NCAA Tournament: Gonzaga and the Path to the Final Four
By Ben Renner
The NCAA Tournament brackets are finally out and Gonzaga is a number-one seed. Can they make their first-ever Final Four this year? Let’s break down their bracket and find a path for them.
The NCAA Tournament starts tomorrow with the “First Four.” After teams like USC and Providence battle each other for the right to join the Big Dance, the first round officially begins on Thursday. Gonzaga, with its expected number-one seed privilege, will take on South Dakota State at 2pm on TBS.
Gonzaga has dominion of the West bracket. If the Bulldogs want to reach San Jose for a chance to reach their first Final Four ever, they’ll likely (assuming no upsets, which isn’t the best policy for filling out a bracket) have to get through Arizona, a battle-hardened Pac-12 team that has been playing squads like Oregon and UCLA all season.
If head coach Mark Few and his one-loss team ride through the NCAA Tournament this year to the Final Four, they have to prove that their soft in-conference schedule didn’t dull their excellent offensive and defensive performance all year. With the leadership of Nigel Williams-Goss and the size of their bigs like Zach Collins and Przemek Karnowski, they have the players to hang with any team in the country.
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Gonzaga got a break this time around for their latest NCAA Tournament run. There are some fearsome number-two seeds in this year’s March Madness bracket. While Arizona is obviously no picnic, the Zags avoided Duke and one-and-done central Kentucky, both dangerous in postseason play with the traditions and coaching they have.
A team to look out for in the Sweet Sixteen is West Virginia, a team that statistically ranks among the leaders in the nation in efficiency. The Mountaineers are perhaps under-seeded at four and seem to match up well with all the teams around them in the first rounds.
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Also, watch out for those pesky St. Mary’s Gaels, who lurk on the other side of the West bracket. It’s unlikely Gonzaga will meet their fierce WCC rivals for the fourth time this season, but it could happen. Wouldn’t that be fun?