‘Frog-stomping’ time: The struggles Gonzaga has faced this season feel eerily familiar for the group that scrambled to make sure the NCAA magic didn’t die a quarter century ago

Even with so much talent returning, Gonzaga’s men finished second in conference play and faced a critical challenge heading into the West Coast Conference Tournament.

The Zags had been inconsistent during the regular season, at times performing below the massive expectations they shouldered.

So it is today. So it was 25 years ago.

Three iconic, turn-of-the-century Gonzaga players remember feeling as if some of the magic – so new, then – might be slipping away in the 2000 season.

Matt Santangelo, Richie Frahm and Casey Calvary were among the national darlings of GU’s 1999 NCAA Tournament Elite Eight emergence.

At times in the 2000 season, though, they had to wonder if their streak of consecutive NCAA appearances – now running toward 26 – might end at one.

They had lost eight regular-season games, going 5-5 in December 1999. Knowing that the WCC was only a one-berth conference, the reality was simple: They needed to win three conference tournament games to get the automatic berth back to the NCAAs.

Although college basketball and Gonzaga’s place in it were drastically different those days, these Zags elders agree with the premise that their 2000 team bears similarities to the current team.

They suspect that today’s Zags not only feel the pressure of expectations, but recognize that they’re weightier than ever, carrying cumulative gravity of their predecessors’ success.

But most important to the current team and their followers, Santangelo recalled something about his group’s belated-but-timely string of clutch play in 2000, which appears to be recurring with the contemporary Zags.

“This team is still finding its way,” he said.

The similarities

Without byes in an eight-team tournament in March 2000, the unranked Zags (21-8, 11-3) needed three more wins to get the automatic NCAA berth. They had opened conference season with nine consecutive wins, but dropped three of their final five in conference.

Also unranked, at 23-8, now, the Zags stood No. 3 in the national rankings in late November, but lost overtime games to West Virginia and Kentucky, and then twice more, narrowly, to Connecticut and UCLA.

Their four conference losses, two to Saint Mary’s, were the most since 1998.

Although they dropped out of the Top 25 in mid-January, their strength of schedule, overall resume, tournament history, and a couple of late wins at Santa Clara and San Francisco make them almost certain to receive an at-large bid and stretch the streak.

That was not the case for the 2000 Zags. They didn’t need much reminding of the tournament snub two seasons earlier, when they won the WCC regular-season title before losing to USF in the title game.

They had 23 wins and beaten No. 5 Clemson early in the season but were passed over and ended up with a first-round NIT game against Wyoming in Laramie.

“I think some of the lessons we learned apply to this year’s team,” said Calvary, a tough and springy post player whose tip-in against Florida sent the 1999 Zags into the regional finals against Connecticut. “There’s part of that fear factor; our Gonzaga teams always had that after our ’98 team. We always felt we can’t leave it in the NCAA’s hands or they’re going to burn us.”

With that in mind, they tromped Saint Mary’s by 27, topped San Diego by 10, and then edged Pepperdine by four in overtime.

Calvary powered in 28 points, and Frahm scored the first seven points for the Zags in overtime.

“The one play I remember was Casey grabbing an offensive rebound or a loose ball, him just ripping the ball like his life depended on it,” Frahm said. “He looked at me and saw I was open; I shot a 3 from the corner and it went in. That sticks with me because it was like, OK, this is our game.”

For the second straight year, they were made a No. 10 seed in the NCAA West Region, dealing losses to Louisville in the opener, and No. 2-seeded and ninth-ranked St. John’s, before falling to Purdue in the Sweet 16.

Under tournament pressure, they’d won five straight, win-or-go-home games.

“The 2000 team didn’t have this level of expectation outside of the locker room, but we put a significant amount of pressure on ourselves,” Santangelo said. “This need to perform down the stretch, and the need to go into the WCC Tournament and win, with that March Madness mentality, yeah, there’s probably a lot of similarities (to this year’s team).”

The challenges

A talented Pepperdine team was not intimidated by the reputation GU earned in 1999. In fact, the Waves were motivated by it.

“That team was hungry,” Frahm said. “They probably saw what we did the year before and were thinking, ‘Hey, why not us?’ They were athletic and well-coached and they pushed us hard.”

Calvary quickly detected the cost of their reputation: Suddenly, every team geared up and was revving hot for the chance at an upset.

“A lot of people asked, ‘Didn’t you like getting everybody’s best game?’ ” Calvary said. “I said, ‘Hell no, I wanted to frog-stomp people.’ ”

Although the 1999-2000 team was the first in the Mark Few era, he had been involved in the program for a decade, so the cultural mechanics went unchanged. But for a while, the parts moved differently.

“The culture was already there,” Frahm said. “We knew his personality and what he expected from us, and we held ourselves accountable as teammates because we knew the standard at Gonzaga was being set.”

But, “we started moving to a motion offense and it was a little foreign,” Frahm said. “The moving and timing and spacing was a part of our early struggles. He was giving us freedom and it took some time to adjust.”

While the key scorers returned, the loss of kinetic point guard Quentin Hall and post Jeremy Eaton caused an unquantifiable deficit.

“They had been such emotional leaders for us,” Calvary said. “That was a challenge that year: How do we find a way to play together when we have these emotional voids, (missing) the guys who gave that to us the year before,” Calvary said.

Calvary said he sensed another disconnect that went unseen from the outside.

“Some of us were trying to make the NBA,” he said. “When we would get up a certain number of points, they would sub us out of the games. We were having those conversations behind the scenes the whole year. The coaches were trying to develop young guys and doing the best for the program, but we needed them to get us to the NBA.”

Under the pressures and fears of failing, it finally began to mesh, and the chemistry created competitive heat.

Quoted after the overtime win over Pepperdine, Santangelo said: “We’re back, baby, we’re back. This is a great weight off our shoulders.”

Few told reporters that the battle cry during the previous week, from Calvary, was: “We’re not going back to Laramie.”

No, they were going back to the NCAA Tournament, and extending a streak that is alive today.

The lessons

“I always have a theory that it’s good to play those (tough) games early in the year because it’s good to know your weaknesses,” Frahm said. “In those losses, we learned we needed guys to step up, and our roles might not be what we thought they were. (Mike) Nilson’s role expanded, Ryan Floyd’s role expanded, Mark Spink’s role expanded, and Zach Gourde stepped up and played significant minutes.”

Floyd keyed an upset win over UCLA in December, and scored 14 in the title game against Pepperdine. Nilson became the conference’s defensive player of the year.

“The guys that came off the bench were flawless,” Frahm said. “The team was deep, and once we learned our roles, we became so strong.”

This year’s Zags also have been challenged with the shuffling and defining of roles, and maybe more than anything, refining and invigorating their defensive tactics and efforts.

A late surge has them on an apparent upward trajectory.

“We had talent, but we weren’t as deep as this group,” Santangelo said. “From the high expectations, with the early Baylor performance (a runaway GU victory), to the struggles they’ve gone through – a lot of that is because it’s a new team.”

It’s a veteran team, by current college basketball’s transient standards, Santangelo said, “but they’re not necessarily Gonzaga-tested and true. It’s a different chemistry.”

Santangelo recalled Calvary once addressing the label of “talent.” “Is that because they can run and jump, or look good in the team photo, or is it because they can really play?”

And this year’s team can run and jump, and does, indeed, look good in a team photo.

“There’s a reason they had such a high preseason ranking (No. 6),” Calvary said. “(They have) all the talent and all the weaponry, but can we figure out how to get it locked and loaded and unleashed at the right time?”

That, he said, is Mark Few’s job.

“It’s a hard job to do every year,” Calvary said. “What is it, nine straight Sweet 16s? That’s an insane standard to try to live up to.”

The message

The streak of 25 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances by Gonzaga is one of the most unlikely and impressive in college sports history. Michigan State leads existing streaks with 26, but the next after GU’s 25 is Purdue’s nine.

Twenty-eight straight by Kansas (1990-2017) is the longest appearance streak .

A streak, by definition, exists or it dies. It’s fragile, subject to entropy over time. It requires nurturing, feeding, building and sustaining over its customarily brief lifespan. It needs dedication and good fortune. And an administration willing to support it.

And, perhaps more important than any other factor, it needed a head coach to stay at the school and somehow keep steady at a Hall of Fame pace.

Fair to wonder whether the whole thing could have continued this long if that 2000 team hadn’t fought their way back to the tournament.

“Their fears are different than ours,” Frahm said. “They don’t want to end the streak, but they have enough firepower and I think they’ll be recognized for an at-large bid with their reputation with the (selection) committee (regardless of conference tournament outcome).”

Frahm made another assessment he wanted to be sure made it into print.

The GU alums and former players “… don’t want the streak to end,” Frahm said. “They’re doing everything they can, but they could do more. Everybody needs to do more this time of year. Fear is a huge motivator. If they can put their discipline over their personal motivation, the team will succeed. If somebody’s off doing their own thing, they won’t. Talent doesn’t always win. It takes more.”

Fear also was a factor in the infant stages of Gonzaga’s run, but chemistry was at the core of it.

“What we were missing in games that we lost was the belief in one another,” Calvary said. But that trust arrived in time.

“We knew that if my job was to screen for Richie, I was going to do that. By the end of the year, we developed the faith in each other that we were going to do the right things to win games.”

The lesson for the current team?

“If these guys can develop that kind of chemistry, that trust in each other, it’s a fantastic time to make a run.”

To co-opt Calvary’s concept and terminology, it’s “frog-stomping” time.