Gonzaga Bulldogs Mark Few Opens Up on Landscape of College Basketball

Gonzaga Bulldogs men's basketball head coach Mark Few opened up about the changes to the sport with NIL and transfer portal playing a big part.

Nov 28, 2024; Paradise Island, Bahamas, BHS; Gonzaga Bulldogs head coach Mark Few reacts during the second half against the Indiana Hoosiers at Imperial Arena at the Atlantis resort. / Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images

Under head coach Mark Few, the Gonzaga Bulldogs men’s basketball team has become a perennial powerhouse.

Regularly, they are among the best teams in the nation. He has led them to the NCAA Tournament every year that it has been held since he took over the job at the start of the 1999-2000 campaign.

In that time, the landscape of collegiate sports has changed a lot. The current obstacle that coaches and programs are dealing with is adapting to NIL as a form of free agency has begun in college.

Players regularly enter the transfer portal seeking as big of a payday as possible. That leads to a lot of turnovers on rosters from year to year, as continuity is difficult to maintain if a program doesn’t have the funds to retain star players.

Greg Heister, who hosts The Mark Few Show and is the Gonzaga play-by-play broadcaster, asked the head coach during a recent episode how those two aspects, NIL and transfer portal, have changed not only college basketball but college football as well.

“It most definitely does,” Few affirmed, via SWX Local Sports. “What you’re seeing on all these rosters in football and basketball is fifth and, because of the silly COVID rules, even sixth-year players. So, I mean, you’re playing against some really, really older, experienced players that know how to play.”

Experience is something that can level the playing field for schools that aren’t landing the top high school recruits. 

An 18-year-old kid fresh out of high school, no matter how talented, is going to have some struggles facing off against someone who could be 4-6 years older than them who has matured and grown into their body.

Alas, the pressure to succeed never goes away regardless of the circumstances. That is part of the reason why Few is an advocate to get rid of the preseason polls given the current landscape of college basketball.

“I wish we wouldn’t do preseason polls,” Few said. “It’s ridiculous how everybody gets so worked up. Teams we don’t even know—especially now with the transfers—we don’t know who’s going to gel, who really is good and who isn’t. It takes a while for all of that to shake out, literally until the first of the year.”

His Bulldogs have survived a very tough slate of games in the early going, as they are 7-1. Their only loss is in overtime to the West Virginia Mountaineers in the Bad Boy Mowers Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas.

Gonzaga has also played against the Baylor Bears, Arizona State Sun Devils, San Diego State Aztecs and Indiana Hoosiers to this point. They have a massive matchup against Kentucky and the two-time defending national champion UConn Huskies looming.

“Some of us went out and played really, really good schedules,” Few said. “Nobody’s going to make it through this thing undefeated, and there’s probably going to be a handful of losses on everybody’s schedule because of that parity we talked about.”

UConn suffered three losses in a row at the Maui Invitational. The Arizona Wildcats have gone on the road to face the Wisconsin Badgers, hosted the Duke Blue Devils and were in the Battle 4 Atlantis field as well and are 3-4.

Both teams were in the top 10 entering the season abut have sunk. The Huskies are No. 25 while the Wildcats are no longer ranked.

That plays into what Few said about preseason rankings, as both programs are perceived to be in danger when they are just working through some early-season struggles with new faces and lineup combinations.