Gonzaga experiments with starting rotation ahead of 2024-25 season opener against Baylor

Bulldogs coaching staff played around with a handful of five-man combinations in USC exhibition game

Gonzaga Bulldogs forward Ben Gregg (33) takes a shot during the first half of their exhibition game at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, Calif., Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024. / Andy Abeyta/The Desert Sun / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Exhibition games can sometimes bring out a different side to a program that fans don’t usually see in the regular season or NCAA Tournament. 

Especially given the amount of player movement in college basketball these days, coaching staffs across the country have spent countless hours this summer and fall tinkering with their starting lineups. With only so many weeks of practice before it’s time to lace up again, coaches use modified closed-door scrimmages and exhibitions as an opportunity to play around with their substitution patterns without worrying about the risks of taking on an early-season loss or hurting their team’s advanced analytics against a new opponent.

During their season-opening charity exhibition game against USC, Mark Few and the Gonzaga men’s basketball’s coaching staff went through almost every five-man combination that was possible to put on the floor, often going for platoon swaps to maximize how many different players they could get on the floor in the 40-minute friendly. Eleven players played at least three minutes for the Zags, who ended up falling to the Trojans, 96-93, in a highly competitive affair from Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, California. 

“We were shuffling guys in and out of there,” Few said after the game. “It’s what you need to do in an exhibition, man. We’ll figure it out. It’ll change throughout this year, we have a bunch of guys who are kinda all … bunched together, in the same [tier], not head-and-shoulders above each other. So there’ll be a bunch of that.”

Few and company weren’t afraid to shuffle the cards in the starting lineup, either. In the first half against the Trojans, the Bulldogs trotted out Ryan Nembhard, Khalif Battle, Michael Ajayi, Ben Gregg and Graham as their starting five. Meanwhile, senior guard Nolan Hickman came off the bench for the first 20 minutes, then was featured heavily in the second half starting five next to Nembhard in the backcourt with Battle on the wing and Ajayi and Braden Huff in the frontcourt.

Even in an exhibition game that lacked real stakes, it was unusual seeing a side to the Bulldogs that was without their preseason All-WCC guard on the floor for the opening tipoff. Hickman has started in 70 of the team’s last 71 games dating back to the start of his sophomore season. A respected leader in the locker room, the Seattle native is also coming off a career year in which he put up 14.0 points per game and shot a team-best 41.3% from 3-point range on 5.4 attempts per game. 

As for Battle, his reputation as an elite scorer precedes him. The 6-foot-5 guard showcased a little bit of how he averaged nearly 30 points down the stretch of SEC play last season during the exhibition with USC, as Battle dropped 20 points and made big plays down the stretch to help the Zags nearly climb out of a double-digit deficit at the very end. 

Yet despite Battle’s shotmaking, Nembhard’s playmaking, Ike’s dominant presence down low, Hickman’s 3-point marksmanship and Ajayi’s rebounding skills all in the same lineup at once, the Bulldogs struggled to keep the Trojans off the scoreboard when it mattered most. The small-ball lineup minutes helped Gonzaga put up 54 points in the second half, though USC put up 59 points on 19 field goals and 16 made free throws.

“I think I was pretty bad tonight playing defense 1-on-1,” Nembhard said. “We gotta learn how to level our guy off and when it’s 1-on-1, we gotta win that matchup as well as rebound … we just gotta be physical, that’s the physicality of the game and that’s something we gotta improve on for sure.”

Any five-man lineup for Gonzaga that doesn’t feature Gregg at the “4” spot is likely going to sacrifice some physicality and toughness on the defensive end of the floor. The 6-foot-10 forward only played 14 minutes against USC, which could partly explain why the Trojans scored with more ease in the second half. That being said the rest of the team didn’t particularly look good on that end of the floor either.

The one-on-one defense was one of the many messages the players echoed after the exhibition loss, as well as the fact that the team’s rotation is still a work in progress. With as talented a roster as Few has on his hands, it’s safe to assume Gonzaga hasn’t settled on any kind of rotation just yet. Expect more experimentation during the Bulldogs’ final exhibition game against Warner Pacific on Wednesday at 6 p.m. PST from the McCarthey Athletic Center.

MORE GONZAGA NEWS & ANALYSIS

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• What Mark Few said after Gonzaga-USC basketball exhibition game

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