What Mark Few said before Gonzaga-Purdue NCAA Tournament matchup

Few met with the media as the Bulldogs prepare for 9th consecutive Sweet 16 appearance

Gonzaga Bulldogs head coach Mark Few speaks with the media Thursday in Detroit. / Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

The Gonzaga Bulldogs are well aware of the matchup problem Zach Edey poses based on the fact they’ve already seen the 7-foot-4 All-American earlier this season at the Maui Invitational.

Still, there’s a fine line Mark Few and the Gonzaga coaching staff walk when they look back at that 73-63 loss to the Purdue Boilermakers in trying to prepare for the rematch on Friday in the Sweet 16. That game from Nov. 25 was just the third time Few’s newly formed squad had played together in a competitive environment. A lot has changed since then; newcomers are now entrenched in their roles while the few returners have adjusted to their new responsibilities. 

Now, Gonzaga went through the fire and came out on the other side for the program’s ninth-straight NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 appearance.

“It’s just awesome to be back to another Sweet 16,” Few said on Thursday. “As I told the guys, it's just a great week. It's such a fun week to advance and have a little bit of time to hang out and enjoy each other. I think that's really important with this group because this group, I've had some really, really close teams, but this group is as close as any of them.”

Here’s more of what Few had to say at Thursday's media availability in Detroit.

On trying to defend Zach Edey:

 “I’ve been doing this a long, long, long time, and you just have never dealt with something like Zach, that size but yet that good of a player. He's really developed his touch. His ball goes in now. It's very soft. Great passer if you choose to double-team him. Shoots free throws really, really well. Obviously at that size, really impacts the game on the defensive end.”

“So he's an entity that you just don't see. The positive is we have seen him. We played him in the PK-85 early a year ago. Like I mentioned, we played him in the Maui tournament at Thanksgiving. At least we've felt his size and his strength, and also played against a really, really good Purdue team. So if anything we can draw on some of those experiences.”

On what’s changed since first matchup with Purdue in November:

“I think we're both different. I know in our case we're vastly different. We had some -- whew, we had some pretty rough patches there early, if you watched some of our practices and even some of our early games.”

“We actually played really, really hard against them the first time. We just turned the ball over too much and shot way, way, way too many threes. So I think hopefully we'll get that cleared up. We're sharing it better, and I think we're much more purposeful on the offensive end. But they're better too, so I think that will be the biggest challenge there.”

On adapting to the changing landscapes of college athletics:

“Gosh, that's been a bigger challenge than probably getting these dudes this year to play, get back playing in a good way. You know what, it's kind of been easy in some ways because it's just Gonzaga, and it's how we operate, and it's who we recruit and who we always end up with. The guys we end up with kind of end up belonging there. The guys we missed out on are frustrating at the time, but you end up, yeah, maybe he didn't belong here.

"I always tell the staff it's like that old Garth Brooks song, Thank God for Unanswered Prayers. You need to listen to the words of that sometime. It's pretty good.”

“Anyway, it's getting hard. It's getting really, really hard. We could spend three hours up here, Matt [Painter] and I both, because we've tried and tried. The one thing I would say is they need to start listening to us coaches, especially those of us coaches who have been around a long time and have tried to do it the right way, and get us out of this bureaucratic stranglehold where nothing gets done and the stuff just crushes us when it hits, all these changes, and we could all see it coming.”

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