Gonzaga's Ryan Nembhard rises to the challenge his senior year: 'It was time for a big jump'

A look at how the Bulldogs senior guard has been the team's caped crusader to start the 2024-25 season

Gonzaga senior guard Ryan Nembhard. / Photo by Erik Smith, Myk Crawford

Gonzaga men’s basketball assistant coach Stephen Gentry met with Ryan Nembhard over the offseason to discuss each other’s expectations for the senior guard heading into the 2024-25 season. They agreed that Nembhard’s final year of college hoops couldn’t just be any regular jump from his junior year, but it had to be a big one.

Gentry, now in his fourth year back with the program, has been Nembhard’s go-to guy since he transferred in from Creighton. When he rejoined Mark Few’s staff in 2021 after two seasons with Brad Underwood in Illinois, Gentry worked closely with Ryan’s older brother, Andrew, for the two seasons he was in Spokane. It likely didn’t take long for the former Gonzaga walk-on to notice the similarities the brothers share, most notably that contagious Nembhard charm.

“We just spend a ton of time together,” Gentry said. “I mean it’s a daily thing, I know that’s cliche but we watch his film after every game. I clip up his stuff personally, we watch that. So we have a ton of awesome film sessions. We bounce ideas off of each other and pick each other’s brains. I think what makes it really cool with Ryan, like it’s a partnership. He’s sending me clips, I’m sending him clips; ‘Hey, what about this? What about that?’ 

Gonzaga senior guard Ryan Nembhard. / Photo by Erik Smith, Myk Crawford

The relationship between the assistant coach and the player grew over the summer. The two spent hours in the film room studying clips of New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, paying close attention to how the 6-foot-2 Villanova product creates foul pressure with angles and his arms. Brunson was considered by some to be too small to play the position at the pro level when he came out of college, but obviously, height didn’t stop him from winning two national championships with the Wildcats, nor earning All-NBA Second Team honors last season. That’s partly because of his ability to create foul pressure.

Nembhard utilized some aspects of Brunson’s blueprint to retool parts of his own game, which included playing more grounded and on two feet, rather than settling for the one-legged floaters he occasionally leaned on early in his college career. Nembhard started to play with more control toward the end of his junior season as he became more accustomed to his teammates’ style of play and Gonzaga’s system. The ensuing months following the loss to Purdue in the Sweet 16 were spent turning those flashes into habits.

“We really emphasized in the offseason, with just his ball handling, just tightening that up,” Gentry said. “And he’s getting fouled at a high, high rate. That was another big focus of our offseason workouts in terms of being elusive with his handle but also being a foul magnet and getting some easy ones at the free throw line.”

After a lot of long summer days spent in the practice facility and doing tape study, Gentry had one last little piece of motivation for his stud floor general. The way he saw it, Nembhard had put in the all work behind the scenes to warrant the “big jump” they had talked about. 

“I actually showed him clips from The Dark Knight Rises,” Gentry said. “The theme was rise, like it’s time to rise; you’ve done all the work in the shadows but now it’s time to rise and it’s time to show it. And so I constantly remind him of that theme that he put in the work, and now it’s just time to show it.”

So far, Nembhard’s final act in Spokane has been as triumphant as Batman’s return to Gotham in the final act of Christopher Nolan’s epic trilogy. Through five games, Nembhard’s dished out 47 assists — tied for the most in the country — while committing just six turnovers, which translates to the 11th-best in the country assist-to-turnover ratio in the sport (7.83). He hasn’t been afraid to get his hands dirty either — Nembhard’s drawing 4.1 fouls per 40 minutes (up from 3.1 last season) and has a 53.9% free throw rate, which is nearly double his rate from 2023-24 (27.8%).

Unlike the masked vigilante, though, Nembhard isn’t doing all the work alone. His Justice League consists of big-man duo Graham Ike and Braden Huff, who’ve helped spearhead Gonzaga’s attack on offense in the pick-and-roll game, as well as high-flying guard Khalif Battle (14.4 points) and the sneaky sharpshooting senior Nolan Hickman (11.2 points).

Gonzaga senior Ryan Nembhard with a no-look pass to Michael Ajayi. / Photo by Erik Smith, Myk Crawford

“If we get him open, he’ll get us open at the end of the day,” Ike said after Gonzaga’s 84-41 win over Long Beach State. “So we always appreciate him for what he does for us and the whole team."

Behind the calm, cool and focused demeanor he carries with him as he orchestrates Gonzaga’s offense, Nembhard masks a confident swagger that Gentry noted sort of runs in the family. Like when he flexed on the Viejas Arena crowd during the Zags’ 80-67 win at San Diego State.

“Gentry has a great mind for the game and we were working real hard this whole summer on everything,” Nembhard said. “And then just you know me being me, just playing my brand of basketball and being confident and doing whatever I need to do to help the team win.”

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