There were plenty of impressive performances early in day one of the NCAA Tournament, but arguably none more so than 8-seed Gonzaga, which started the game on a 30-5 run and never looked back in a first-round win over 9-seed Georgia. After an up-and-down regular season, Mark Few's team entered the Big Dance with a ton of momentum after a run to the WCC Tournament title, and they show no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
This Zags team is big, burly and full of athletes, and now they're finally starting to live up to their considerable potential. Which means it's time to start looking ahead and wondering just how far these Bulldogs can go.
Who does Gonzaga play in the second round of the NCAA Tournament?
Gonzaga's reward for their big first-round win? A matchup with Houston, the top seed in the Midwest region and arguably the single orneriest team in the entire country. Kelvin Sampson's team, as always, boasts a ferocious defense, third in effective field-goal percentage and 16th in turnover rate per KenPom. But this year they've got an offense to match, with LJ Cryer, Milos Uzan and Emanuel Sharp forming one of the sweetest-shooting backcourts around.
How that backcourt will match up against a Zags team that boasts length up and down its lineup will be fascinating to watch. With Ryan Nembhard at the controls, Gonzaga turns it over very, very rarely, and can really bog you down on the other end (as Georgia can attest). Houston doesn't back down from anyone, but they have to feel like they got a bit of a raw deal here, drawing a top-10 team in most advanced ranking systems in the opening weekend of the tournament. And this is a Gonzaga program that knows how to go on deep runs in March.
When did Gonzaga last make the Sweet 16?
In fact, the last time the Zags reached the second weekend of the tourney was ... just last year, when they ran past 12-seed McNeese State and 4-seed Kansas to reach the Sweet 16. They would eventually come up short against Zach Edey and eventual national runners-up Purdue, but this is a program that knows how to win big games: Few has guided Gonzaga to at least the Sweet 16 in nine of the last 10 seasons, and he can make it 10 of 11 with a win on Saturday.