Kyle Wiltjer was lights out for the Zags in the WCC Tournament. (Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports)
By Theo Lawson
LAS VEGAS — If this is the best group of Gonzaga basketball players Mark Few has ever assembled, the squad most likely to carve out a deep NCAA Tournament run, well, the Bulldogs really haven’t done anything to prove it — at least not just yet.
But the next three or four weeks will likely decide if that’s the case.
What the Zags have done up to this point, though, is win the West Coast Conference regular season title, escape a thorny non-conference schedule with just one loss (to then No. 3 Arizona) and snip down the nets in Las Vegas, where Tuesday evening, Gonzaga thumped BYU 91-75 for the WCC Tournament championship.
It’s more or less what every successful GU team has done, including the best of the best — i.e. Sweet Sixteen teams of 2000, ’01, ’06 and ’09 and the Elite Eight team of ’99 which is, for now, the le crème de la crème as far as Gonzaga teams go.
The 2014-15 Zags hope to change that however.
“This is a group that loves each other and they want to keep playing together,” Few said after Tuesday’s conference title game.
It was on full display at the Orleans Arena, where six Gonzaga players scored in double digits before the Bulldogs left BYU in the dust one week after the Cougars had upset them in Spokane.
Kyle Wiltjer had 18, Kevin Pangos had 16, Gary Bell Jr. and Domantas Sabonis had 15, Przemek Karnowski had 12 and Kyle Dranginis, scoring in double figures for just the second time this season, tacked on 10 more.
Best? Possibly. Deepest? It sure seems so.
Pangos and Bell Jr. walked off the Orleans floor for the last time, notching the third WCC tournament title of their respective careers. The senior duo also sits atop Gonzaga’s all-time wins list.
Both have been to the NCAA tournament, but neither has sniffed the Final Four, let alone the Elite Eight.
What makes these Zags special is that they have someone who has. And it’s probably why Wiltjer was so nonchalant after Tuesday’s WCC feat. Named the tournament’s most valuable player, the former Kentucky national champion was caught sending Snapchat videos during the post-game press conference.
“I’m making a ‘My Story, you’re in it,’” Wiltjer responded after being called out by the Zags’ head coach.
“I try to teach my kids,” Few joked.
There isn’t much he can teach Wiltjer about the ins and outs, the do’s and dont’s, of the next few weeks.
Wiltjer averaged five points per game and almost two rebounds for John Calipari’s 2011-12 national championship team, advancing further into the NCAA Tournament as a true freshman than Few has as a 16-year coaching vet.
He’s shared that experience with teammates — Pangos and Bell Jr. included — who haven’t been quite as fortunate in the month of March.
“I keep telling the guys that just like that 2012 team, before the tournament we were anxious, like ‘Hey, we could do something special,’” Wiltjer said. “We have the same thoughts with this team.
“We have all the pieces.”
And piecing together an unprecedented late-March, early-April run will separate this Gonzaga team from the 16 that preceded it.
Then Wiltjer and his teammates will really have something worthy of a Snapchat story.
