47% or lower of returning minutes, with four of them below 25%.

It’s an impressive level of retention, even by Gonzaga’s standards, and yet none of the team’s four returning starters seem overly surprised things played out this way.

“I’m not surprised at all,” Gregg said. “I mean honestly with the world of college athletics now, you could probably go somewhere else and make a lot of money. But I don’t think that’s what these guys are worried about. I know I’m not.”

“I just felt like we knew what we had in this locker room,” Nembhard said, “and I really had no plans on doing anything else.”

Added Hickman: “For me it was a no-brainer, honestly. I’ve been here since my freshman year so it would’ve been hard to up and leave Gonzaga as a whole. The fans, everybody around Gonzaga as a community. It wouldn’t feel right for me to leave.”

• • •

Michaelson specifically remembers two things about GU’s locker room moments after Zach Edey and top-seeded Purdue ended Gonzaga’s postseason run in Detroit.

First was the outpouring of love and gratitude for outgoing senior Anton Watson, a fifth-year player who left an unquantifiable impact on his hometown program, from his first day on campus down to his final seconds in a Gonzaga uniform.

Second was the shared feeling among rotation players with eligibility left that it couldn’t end this way. Not in the Sweet 16. Not after conceding the WCC championships – yes, both of them – to bitter rival Saint Mary’s. Not after the progress they’d made over five months, going from NCAA bubble candidate to a group nobody wanted to see in March.

“Two things that stuck out was how much emotion those guys had for Anton and how much they loved him and respected him … That really, really stuck with me. That was really cool,” Michaelson said. “And then almost in that same breath, them all being like, we’ve got to do this again. So that’s far from official, but even in that moment while you’re dealing with the end, there was clearly a thought toward the future. Which is always a good sign.”

Almost as if they’d scripted the response beforehand, Nembhard, Hickman, Ike and Gregg all relayed the same message to reporters from their individual lockers at Little Caesars Arena.

“We had some unfinished business,” Nembhard said.

What if actual business interfered with the unfinished business that brought all four players back to Gonzaga?

Advancing to the second weekend of March Madness inevitably drove up their market value and a 2024 report from NIL technology firm Opendorse shows that athletes who transfer make 70% more in NIL earnings than those who stay put. Nembhard, Hickman, Ike and Gregg could’ve commanded significant NIL packages, potentially putting Gonzaga in a position where it might have been able to afford a raise for one or two players, but possibly not all four.

Once the semester ended, all four players would eventually split to their offseason homes, where family members, friends, AAU coaches and NIL agents would have opportunities to get in their ear.

Gregg, for instance, returned to the Portland area where longtime friends and basketball acquaintances gauged his interest in a move away from Gonzaga, tossing out dollar figures to see if anything would move the needle.

“People I’ve been close with since I was a kid that have connections to other programs and said other schools can you give this much money, this and that,” he said.

Gregg, who’s seen six teammates drafted to the NBA over the last four years, understood the value of the long play at Gonzaga.

“I’m like, I’m good man,” Gregg said. “I’m good where I’m at, so I didn’t pay any mind to that.”

Gonzaga made it through the transfer portal window unscathed, but the professional route offered another potential roadblock for the program’s chances of bringing back all four starters.

None were considered top-end draft prospects, but even for players who aren’t firmly on the NBA’s radar, there’s value in testing the waters, going through pre-draft workouts and gaining feedback from scouts. Players are permitted to enter the draft twice without forfeiting their college eligibility and none of Gonzaga’s returning starters had done it previously.

Which made May 1 another important checkpoint for Gonzaga. The NBA revealed 195 players who’d filed for early draft entry and while none of GU’s returners had indicated they’d be testing the waters, it was still worth scrolling through the alphabetical list just to be sure there wasn’t a Gregg, Hickman, Ike or Nembhard appearing anywhere on the page.

“The NBA is always going to be there. Pro is always going to be there,” said Nembhard, who possibly took advice from older brother Andrew, a starting guard for the Indiana Pacers, on that front. “You only have a certain amount of time to play with this group of guys and achieve some great things.”

All four made personal decisions to stay and informed Few of their plans – at that point more of a formality than anything else.

“We didn’t even have to say it, it was just known,” Hickman said. “Yeah, no doubt.”

• • •

If retention was the buzzword associated with Gonzaga’s offseason, intention may be the one that defines the next five or six months.

“We’re attacking every day with the right intentions of winning,” Ike said, “whether it’s a drill in practice, as a whole, whatever it may be.”

One season may feel like an eternity to some, but within the context of a long career, it can feel like Gonzaga’s veteran starters are coming up on the final seconds of their respective shot clocks.

Gregg, the last remaining remember of GU’s 2020-21 national runner-up team, is entering his fifth season and refers to the quartet of returning starters, with an average age of 21½ years, as “old heads.” Together, they’ve played in 389 total games, 33 NCAA Tournament games and have 4,041 career points under their belt.

Knowing the time remaining is finite, there’s not as much tolerance when the team has to repeat a drill or exercise two or three times at practice. Gregg, Ike, Nembhard and Hickman are viewed as an extension of the coaching staff and they’re encouraged to speak up if they see something Few or one of his assistants happen to miss.

“We’ve got to go all out every day,” Gregg said. “We can’t waste any practice time, walkthroughs or anything like that. It’s all about making sure we’re holding each other accountable every day.”

Early in his career, Hickman was stubborn and not always willing to take advice from GU’s veterans. Now he’s comfortable dishing it out to younger players and transfers – and doesn’t take offense if Ike, Nembhard or Gregg feel the need to correct him on something.

“Freshman year, you’re not accepting none of that and you’re starting to feel a lot of hostility toward others and everything,” he said. “Yeah man, once you start getting older, getting mature and start realizing things, it starts putting things in perspective.”

On the floor, everything is clicking at a higher level in many of the ways you might expect.

Nembhard’s two-man game with Ike was effective last season, but their partnership has reached another gear. Hickman, Gonzaga’s primary point guard two years ago, has grown more comfortable playing off the ball and has a better understanding of where he can complement Nembhard, unlocking more possibilities for the team’s highly touted backcourt.

“Last year, new point guard, new big man coming in, we play through them so much that you kind of have to get used to the way they play and where they get their shots and where they’re looking to pass the ball to you,” Gregg said. “I know Graham’s game so well now, I know where to go if he misses a shot, where most of his misses go if he does miss, which is rare. Then where to spot up for Ryan to find me at and that stuff.”

Centered around retention, Gonzaga’s formula is something most coaches strive for but struggle to replicate, especially in the increasingly chaotic transfer portal/NIL climate. Few’s had better success than most, but the Zags haven’t been completely immune to offseasons where they’ve had to turn over a majority of the roster, if not more.

“It rings loud and clear how much they love each other, care for each other, care about the program, care about the school, care about the community,” Few said. “I’ve been so impressed by that and go into this season kind of with just carrying that as a motivator and a debt I and our staff wants to pay back to them for that. So it’s pretty cool in this day and age.”

Outside expectations are understandably high for the country’s sixth-ranked team. Within the locker room, there’s an internal understanding of what’s possible, but the Zags have been strategically more subtle about voicing their goals this season.

The last time “national championship” came up in a team setting?

“We try not to use that word anymore,” Gregg said. “We had a good retreat where we just all got to get together to talk about what we want from this season. Every year we’ve done a retreat, the goal is national championship. That’s all we talk about and this year we’re more worried about getting 1% better each day.

“We’ll make the run and do all that, but we’ve just got to focus on what we’re doing day to day and try to get better every day we step onto the floor.”