Gonzaga Nation’s WCC preseason rankings and awards for 2024-25 season

Zags take No. 1 spot in league table with three players on All-WCC team

Photo by Erik Smith, Myk Crawford

As is the norm in college athletics these days, the West Coast Conference does not look the same as it did five months ago.

Two new faces join the league as affiliate members: Washington State and Oregon State, the last two members of the legacy Pac-12 that opted to move to the WCC for a two-year term that starts this season. The Cougars previously had ties to the league through their head coach Kyle Smith, who was the head coach of San Francisco from 2017-2019. He’s now at Stanford. Under Smith, WSU played just two games against the WCC — both against Santa Clara in 2019 and 2023.

Likewise, Oregon State doesn’t have much familiarity with the league despite being located within the WCC’s geographical footprint, which will grow again in 2025 when Grand Canyon and Seattle U join the mix as full-time members. For now, the conference has upped its schedule from 16 to 18 games to accommodate the Beavers and Cougars.

Three programs made coaching changes over the offseason. David Riley takes over WSU after leading Eastern Washington to back-to-back Big Sky conference titles. The 35-year-old brought four players from last season’s Eagles squad with him from Cheney to Pullman, Washington, via the transfer portal.

Pacific brought in legendary Canadian college coach Dave Smart to take over the struggling men’s basketball program, which finished 6-26 overall and 0-16 in league play last season. Smart amassed 656 career wins in 18 seasons as the head coach of Carleton University (Ottawa, Ontario) and guided the Ravens to 13 U SPORTS Men's Basketball National Championships and 11 OUA Conference Championships, the most by any coach in conference history. He was an assistant coach at Texas Tech last season.

Pepperdine hired former GCU assistant Ed Schilling to lead a new era of Waves basketball after firing Lorenzo Romar, who remains in the league as an assistant at Loyola Marymount.

Despite conference realignment, coaching changes and a massive influx of transfers into the league, the hierarchy of the WCC heading into the 2024-25 season features three of the longest-tenured head coaches in the WCC — Mark Few and Gonzaga on top, followed by Randy Bennett and Saint Mary’s in second and Herb Sendek’s Santa Clara program in third.

The Bulldogs brought back seven of the team’s top eight scorers from last season’s Sweet 16 squad, including All-WCC players Ryan Nembhard, Nolan Hickman and Graham Ike. Few and the coaching staff rounded out the rotation with a transfer portal class that’s highlighted by All-WCC wing Michael Ajayi, 6-foot-5 grad transfer Khalif Battle and WAC All-Defense selection Emmanuel Innocenti. Experienced and talented, Gonzaga sits near the top of notable preseason rankings and polls from national media outlets.

Saint Mary’s lost some firepower this offseason, though it’s always safe to expect any Bennett-led program will compete for the top two spots in the WCC standings. Aidan Mahaney is at UConn and Joshua Jefferson transferred to Iowa State, while Alex Ducas graduated. The Gaels added Memphis transfer Ashton Hardaway and Arizona transfer Paulius Murauskas to a rather young squad by Bennett’s standards, as WCC Player of the Year Augustas Marciulionis and WCC Defensive Player of the Year Mitchell Saxen make up two of the three seniors on the 2024-25 roster.

The Broncos might be the second-most experienced team in the league behind the Bulldogs this season, as Sendek brought back over 76% of the minutes played from a 20-win team that finished one game back of third-place in the WCC table in 2023-24. With the return of All-WCC guard Adama Bal and the re-addition of LSU transfer Carlos Stewart, who was all-conference with the Broncos in 2022-23, there are not many backcourts in the WCC that are better than the one Sendek currently possesses.

Here is a look at the rest of the WCC pecking order heading into the 2024-25 season, as well as award predictions and all-conference team picks.

WCC PLAYER OF THE YEAR: GRAHAM IKE

Photo by Erik Smith, Myk Crawford

Ike made a strong case to take home the league’s player of the year award after leading the WCC in points and field goal percentage in conference play last season — a feat only five other players in league history have accomplished (four of them went on to win WCC Player of the Year that same season).

“Once he started understanding to get deeper post touches, he was playing at an All-American level,” former Gonzaga All-American Adam Morrison said of Ike. “I thought he was a legitimate candidate [to win] player of the year in the West Coast Conference.”

Now a year removed from rehabbing a foot injury, the 6-foot-9 post has a chance to hit the ground running as a senior in 2024-25, especially after finishing last season as one of the best low-post scorers in the country.

WCC NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR: CARLOS STEWART

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The newcomer of the year race will be an interesting one to watch all season long, as a majority of the over 40 transfer players who joined WCC schools this offseason are expected to shoulder some serious weight with their new teams right off the bat.

The pick for the 2024-24 WCC Newcomer of the Year isn’t really a “newcomer” — he spent his first two seasons of college at Santa Clara before a one-year stint close to home at LSU. Now back with the Broncos, Carlos Stewart has a chance at earning all-league honors again with another productive season under Sendek.

Stewart averaged 15.2 points, 2.4 rebounds and 1.8 steals in over 31 minutes per game when he was named to the All-WCC First Team in 2022-23, as Santa Clara finished 23-10 and 11-5 in league play, which was good enough for third place in the final league standings. Now he’ll team up with a potential NBA player in Bal, who returned to college for his senior year after going through the NBA Draft process this past summer. That combination in the backcourt should prove to be quite daunting for the rest of the WCC.

Other names to watch for the newcomer award include Washington State’s Cedric Coward and LMU’s MJ Amey Jr.

WCC COACH OF THE YEAR: MARK FEW

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Bringing back 10 players in this era of college basketball is no small feat. The transfer portal and NIL opportunities have made the offseason a never-ending cycle of movement across the sport. Yet while other coaches assembled their rosters from scratch, Mark Few brought back all but one player from his main rotation while still maintaining some flexibility for the portal.

“I think my team deserves a ton of credit for staying together,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said on Gonzaga Nation. "Wanting to play together, valuing Gonzaga, this whole experience, life with the school and here in Spokane. And just playing with each other and sticking together as opposed to putting their name in the portal to go see how much money they can make. They deserve a ton of credit for that because it’s very, very rare.”

Few deflects all the credit to his players for now, but if the Bulldogs finish atop the WCC standings as is expected, he’ll be in a position to earn his 14th WCC Coach of the Year award. Coincidentally, the last time he won the award was when the Zags went to the Final Four in 2021.

2024-25 ALL-WCC TEAM

Graham Ike (Sr., Gonzaga)
Ryan Nembhard (Sr., Gonzaga)
Michael Ajayi (Sr., Gonzaga)
Mitchell Saxen (Sr., Saint Mary’s)
Augustas Mariculionis (Sr., Saint Mary’s)
Adama Bal (Sr., Santa Clara)
Marcus Williams (Sr., San Francisco)
Carlos Stewart (Sr., Santa Clara)
Cedric Coward (Sr., Washington State)
MJ Amey Jr. (Sr., LMU)

2024-25 WCC PREDICTIONS

1. Gonzaga
2. Saint Mary’s
3. Santa Clara
4. San Francisco
5. Washington State
6. Loyola Marymount
7. Oregon State
8. Portland
9. Pacific
10. San Diego
11. Pepperdine