What makes Gonzaga different from every other NCAA Sweet 16 team

SPOKANE, Wash. — Zach Norvell Jr. is accustomed to playing high-level basketball, having graduated from Chicago’s Simeon Career Academy, which has won four state championships this decade and counts the Milwaukee Bucks’ Jabari Parker among its recent alumni.

But what Norvell encountered last summer during his first offseason workout with the Gonzaga men’s basketball team was something else.

“It was so much faster,” Norvell said. “I was like, Oh God, I’m so tired. I’m taking plays off, that’s how tired I am.”

Speed and endurance weren’t the only challenges Norvell encountered in his first months with the Bulldogs. He tore the meniscus in his left knee in July. By October he made a decision that numerous other Gonzaga players have made dating back to the era before the program’s current streak of 19 NCAA tournament appearances: He decided to sit out this year as a redshirt.

The decision of Norvell, who was rated as one of the top 100 recruits entering college basketball this season, as well as that of fellow freshman Jacob Larsen reinforce an area in which Gonzaga zags where the other teams in the NCAA tournament Sweet 16 zig. In a period in college basketball when many players in top 25 programs view the sport as a brief way station en route to the professional game, Gonzaga has a tradition of players intentionally prolonging their college careers.

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Eleven of the 17 players on the Bulldogs’ roster have redshirted during their time here. The other 15 teams still alive in the NCAA tournament have an average of 2.93 such players.

“When we go around the locker room and we're all sitting there waiting for coach and point around the room and go redshirt, redshirt, redshirt, redshirt, redshirt, redshirt, it's literally like you are the exception to the rule if you haven't redshirted at some point,” said Travis Knight, Gonzaga’s strength and conditioning coach.

“It's not looked at as, hey, you failed to be out there as a freshman. It's looked at as if you don't redshirt, by all means do as much as you can, but if you do get an opportunity to redshirt, man, it will change everything for you.”

Nigel Williams-Goss, the Bulldogs’ all-American redshirt junior guard, recognized that quickly when he was entertaining suitors after deciding to transfer from Washington in 2015. Like almost all Division I transfers, he was going to have to sit out a season per NCAA rules, but the last thing he wanted to do was spend that time actually sitting.

“That was one of the biggest reasons why I came here was because of the plan that they had in place for me,” Williams-Goss said. “It was already mapped out when I came on my visit as far as what we were going to do, things we were going to work on.”

Redshirt junior forward Johnathan Williams was Missouri’s leading scorer and rebounder as a freshman and sophomore before deciding to transfer. He was attracted by Gonzaga’s success in developing post players, but when Gonzaga’s coaches met with him, they didn’t pump him full of platitudes, instead conveying what their film study of him revealed and how together they could improve those parts of his play during his redshirt year.

“I took other visits, and none of the other schools had a game plan for me,” Williams said. “But Gonzaga when I sat down for my visit (spelled out) you need to work on this, this and this. I took that plan to heart, and when I stepped on campus, I got straight into it.”

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Draw, not deterrent

For players matriculating to Gonzaga directly from high school, the redshirt is an option, but it’s not a fit for every player. Current Bulldogs forward Zach Collins is the team’s most efficient player as a true freshman, and Oklahoma City Thunder rookie Domantas Sabonis played as a true freshman and sophomore from 2014-16 before leaving for the NBA.

Yet Gonzaga has figured out how to turn the redshirt year into a recruiting tool. Player development is one of the program’s core pillars, and Knight presents redshirting as a problem-solving exercise that is different player to player and often day to day. The weight room isn’t a place to brag or turn into bodybuilders, but just one of dozens of tools for the players’ benefit.

“We literally try to not leave any stone unturned,” said Mark Few, Gonzaga’s head coach, “whether it’s nutrition or sleep or DNA predisposition to weights to speed, agility, flexibility, yoga.

“Capping out their potential has always been the goal. If you’re not getting the top five or 10 or 15 players in the country — which we don’t get coming out of high school — you focus on, Let’s get these other guys that we evaluate properly and know how hungry they are and their potential and then let’s do it that way.”

Matt Santangelo, who was part of a five-player redshirt class in 1995, remembers being told as a freshman, “You’re going to be better at the tail end of 22 than on the front of 18.”

“And that kind of made sense to me,” he said.

Santangelo and his fellow redshirts would grab then-graduate assistant coach Bill Grier to play 3-on-3. Four years later Santangelo earned honorable mention all-America honors on the Bulldogs’ 1999 Elite Eight team, and as a senior they made the Sweet 16.

Few reiterates that the process has evolved since Santangelo’s era, with Knight the being one of the biggest differences and players like Kelly Olynyk, Kyle Wiltjer and now Williams-Goss earning all-America honors in their first seasons post-redshirting.

“They now have multiple examples to say, ‘Hey, our system works,’ ” Santangelo said. “Our system is working for whichever direction you’re coming from or going to.”

Said assistant coach Brian Michaelson, “I think that we’ve developed a niche there.”

Michaelson says basketball alumni who redshirted tend to ask about the current redshirts’ gameday workouts, which have become a tradition that bonds generations of Bulldogs players because of their intensity and competitive nature. As much interest as there is in the active Bulldogs who are trying to extend Gonzaga’s run of West Coast Conference titles and NCAA berths, there can be just as much in those who are taking a redshirt year.

“It’s like there’s a story to each one,” Knight said.

The ultimate redshirt

There is one story in Gonzaga’s history of redshirting that reached legendary status even though it is only a few years old.

Shortly after the 2010-11 season, Olynyk met with the coaching staff, troubled by his lack of body control and disappointed that he could not be a bigger contributor to the team. In Gonzaga’s final game that season, a 22-point loss to BYU in the NCAA’s Round of 32, Olynyk had played 10 minutes off the bench. He suggested that it should be his final game in a Bulldogs uniform, that he should transfer.

“He was frustrated,” said assistant coach Tommy Lloyd. “He was kind of a late bloomer, so physically he wasn’t quite there, so he had a lot of balance issues and things like that. But he loved it here so much, we were able to sit down and have some honest conversations.

“Basically, the conclusion was, Yeah, transfer. Transfer to Gonzaga and redshirt here. We’d had a ton of redshirts before, and they’d all had success and let’s see what we can do with you.”

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What they saw was an effort that may never be matched. Olynyk was so eager and aggressive in his desire to improve, Knight said it challenged him to be a better strength and conditioning coach and find new drills, tools and exercises to implement. Because Olynyk was a rare mid-career redshirt, Lloyd said, he was able to focus on the aspects of his agility and movement that were specifically tailored to accentuate the style of play he had been a part of for two years. Olynyk’s commitment and growth redefined what could be accomplished in a redshirt year at Gonzaga.

“Mentally he shifted where he became tough and physical and willing to go inside and outside,” Michaelson said, and then all of a sudden not much after Christmas there was a stretch where it was, He might be our best player. In February and March, we knew what we had coming. He was our best player. Our best player’s not even playing this season.”

The next season he did, earning first-team all-America honors from four organizations and becoming a lottery pick in the 2013 NBA draft.

Why it works

The notion that the best player on the roster could be unavailable for game competition may seem like a risk of the redshirting strategy, but it’s really the point.

“What’s made it work is we have a culture of ownership and responsibility,” Lloyd said. “Those guys know they’re redshirting for a reason, and I always tell them the redshirt needs to be your ‘because’ year. Because you redshirted, you were able to do this. It’s not a wasted year. Your mindset needs to be at the end of your career, because you redshirted, you were able to do this, this and that.”

Because Norvell redshirted, he has a plan for every move and shot, he is learning to play at a faster tempo, and thanks to the use of strobe goggles with Knight, is learning to trust his instincts as a player.

Because Larsen redshirted, the 7-foot native of Denmark has been able to add 20 pounds of upper body muscle to complement his ultra-cerebral, European playing style. “He’s a guy who walks around quoting Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Knight said. “Everybody who comes in contact with him just marvels at how he’s transformed his body and calls him The Machine.”

As Division I transfers, Williams and Williams-Goss’s redshirt years were mandatory, but because of them Williams learned to get more arc on his shot, use the backboard on hook shots, and actually show he could use his right hand. “I was so left-hand dominant in my two years at Missouri, you probably thought I’d cut my right hand off,” he said.

The focus for Williams-Goss was almost all mental, specifically recognizing and manipulating floor spacing to his advantage. He embraced the work, especially because he couldn’t imagine how much he could improve if he had an entire year to study and work on his game.

This season he conveyed that notion to Norvell, suggesting that because the freshman wasn’t going to play, he could practice 10 times as hard. Gonzaga expects that kind of effort — assistant coach Donny Daniels says 80% of a successful redshirt year is up to the player and 20% is on the staff — because they recruit the kind of players they see as driven to make that kind of effort.

The days when Gonzaga is playing are the days the redshirts have their hardest workouts, a combination of weight room training and on-court training in an empty gym that soon will be filled with fans rooting for or against the Bulldogs who are actually playing. That’s what dozens of Gonzaga players have done for more than 20 years, and it’s what Norvell and Larsen are doing now.

“I feel like if you take advantage of it or you make the most out of it,” Norvell said, “nothing but good will come out of it.”

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