By Jeff Faraudo
#WCChoops columnist | ARCHIVES
 
Bob Knight’s 1976 Indiana squad was the most recent team that achieved what top-ranked Gonzaga will resume chasing on Saturday — an undefeated NCAA championship season.
 
The Hoosiers (32-0) became the seventh team to achieve Division I perfection. John Wooden sculpted four of the others at UCLA — all of them exactly 30-0 — armed with the likes of Kareem Adbul-Jabbar and Bill Walton. North Carolina (32-0) pulled it off in 1957, outlasting Wilt Chamberlain and Kansas in a triple-overtime championship game.
 
Four teams since ‘76 have arrived at the NCAA tournament doorstep with perfect records. Larry Bird and Indiana State in 1979, UNLV in 1991, Wichita State in 2014 and Kentucky in 2015 all flirted with history but were denied once March Madness officially got under way.
 
If Mark Few's Zags (26-0) can do what those four failed to do they will create West Coast Conference bookends of perfection. That’s because San Francisco in 1956 became the first team to complete an unbeaten season with an NCAA title. 
 
Corey Kispert, Drew Timme, Jalen Suggs and the Zags bring a 30-game win streak to Indianapolis, but the defending champion Dons, powered by Bill Russell and K.C. Jones, carried a collegiate-record 51-game win streak into the ’56 NCAAs.
 
“For all intents and purposes,” wrote Jim Savage in The Encyclopedia of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, “the tournament competition was on two rungs in 1956 — there was San Francisco and there was everybody else.”
 
Whether Gonzaga takes its place alongside that USF team of 65 years ago remains to be seen. But the Zags have played at a different level than the rest of the country so far.
 
Ranked No. 1 in the AP Top-25 poll every week this season, the Zags collected all 60 first-place votes this week in the final rankings. They totaled 299 points in early-season wins over Iowa, Kansas and Virginia — the Nos. 2, 3 and 4 seeds below Gonzaga in the West region. And they have beaten their past 23 foes by double-digit margins.
 
Especially after the 12 months we’ve all just endured, man, this is going to be fun.
 
THE WCC IS EVERYWHERE: The WCC has eight postseason entries, including two each in the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments. With Gonzaga and BYU each qualifying two teams, the WCC will be represented by multiple entries in both NCAA brackets for the fifth time since 2012.
 
Here’s the lineup and opening-round assignments, starting with four men’s teams:
 
— No. 1 seed Gonzaga (26-0) will play Saturday at Indianapolis against the winner of Thursday’s First Four game between Norfolk State (16-7) and Appalachian State (17-11) at 6:20 p.m. PT (TBS). Notable: No. 1 seeds are 139-1 in the first round. With a win, the Zags would play the No. 8 Oklahoma vs. No. 9 Missouri winner on Monday.
 
— No. 6 seed BYU (20-6) plays Saturday at Indianapolis against the winner of Thursday’s First Four game between UCLA (17-9) and Michigan State (15-12). Tipoff is 6:40 p.m. (CBS). Notable: After throwing a serious scare into Gonzaga for a half in the WCC championship game, the Cougars climbed to a tie for No. 23 in the final AP Top-25 poll.
 
— In the NIT, Saint Mary’s (14-9) faces Western Kentucky (20-7) on Wednesday at Frisco, Texas. Tipoff is 6 p.m. PT (ESPN2). Notable: The Gaels must contend with 6-foot-11, 235-pound junior Chris Bassey, who averages 17.7 points and 11.5 rebounds, is tied for second nationally with 16 double-doubles and fourth in blocked shots at 3.15 per game.
 
— In the College Basketball Invitational, Pepperdine (12-12) plays Longwood (12-16) at Daytona Beach, Florida, on Monday at 2:30 p.m. PT. Notable: Three-time first-team All-WCC point guard Colbey Ross needs just one point to become the first Division I player to compile career totals of at least 2,200 points, 800 assists and 400 rebounds.
 
On the women’s side: 
 
— No. 5 seed Gonzaga (23-3) faces No. 12 Belmont (20-5) on Monday in a first-round game in the Mercado region at San Marcos, Texas. The game will tip at 1 p.m. PT (ESPN2). Notable: Belmont, riding a 10-game win streak and in the field for the fifth time in the past six tournaments, is led by freshman guard Destinee Wells, who was named MVP of the Ohio Valley Conference tournament after totaling 32 points, 7 assists, 4 steals in the title game.
 
— No. 11 seed BYU (18-5) takes on No. 6 Rutgers (14-4) in a 9 a.m. PT game (ESPNU) on Monday in the Mercado region at San Marcos. Notable: Rutgers’ C. Vivian Stringer, who has won 1,055 games in her 50 seasons as a college head coach, was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in the 2009 class that also included Michael Jordan, David Robinson and John Stockton.
 
— In the WNIT, San Francisco (15-10) battles Houston (16-7) on Friday at Fort Worth, Texas. Tipoff is 3 p.m. PT. Notable: Picked 10th in the WCC preseason coaches poll, the Dons won 10 of their past 12 games to secure their first postseason bid since 2016.
 
— In the Women’s Basketball Invitational, Portland (12-12) faces Abilene Christian (14-10) on Friday at 2 p.m. PT on the campus of Kentucky State University in Frankfort, Kentucky. Notable: All eight teams are guaranteed three games in the WBI. The Pilots, who won the WCC tournament title a year ago only to have the NCAAs canceled by the pandemic, are pursuing their first-ever postseason tournament victory after seven straight first-round defeats.
 
ZAGS DOMINATE AP ALL-AMERICA TEAMS: In the latest testimony to the respect Gonzaga’s season has earned, three Zags were among the top seven vote-getters for the Associated Press All-America teams.
 
Kispert, the senior forward, finished fifth in the voting to secure a spot on the first team, alongside Iowa’s Luka Garza, Baylor’s Jared Butler, Illinois’ Ayo Dosunmu and Oklahoma State’s Cade Cunningham.
 
Timme and Suggs were sixth and seventh in the balloting, putting them on the second unit. Gonzaga joins Duke in 2002 and Illinois in 2005 as the only teams since 2000 to place three players on the first, second or third teams.
 
Gonzaga’s Joel Ayayi was named honorable mention as was BYU's Alex Barcello.
 
FIRST FOURS NOT CREATED EQUAL: Both Gonzaga and BYU must wait to learn their first-round opponent until after a pair of First Four games on Thursday night. But while the two teams dueling to face the Cougars come from college basketball royalty, the two hoping to get a shot at the top-seeded Zags are postseasons dreamers.
 
UCLA and Michigan State — vying to face BYU — have combined for 185 NCAA tournament victories, 28 Final Fours and 13 national championships. Norfolk State and Appalachian State — warming up for the Zags — have one NCAA victory between them.
 
App State owns one eye-opening victory this season. The Mountaineers posted a crazy 105-23 victory over Carver College, a tiny (enrollment 60 students) historically black college from Georgia that played 17 games vs. Division I opponents by the end of December, losing them all — by an average margin of 58 points.
 
THE FIRST WEEKEND CHALLENGE: Gonzaga’s men have advanced to the Sweet 16 each of the past five NCAA tournaments, and nine times in 22 seasons under Few.
 
BYU is trying to get to the second weekend for the first time since 2011. That was Cougars’ final season in the Mountain West Conference, and they got through the Round of 32 at the expense of their soon-to-be WCC rival, beating Gonzaga 89-67 behind 34 points from Jimmer Fredette.
 
BYU’S TWO OF A KIND: There are 23 schools who landed men’s and women’s teams in the NCAA brackets. Among them, BYU can make a unique claim.
 
Only the Cougars have coaches for both teams who played in the NBA. Mark Pope of the BYU men’s team played parts of six seasons with the Pacers, Bucks and Nuggets while Jeff Judkins, coach of the Cougars’ women, spent five seasons in the league with the Celtics, Jazz, Pistons and Trail Blazers.
 
While neither assembled a Hall of Fame career, both played alongside teammates now enshrined in Springfield, Mass. Pope’s teammates included Reggie Miller, Ray Allen, Chris Mullin and sure-fire future HOF inductee Carmelo Anthony. Judkins was on the same rosters with an even more impressive collection of talent: Larry Bird (as a rookie), Pete Maravich, Isiah Thomas (as a rookie), Dave Cowens and Tiny Archibald.
 
NOTHING IS EASY IN MARCH: Consensus among many hoops authorities is that Gonzaga has the smoothest road to the Final Four among the four No. 1 seeds. There are good reasons for that, and it doesn’t hurt that Kansas and Virginia in the Zags’ region both are dealing with COVID-19 issues.
 
Then there is this: Only three overall No. 1 seeds – Florida in 2007, Kentucky in 2012 and Louisville in 2013 – have won the NCAA Tournament since the seeding order was revealed, starting in 2004. Over the past five tournaments, only Kentucky in 2015 has even reached the Final Four.
 
UPSET ALERT TO BYU: The Cougars should be aware that their No. 6 seeding isn’t a guaranteed ticket to the second round. In the past 10 NCAAs, the No. 6 seeds have won just 47.5% of their first-round games. At least one No. 11 seed has pulled an upset in every tournament since 2004. And zero No. 6 seeds have advanced to the Sweet 16 in the past three NCAA tournaments.
 
ZAGS TRY TO BUCK HISTORY: Although the WCC is labeled a mid-major conference, Gonzaga long ago ceased to be a mid-major program. So this statistic may only loosely apply.
 
But it’s interesting that since the NCAA expanded its field to 64 teams (now 68) in 1985, only two national champs emerged from conferences that received fewer than four bids. Louisville did it in 1986 out of the Metro Conference (three bids) before UNLV of the Big West matched it in 1990 (also three bids).