After a great and logistically challenging March Madness tipped off its final last night, the college hoops season ended with a thud. The 2 teams everyone thought were the 2 best teams all year long met in the final for what we all hoped and believed would be an epic showdown. Why? Because the 2 teams we all think should be in the final every year almost never make it the final every year. Upsets and buzzer beaters make every team mortal in the madness of hoops’ greatest month. This year, however, we all got what we hoped, except that Gonzaga didn’t deliver on Monday night
It was a great night for Baylor, an embarrassing one for the Zags, and in the world of sports, someone is to blame when we don’t get what we want. In college basketball, that someone is often the head coach. He is the one who recruits the players, coaches the team, and runs the show. If your team loses, the finger pointing is directed at that guy, and it’s already begun. Less than a few hours after Gonzaga’s 2nd title game loss without any title wins, the so-called experts are pointing an “I told you so” finger at Mark Few who due to a bad night is now the coach who will never win it all. He stinks. He’s terrible. He recruits the wrong kind of guys. He doesn’t schedule the right teams. His team is in a soft conference. He’ll never win it all.
That last part may be true. Mark Few may never win it all, until he actually does. Steve Young, Peyton Manning, and John Elway in football were once labeled as guys who would never win it all. The same “experts” said Lebron would never win it all, and now he’s done it with 3 teams. Saying this guy or that guy will never win it all is a lazy and bullshit argument to diminish a great athlete or coach who didn’t get to the finish line.
In college basketball: Tom Izzo, Al McGuire, Jim Valvano, John Thompson, Lute Olsen, Jim Boeheim, John Calipari, and Nolan Richardson are all held in the sports pantheon of great coaches and each of them has won 1 title. Plus you could argue that many of these guys got lucky on championship night. Guess what, they are all great coaches because of the hundreds of games they won, not just for the one night they won it all. John Cheyney, Lefty Driesell, and Eddie Sutton were all great coaches too, and if Temple, Maryland, and Oklahoma State fans feel a little bummed they didn’t win a title with those men at the helm, I get it. However, you need to accept the fact they had damn good coaches leading their teams. Cheyney, Driesell, and Sutton are no less great coaches because they never put a gaudy ring on their finger. Mark Few won’t be any less of a man if he goes down the same path.
Since taking over the head job at Gonzaga at the end of the last century, Mark Few has won 630 games and lost 125. That’s a winning percentage of more than 83% for a little Jesuit college tucked into the Pacific Northwest. That’s a better winning percentage than every other human who has walked the earthen and coached men’s D1 basketball. It's better than John Wooden, or Coach K, or Roy Williams who just road into the sunset dressed in Carolina blue. It's better than Dean Smith, and Adolph Rupp, and Tark the Shark. Has Mark Few won all those games in the toughest college basketball conference in the country? No. Would he have won all of those games if Gonzaga was in the ACC, SEC, Big 10, or other “power” conference? Probably not. Instead, he’s done it in place called Gonzaga, a place none of us heard of before he took over the team.
Prior to Few, the Zags made the tournament twice under all of their previous coaches. Few built Gonzaga into a national presence that makes the tournament every single year. He could have left for the bigger money and the brighter lights any time he wanted. Heck, he still might at some point. His salary and his location would be his choice to make, but he is happy at Gonzaga, and what he has done is astounding. This level of repetitive success doesn’t happen at any of the Loyolas. It doesn’t happen at Creighton. It doesn’t happen at Utah State. It doesn’t happen at Lehigh, and it doesn’t happen at countless other schools that try build their programs into a national name. Few has done all of this hidden away in Spokane, Washington, and he seems content to stay right there.
Next fall the basketballs will be bouncing again across the nation. The preseason polls will be debated. The new crop of can’t miss freshman will get their turn in the national spotlight, and the pressure will be thrown onto Baylor, UCLA, and a few other teams that are can’t miss picks for next year’s Final Four. Gonzaga’s name will be in there somewhere, and you can thank Mark Few for making that happen yet again. Keep dismissing him if you wish. I’ll be rooting for him.