Gonzaga coach Mark Few weighs in on new-look West Coast Conference

Jun. 22—Change seems to be the only constant in college athletics these days and it’s not just limited to landscape-altering moves made by football-powered power conferences.

The West Coast Conference took significant steps by adding Washington State and Oregon State as affiliate members for the next two years and the Western Athletic Conference’s Grand Canyon and Seattle as full members beginning in the 2025-26 season.

The moves provide the WCC with stability as well as strength in numbers in case Gonzaga were to leave for another conference down the road. The Zags have had multiple conversations with the Big 12, but talks have cooled off with the conference expanding to 16 with four former Pac-12 schools on board for the upcoming season.

The WCC’s changing roster obviously impacts Gonzaga, particularly in terms of scheduling.

Eleven WCC teams will each play 18 conference games this season compared to 16 in recent seasons. Gonzaga will face San Diego (in Spokane) and Pacific (in Stockton, California) once and the other eight teams home and away. It’s unclear how many conference games will be on the schedule in 2025-26 when the WCC could have as many as 13 teams for one season.

“It’s certainly changed our nonleague,” Zags coach Mark Few said at a recent media availability. “We have a lot less nonleague games, which are very important to us. Now we’re going to play 18 league games, so that’s impacted our nonleague scheduling to a certain extent.

“It certainly throws some Northwest teams in, so our travel won’t be quite as bad.”

The 16-game conference slate was implemented following the 2018 season in hopes of elevating the WCC’s chances of earning multiple NCAA Tournament bids. For the top teams, playing 16 conference games erased a couple of games against foes with low NET rankings and opened up a pair of nonconference opportunities.

Gonzaga, which has dominated the WCC for decades, has leaned on challenging nonconference schedules to strengthen its tournament credentials and…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/gonzaga-coach-mark-few-weighs-020200145.html

Author : The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

Publish date : 2024-06-23 02:02:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.