In 2021, I had an urgent message for Slate readers ahead of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament: The Gonzaga Bulldogs were on the verge of becoming the best team ever. It did not work out, as Gonzaga fell to Baylor in the national championship game. In 2022, I was undeterred. “Just pick Gonzaga,” I urged. “Their time has come. And if it has not, I will rewrite this argument every March until it does.” Once again their time did not come. Gonzaga lost even earlier, in the Sweet 16. In 2023, I stayed strong. The headline read, “Just Pick Gonzaga Again. No, Really!” The Bulldogs were peaking at the right time and seemed as good a bet as anybody, but they fell to eventual champion Connecticut in the Elite Eight.
In 2024, it would be easy to drop the obsession. Gonzaga didn’t win the title with its best team ever in 2021, and the past few years, it has fallen earlier in March Madness. And unlike each of those recent Gonzaga outfits, the 2024 team did not even win the West Coast Conference that the program customarily dominates. Glory appears farther away than ever for a team that has made the NCAA Tournament 25 years in a row while shifting from mid-major underdog to big-time juggernaut to sad disappointment.
But no. As is so often the case in men’s hoops, the 2024 tournament does not have a dominant team that looks poised to choke the life out of the competition. The 68-team bracket is wide open, and Gonzaga, as the No. 5 seed in the Midwest region, has a legitimate chance to break through the noise. It’s again time to drill into a piece of ground that has yet to yield oil but eventually should: In 2024, pick Gonzaga.
Before picking Gonzaga, you will need to eliminate the other 67 teams one by one. Fortunately, finding a fatal flaw in a college basketball team is as easy as finding one in a Tinder match. Most men’s college seasons do not feature one dominant team that towers over the rest through the regular season and conference tournaments. The last was arguably 2021 Gonzaga. True to the sport’s form, the No. 1 seeds in the 2024 bracket are all easy enough to dismiss if you have an agenda to push.
The top overall seed is defending national champion UConn. The Huskies are great, but their style, historically, is to win the title as a bit of a Cinderella, or at least from the periphery, not as the top dogs. (In 2015, they won it all as a No. 7 seed, last year as a No. 4.) Their offense is gangbusters and they really should win the tournament, but their East region seems much harder than UConn deserves as the top seed. Maybe more pressingly, repeating is just hard, and UConn has had to play a lot of extra games over the past two seasons. No team has repeated since Florida in 2007, a long time ago. Let’s hand-wave Dan Hurley’s team away even though they have by far the simplest on-paper case to win the thing again.
The other No. 1s have real issues, though. Houston plays with voracious intensity at all times under coach Kelvin Sampson, but they just got run out of the building by Iowa State in the Big 12 championship game, not unlike the time Sampson’s team met unholy destruction against Baylor in 2021’s Final Four. When guard Jamal Shead has a down offensive night, the Cougars are vulnerable. North Carolina is somewhat the reverse; when star guard RJ Davis had ineffective scoring games against Duke, his teammates picked him up and the Tar Heels swept the Blue Devils anyway. But UNC is relatively undersized and also leans heavily on a freshman point guard, Elliott Cadeau. He’s good. He’s also a freshman, and it’s March.
The most captivating team might be Purdue, the other No. 1 seed. The Boilermakers hope to mount a vengeance tour after taking literally the worst loss in the history of college basketball in last year’s tournament. The good news: Matt Painter addressed his team’s fatal shortcoming in that loss to 16th-seed Fairleigh Dickinson. The tiny FDU players simply swarmed all over 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey, the best player in the country, and made Purdue’s other guys hit shots from some distance. They couldn’t, and FDU got some epic luck and pulled the upset. Last year’s Purdue team was very bad at 3-point shooting, but this year’s is amazing at it. They make 41 percent of their triples, second-best in Division I, and move the ball around in a beautiful symphony. They could still lose, though. After all, Painter’s teams always have.
The No. 2 seeds are a mishmash themselves—all very good, all with some issues. Iowa State is the best defensive team in the land but has significant trouble getting the ball to go through the hoop. Arizona is well-rounded but lost two of three entering the tournament. Tennessee has dropped two in a row heading into the event, and the Volunteers’ coach, Rick Barnes, is arguably the archetype of March underachievement. (Something has to give between Vols guard Dalton Knecht’s incredible basketball skills and Barnes’ historic ability to lose before the regional weekend.) Marquette went 0–3 against UConn and was barely competitive, which might say something about the Golden Eagles’ ability to survive in the later rounds.
What do you see in that catalog of No. 1 and 2 seeds that you love? Other than UConn, Purdue, and maybe Houston, all of whom will be such popular bracket picks that you’ll barely be gaining a competitive advantage against your friends if they win? I certainly don’t see it. Which is why I’m called home—to someone off the radar, someone consistent. Someone like Gonzaga.
Gonzaga’s cascading disappointments late in March Madness obscure an important point: The team is usually around for a while. The Bulldogs have made at least the Sweet 16 eight times in a row, getting to within one and four victories of taking the whole enchilada. For starters, this year’s team has a solid chance to get back within striking distance. The only higher seed in the Zags’ opening-weekend quadrant is No. 4 Kansas. The Jayhawks are America’s most consistent program, but they’re subdued this season as legendary coach Bill Self has put out his least effective offense in 21 seasons at KU. Gonzaga has a better Ken Pomeroy efficiency margin and NET rating than the higher-seeded Jayhawks and could be a slim favorite if their anticipated matchup comes about in the second round. (First, Gonzaga must beat No. 12 McNeese State and Kansas must handle No. 13 Samford, both in Salt Lake City.)
If Gonzaga can return to its customary Sweet 16 spot, the team’s strengths could go a long way. The Zags do not have a world-beating freshman setting the world on fire, like center Chet Holmgren or guard Jalen Suggs in recent seasons. They do not have big man Drew Timme scoring a million points, because Timme finally, against all odds, ran out of eligibility following 2023’s tournament. But they otherwise look a lot like a typical team under coach Mark Few: They run an up-tempo offense, eschew 3-pointers in favor of working the ball inside, and have a nice mix of veterans, freshmen, transfers, and international players.
Leading scorer Graham Ike comes from Wyoming, following in the transfer-portal footsteps of many, many veterans Few has added to great effect over the years. On the other hand, forward Anton Watson is in his fifth year with the Zags. Guard Ryan Nembhard is a Few player in at least three ways: He’s Canadian, transferred in from Creighton, and is the little brother of a former Gonzaga player. Two freshmen, guard Dusty Stromer and center Braden Huff, are important pieces of the rotation.
It’s all typical Gonzaga business, right down to having played well enough at the end of the season to look pretty dangerous entering March. The Bulldogs lost the WCC title game to rival Saint Mary’s, which has become the closest thing to a foil. But before that, they were on a torrid late-season run, winning nine games in a row including one against Kentucky. In fact, Gonzaga has lost just one game in the calendar year to a team other than Saint Mary’s, and the Gaels are on a completely different side of the bracket. Gonzaga doesn’t have to worry about them unless both teams make the national championship. Those of us pushing a Gonzaga agenda will be content crossing that bridge when we come to it.
Bracket-picking is a contrarian’s game. You will very likely not win your competition by nailing the national champion from the first couple of seed lines. The road to glory goes through undervalued assets, and the fifth-seeded Bulldogs have traveled from unheralded to highly heralded to, finally, a middle-of-the-road potential contender that sits outside the elite group. In 2021, you should’ve picked the Zags because they were the best team, and the haters and losers were poised to doubt them more than usual because they did not respect their mid-major label. In 2022, you should’ve picked them because they remained the best team in the country and were due to get over the hump. In 2023, you should’ve picked them because they were rising like a hot stock. In 2024, you should pick them because you’ve come this far, everyone has flaws, and eventually, God will smile upon Spokane, Washington.
