Gonzaga's Growth Spurt

Gonzaga University and it's men's basketball team have been referred to as "Guard U" and "Tiny Gonzaga". While both of those terms are nice, do they really apply anymore?

It is true that many of the guards who have played for Gonzaga have been great. There has been a nearly uninterrupted streak of these guards, starting in the early 1980s when Gonzaga had John Stockton, the greatest point guard to ever play basketball, to the present day with John's son David playing behind Kevin Pangos and Gary Bell Jr.

The 2013 NBA Summer League wrapped up a few weeks ago. Five Gonzaga products participated none of which stand less than 6'8" tall. Of the five only Micah Downs can be called a guard, but he's normally classified as a small forward.

On July 19th, the University of Kentucky's Kyle Wiltjer announced that he would be transferring to Gonzaga. The 6'10" junior big man out of Portland's Jesuit High School is also a Canadian citizen. He referenced a plan brought to prominance by fellow Canadian, and Zag, Kelly Olynyk. In an extended tweet announcing his decision, Wiltjer said "I feel like in my basketball career I'm facing a make it or break it moment and the primary factor in this decision is transforming my body. I'm choosing to transfer to Gonzaga because i feel they have a proven plan in place to help develop players similar to me, which has seen great results."

This is not the same Gonzaga that burst onto the national scene in the 1999 NCAA Tournament.


Those Zags, and nearly every other mid-major school to successfully compete with the big time programs of the sport, won with sharpshooting guards who could knock down threes at a blistering rate.

In the '99 tournament during the Zags' round of 64 victory over Minnesota the team put up 21 threes and connected on nine of them. 27 of the Zags' 75 points came from behind the arc. In the next game, against Stanford, the Zags connected on eleven of twenty threes. Then, against Florida in the Sweet Sixteen the Zags made 54.5% of shots from deep, scoring 36 of their 73 points from behind the arc.

The three point line allows the little guy to play with the big guy. Just ask last year's Zags about that Wichita State team that hit 14 of 28 threes.

Gonzaga still boasts great guards and three point shooters, but the program is no longer reliant on them. There has been a high level of success sustained for so long that big name big men are willing to play in Spokane. Josh Heytvelt, one of the Zags in this year's Summer League, passed up on big-city Seattle and the University of Washington in favor of Gonzaga. Przemek Karnowski spurned Duke, Kansas, Cal and Marquette. Now, Kyle Wiltjer is jumping ship, favoring Gonzaga over the preseason #1 ranked team in the nation

Height is possibly the most obvious and defining trait of basketball players. Taller is typically better. It's no wonder then that the big schools in the power conferences get the taller players. Based upon last season's conference affiliations there were 86 schools in what I am considering "power conferences", the BCS conferences plus the Mountain West (which had a banner year last season until the NCAA Tournament came around). In total there were 347 Division I schools last season, of which 24% belonged to said power conferences.

The incredible Ken Pomeroy keeps track of height across all teams in Division I. Based upon his data I was able to determine that, while power conference teams account for under a quarter of total D1 teams, they accounted for 49 of the 100 tallest teams. Only three teams from power conferences rank in the bottom 100 in terms of height. Gonzaga ranked 55th last season.

Taking a look back at the big name players from Gonzaga over the past decade plus you'll see that guards dominated until recently. In the early 2000s guys like Richie Frahm, Dan Dickau and Blake Stepp had stints with NBA teams. The first Zag big man of the post-Elite Eight era to make an NBA or D-League team was Cory Violette who graduated in 2004. Now, nine years later, Gonzaga has a track record of sending big men to the NBA. Ronny Turiaf won a NBA Championship with the Miami Heat, Kelly Olynyk was a lottery pick and Elias Harris signed a two-year deal with the Lakers where he'll play along side second year man Robert Sacre. Josh Heytvelt and Micah Downs both played in the Summer League this year.

If you're a talented high school big man with aspirations of playing in the NBA, Gonzaga must look pretty good.

Long known for attracting great guards, the Zags now attract great bigs. If they could just figure out how to keep a steady flow of athletic wing players the Zags would have the total package.

This is just another step, albeit one taken in enormous shoes, for Gonzaga on the journey from giant killer to giant.