The Gonzaga Bulldogs will look quite a bit different this season
There’s never anything quite like the first time.
The first time we do anything it’s almost always uncomfortable, imperfect and a little bit messy, but it’s also usually the most memorable. The best first times grab hold of our imagination and don’t let go as we envision what it would be like to do that thing again, whatever it was.
To deliver an encore. Next time, a little bit better.
The 2017 NCAA Tournament will always be remembered for its first times. 2017 marked the first time that the Selection Committee gave a preview of Selection Sunday by revealing their current rankings for the top four seeds in February. It was also the first time the Ivy League determined its representative with a postseason tournament, the first time a 15-loss team earned an at-large bid and the first time the Northwestern Wildcats, the last “power conference” school to make the NCAA Tournament, went dancing.
2017 was also the year that college basketball’s best known Cinderella made it to the ball for the first time. Nearly 20 seasons after originally crashing the party, the Gonzaga Bulldogs made their first Final Four.
Now, all the Bulldogs have to do is hit the stage for an encore to the best season in program history.
Easy.
Oh, and they’ll have to do it without the freshman lottery pick who turned pro this summer and last season’s three leading scorers.
Gonzaga won’t look entirely different for 2017-18, though. Former Missouri transfer Johnathan Williams returns for his senior season after testing the 2017 NBA Draft waters. Williams averaged 16.7 points and 10.6 rebounds per 40 minutes as a junior and his 19.5 percent usage rate is tops among returning players who featured in rotation minutes last season.
Williams is also the lone returning post presence on a roster that dedicated itself to running offense through the low block. 18.9 percent of Gonzaga’s offensive possessions ended in a post up in 2016-17, the third highest mark in Division I, per Synergy. Although the departed Przemek Karnowski and Zach Collins featured more prominently there, Williams was no slouch. He averaged 1.040 points per possession (90th percentile) on the 101 post-up possessions that made up over a quarter of his total offense, per Synergy.
That was a change of pace for Williams who utilized a much higher percentage of his possessions on jump shots during his time back in Columbia, MO. The move to Spokane was significant as his field goal percentage experienced a near 20-point bump — from 41.2 percent as a sophomore to 59.2 as a junior — with the added experience and change of scenery. This season, it will be critical to keep an eye on the balance Williams and the Bulldogs strike between his presence on the low block and his prior affinity for jumpers.
The reason that relationship might prove to be important lies with the players who figure to most prominently fill the void left by the departures of Collins, Karnowski and point guard Nigel Williams-Goss.
It all starts with the lead guard spot where junior Josh Perkins is likely to return to a starting role after holding down the position as a redshirt freshman. With Perkins at the helm, the first question will be whether or not head coach Mark Few will trust him to get out and run like the 2016-17 Bulldogs did behind Williams-Goss. Transition opportunities accounted for 6.6 percent more of Gonzaga’s offensive possessions last season when compared to 2015-16, per Synergy, and the team’s average offensive possession length dropped by nearly two seconds, per KenPom. The Bulldogs were dangerous with Williams-Goss barreling towards the rim while Perkins and the now graduated Jordan Mathews threatened from the 3-point line. Can they repeat that feat with new pieces this season?
The second question relates to the halfcourt where the absence of Collins and Karnowski will be felt as much as the absence of Williams-Goss. Although the differences are somewhat subtle, Gonzaga redistributed some of the possessions it devoted to spot ups and scoring out of the pick-and-roll in 2015-16 to those two big men in the post last season. Remember, Karnowski played just five games of Perkins’ freshman campaign as the Bulldogs primarily used a frontcourt of Domantas Sabonis and Kyle Wiltjer, a floor-spacing forward who led the team in scoring.
2017-18 Gonzaga will likely match up stylistically much closer to the 2015-16 version with rising sophomore Killian Tillie playing the role of floor spacer in the frontcourt. Tillie isn’t Wiltjer, to be sure, but he is definitely more of a finesse big man than either Collins or Karnowski. The 6-foot-10 Frenchman shot it well in a very small number of attempts last season and the Bulldogs will hope that he can bend the floor in pick-and-pops to open up space for Williams to work down low and Perkins to attack the basket.
The Williams-Tillie frontcourt will also be tasked with picking up the slack defensively. The stylistic differences on offense will be important to monitor for the Bulldogs, but the big change between 2015-16 Gonzaga and 2016-17 Gonzaga came on the defensive end. Last season, the team ranked No. 1 in adjusted defensive efficiency, per KenPom, in large part because of their ability to patrol the interior. Opponents shot just 40.0 percent on 2s against the Zags. The presence of the big-bodied Karnowski and the athletic Collins were a major reason why. While Williams is a solid, but unspectacular rim protector, Tillie hasn’t shown much promise as a shot blocker yet. It’s something that could cause Few to change his defensive scheme even more than his offense this season.
Given all of the turnover, the 2017-18 Gonzaga team won’t enter the season as a favorite to re-appear in the Final Four next March, but Few has plenty of talent to work with. Williams has established himself as a legitimate and versatile forward threat, Perkins is a capable point guard and Tillie has plenty of untapped potential.
The Bulldogs have a history of maximizing the talent on their roster. During Perkins’ freshman season, they made the Sweet Sixteen as a No. 11 seed and prior to that, Few had taken them to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament five other seasons. So, if you look up in March and see Gonzaga making a run even with this rebuilt roster?
Don’t be surprised. It wouldn’t be the first time.