Gonzaga states case for No. 1 ranking in Top 25 college basketball polls

The Bulldogs beat the No. 8 team in the country by 38 points to tip off the college basketball season

Photo by Erik Smith, Myk Crawford

Those who stayed up late Monday night to watch No. 6 Gonzaga and No. 8 Baylor clash in a premiere season-opening matchup witnessed a signature win for Mark Few and company, as the Bulldogs bullied the Bears, 101-63, at the Spokane Arena.

The fans who didn’t stay up for the 8:30 p.m. tip-off had quite the surprise waiting for them on their phones the next morning. The 38-point victory marked the largest margin for any team in a season opener against a top 10 opponent in the history of the Associated Press Top 25 poll. Gonzaga never trailed after the first 27 seconds en route to handing Baylor its worst loss in the Scott Drew era.

What a way to start the college basketball season.

“This was a message sent,” CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander said of the Zags’ win on a podcast Tuesday. “Gonzaga looked like we were checking in on a home game against Portland on January 20. They were humming, absolutely humming.”

The Bulldogs averaged 1.44 points per possession Monday, indeed proof that Few’s well-oiled machine was in midseason form against a Bears team still building continuity among its newcomers. Gonzaga shot 57.1% from the field and drained 13 3-pointers in the process, while redshirt sophomore Braden Huff (14 points) spearheaded a 42-point effort by the team’s second unit.

“We put 100 up today on a great team and kind of a scary team,” Few said. “I mean, they're really, really, really athletic and can do a lot of different things on the defensive end, mix it up. And I thought it was a game where they were switching every screen, which sometimes takes a little rhythm out of you.”

Along with the offensive explosion, Few's bunch played as one cohesive unit on the defensive end of the floor, plugging gaps and sprinting to contest 3-point shots.

"I thought they did a far better job than we did obviously against USC of leveling guys off and helping each other," Few said. "We were in gaps, we made some nice plays off the ball. So they did an awesome job of taking the message after that exhibition and executing it, because you can't guard those guys one-on-one, we really had to be in our gap defense.”

While the Bears are still trying to build continuity after losing four of their five starters from last season, as Scott Drew noted in his postgame press conference, they certainly aren’t short on talent. Baylor’s roster of star-studded freshman and experienced transfers ranked as the  10th-strongest roster in the country according to EvanMiya.com’s 2024 projections. It’s no wonder that despite losing more players to the NBA, the Bears were picked to finish third in the mighty Big 12 conference. 

But Monday was Gonzaga’s night. Even on a day in college basketball that typically lacks juice, especially when there's a presidential election going on, the Zags' historic performance didn't go unnoticed by the rest of the college basketball world. Through the first 198 games of the season they moved up to No. 2 on KenPom.com, up from where it started the season at No. 9.

If Gonzaga can take advantage of its next opportunity when it faces another Big 12 team in Arizona State (Nov. 10, 2 p.m.), it might not be long until the Bulldogs are up to the No. 1 spot. But that's not for them to worry about.

"I think we understand this is only game one,” Huff said. “So there's a long way to go. We're not where we need to be quite yet. But it was a good first game. I think everyone who played made a big impact and we're really, really happy with how we play tonight, but we also understand  it's November right now, and we're playing for March.”

MORE GONZAGA NEWS & ANALYSIS

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