‘It’s wild out there.’ Gonzaga leaders call for organization, leadership from NCAA in wake of recent college hoops trends

There isn’t much Mark Few hasn’t witnessed or experienced in 27 years at the helm of Gonzaga’s basketball program. Major developments pertaining to conference realignment have occurred during Few’s tenure and the longtime GU coach has successfully navigated other landmark changes to the college athletics landscape, adapting to the transfer portal, Name Image Likeness (NIL) legislation and, most recently, NCAA revenue sharing.

This past week, Few and his coaching staff spent four days preparing for Thursday’s visit from West Coast Conference opponent Santa Clara. As part of the scouting report, Gonzaga reviewed game film of Thierry Darlan, a backup wing averaging 7.2 points and 4.1 rebounds for the Broncos.

There’s nothing extraordinary about Darlan’s season averages and he scored just three points on 1 of 6 shooting with six rebounds in Gonzaga’s 89-77 victory over Santa Clara at McCarthey Athletic Center.

Darlan may not be a candidate to make postseason all-conference teams, but it was groundbreaking news when he joined Santa Clara’s roster in late September.

The 21-year-old became the first former NBA G League player to sign with a college program and now represents a larger-scale NCAA trend that Division I coaches and other leaders in the sport are still trying to wrap their heads around, with many concerned about what it could lead to.

Following Darlan’s path, former G League player London Johnson signed with Louisville in October and Abdullah Ahmed announced his commitment to BYU a month later. Darlan spent time playing for G League Ignite before joining the Delaware Blue Coats, an affiliate of the Philadelphia 76ers. Johnson also played with Ignite and Abdullah spent time with the G League Westchester Knicks (New York Knicks).

The trend of developmental G Leaguers returning to college was only a handful of months old when the next shoe dropped. James Nnaji, a 21-year-old center who was selected No. 31 overall in the 2023 NBA Draft, signed with Baylor and made his NCAA debut roughly a week later.

Nnaji was drafted by the Detroit Pistons, participated in NBA Summer League and was later involved in a three-team trade that sent Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks. On Jan. 3, he was coming off Baylor’s bench in a Big 12 opener against TCU.

Just when Few thought he’d seen it all. 

“It’s just wild out there right now,” Few said Dec. 28 after Gonzaga’s WCC opener at Pepperdine, a handful of days after the Nnaji signing was announced. “We really don’t have any organization or any real rules right now and so guys are just trying to do whatever they can do and until there’s a rule that says you can’t do it, it’s hard to blame anybody for doing that they’re doing.”

Nnaji was able to gain eligibility because he never officially signed an NBA contract or appeared in an NBA game. While on loan from Spanish club FC Barcelona, the 7-footer played for Girona Basquet, matching up multiple times with Gonzaga freshman Mario Saint-Supery, who competed for Liga ACB opponent BAXI Manresa. As someone who didn’t previously enroll at an NCAA institution and signed at a college program within the five-year high school graduation window, Nnaji was able to meet all other eligibility requirements.

Some have criticized Baylor coach Scott Drew for adding a player with Nnaji’s credentials in the middle of the season and taking advantage of a loophole many didn’t know existed.

The larger gripe from Few and others is the NCAA system and eligibility guidelines – or lack thereof – that allow such a transaction to take place.

“Our lack of leadership has really shown,” Few said. “Now it’s probably time to get some help from Congress, but they’re more screwed up than the NCAA is. I mean, come on.

“They’ve got to start listening to coaches is what they need to do, especially those of us coaches who’ve been in it a long time and care about the sport and aren’t just worried about ourselves. We actually care about the sport.”

The NCAA has ruled on numerous eligibility cases over the years, but many of those decisions have been challenged in court, where the sport’s governing body has struggled to win cases that pertain to antitrust law.

“Right now the NCAA clearly doesn’t appear to be empowered due to the intervention in the courts and the only path to correcting that seems to be an antitrust exemption granted by Congress and they can’t seem to get their heads around that that’s worthy at this time and we’re just watching the chaos that ensues because of the absence of that now,” Gonzaga Athletic Director Chris Standiford said. “Some people argue the NCAA’s not the right rule-making body and it’s imperfect, I get that. But it’s the body that we have, it’s the one if it needs fixing, that can be part of that process.”

In short, the NCAA can create and outline eligibility standards, but actually enforcing those will be difficult until there’s an antitrust exemption that protects the legislative body from state lawsuits. The antitrust protection is one component of the SCORE Act (Student Compensation And Opportunity Through Rights and Endorsements) that was scheduled to be voted on last month before being pulled from a bill by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“We need state attorney generals to stop being able to file lawsuits and do things that are clearly motivated to advantage their state institutions over another state’s institutions,” Standiford said. “… We need to have the ability for the NCAA to make a rule, to enforce the rule and to not have it be litigated in court.”

Few and other prominent Division I basketball coaches, such as UConn’s Dan Hurley, Michigan State’s Tom Izzo and Arkansas’ John Calipari, have all expressed concerns with the NCAA’s inability to lay out and enforce strict guidelines.

Gonzaga’s coach isn’t sure where the line should be drawn when it comes to former G Leaguers or NBA Draft picks playing in college. He’s more interested in getting any kind of guidance from the NCAA that can inform how he and others build their rosters in the future.

“You could do this on all this stuff and spend an hour-and-a-half, so let’s start with just getting some leadership and sticking to our guns and saying hey if you want to do this, if you want to play college basketball, this is what it is,” Few said. “Bing, bing, bing, and just do that.”

Some, like Hurley, have suggested introducing a specific college basketball commissioner to assist with rule enforcement. Others are leery of that concept and don’t believe it would offer a tangible solution.

“The idea that a single person is going to receive an appropriate amount of direction from the right body to exercise all the right decisions, I don’t see that happening with 360 institutions, I don’t see it happening with 120 institutions,” Standiford said. “I think even at a conference level, you see the struggle that takes place with just conference commissioners. … The idea this is a scalable concept, I’m skeptical on.”

Nnaji and the trio of former G League players that joined college teams this season received backlash largely because they have professional experience in the U.S. Someone making a counterargument could point to 22-year-old international players that earned professional paychecks overseas while competing for top EuroLeague teams that rival the G League in terms of overall quality and talent.

“There are so many different scenarios where one thing looks like another but it’s really not and it’s not until you dig into the details that you understand the difference,” Standiford said. “Similarly with eligibility, some things look the same on the surface but when you dig down they have fundamentally different things that inform that individual’s experiences.

“Right now it’s like if you can find a loophole, if you can find a way to weave your narrative into the broadest sense, you’re probably going to get granted whatever it is you’re asking for, because the NCAA doesn’t want to defend themselves in another lawsuit.”

Standiford, like many others, is concerned about the impact on American high school athletes who will continue to lose out on scholarship opportunities if college programs continue to fill rosters with G League players and experienced European pros that now find the NCAA track more profitable as a result of new NIL and rev. share opportunities. 

“These high school kids are at an all-time deficit in terms of finding opportunity, certainly in Division I,” Standiford said. “We have to define for ourselves what we are.”