Trio of Gonzaga basketball players among favorites to win 2025 Wooden Award

Khalif Battle, Ryan Nembhard and Graham Ike are among the top 15 players with the best odds at winning the 2024-25 Wooden Award according to DraftKings

Photo by Erik Smith, Myk Crawford

A trio of Gonzaga men’s basketball players are among the early favorites to win the 2024-25 Wooden Award, according to preseason betting odds from DraftKings Sportsbook.

Khalif Battle, a grad transfer from Arkansas, has the shortest odds of his teammates at +3500, which is tied with Baylor’s five-star freshman VJ Edgecombe for the eighth-shortest odds to win the prestigious award. Nembhard, fresh off a historic first season with the Zags, is listed at +4000 odds to win the award followed by Ike at +4500 odds.

A pair of All-Americans lead the pack early, as Kansas’ Hunter Dickinson and North Carolina’s RJ Davis are the current favorites to take home the Wooden Award at +800 odds. Duke’s highly touted freshman Cooper Flagg sits at +1200 odds to capture the honor, which hasn’t gone to a freshman since Zion Williamson in 2019.

Here are the top 15 betting candidates to win the 2024-24 Wooden Award:
* Hunter Dickinson (Kansas) +800
* RJ Davis (North Carolina) +800
* Cooper Flagg (Duke) +1200
* Mark Sears (Alabama) +1400
* AJ Storr (Kansas) +1800
* LJ Cryer (Houston) +2000
* Johnell Davis (Arkansas) +3000
* Khalif Battle (Gonzaga) +3500
* VJ Edgecombe (Baylor) +3500
* Liam McNeeley (UConn) +4000
* Zeke Mayo (Kansas) +4000
* Tyrese Proctor (Duke) +4000
* Ryan Nembhard (Gonzaga) +4000
* Grant Nelson (Alabama) +4500
* Graham Ike (Gonzaga) +4500

Battle comes to Spokane after an electric end to the 2023-24 season with the Razorbacks, as he averaged 29.6 points over his final seven games. The New Jersey was effective at applying foul pressure with 186 free-throw attempts, the second-most in the SEC (for reference Ike led Gonzaga with 134 attempts last season). A career 35.3% 3-point shooter, Battle’s ability to flat out score could add a dynamic pop to Mark Few’s offense.

Battle, who’ll be the first player in program history to wear No. 99, also brings a lot of experience — over 1,400 minutes across his five-year career that started in Butler, then three seasons at Temple before a one-year stop in Arkansas.

“I feel like I’ve been in every situation possible,” Battle said. “Now that I’m the older guy with experience, I don’t think any environment or anything else can deter what I bring to the team.”

Nembhard and Ike — two coveted transfers in the 2023 offseason — look to build off the chemistry they developed down the latter half of their first season together. The pair of All-WCC players spearheaded the Bulldogs down the final eight weeks of the season with 15 wins in their final 18 games, as Nembhard set the program record for assists in a season while Ike paced the team in scoring and rebounding.

With Nembhard and Ike clicking, Gonzaga's offense ranked in the top five in the country in efficiency during the month of March. As Battle, Michael Ajayi and Emmanuel Innocenti join the ranks, Bart Torvik projects the Bulldogs will start the season No. 1 in offensive efficiency in its 2024-25 projections.

Major U.S. sportsbooks have Gonzaga listed at +2000 odds or better to win the program’s first national championship in 2025, with the best value at +1200 (Bally Sports and BetRivers). Back-to-back champion UConn is the consensus favorite across the board, as the Huskies reloaded with Dan Hurley back in Storrs, Connecticut, after turning down the Los Angeles Lakers.