Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Donald Trump built a major real estate empire, after inheriting his dad's company.
Hillary Clinton was the first female major party presidential nominee. Her husband was president for eight years.
Football players now make many one-handed catches, after new glove technology was introduced.
Gonzaga is in the Final Four. Their starting five includes three transfers from major conferences.
Unfair?
All of this is just context.
Context is neutral, although whether to include it might not be.
While it takes skill and dedication to excell in each of the above scenarios, for a moment, let's take a closer look at the latter.
No Final Four team has ever had more than one transfer as a starter.
The Bulldogs' three are high achievers; Nigel Williams-Goss averaged 15 points per game in the Pac-12 as a freshman and sophomore for UW. Johnathan Williams led Missouri as a sophomore in scoring, rebounding and blocked shots. Graduate transfer Jordan Mathews averaged 13.5 points per game in his third and fourth years at Cal.
So the year that Gonzaga broke through to the Final Four, they did it with a star from UW, a star from Missouri and a starter from Cal.
And this is the same as if any other Gonzaga team did it?
While Gonzaga has had significant transfers in the past, there's a difference between one in the starting lineup (Kyle Wiltjer) and three.
One is unremarkable, common, just like having foreign-born players and junior college transfers. But three starters from major conferences is say-that-again, please?
Gonzaga coach Mark Few is now receiving praise for the program's “transfer strategy.” But is it a strategy, a concession and/or an unforeseen benefit of what they've built over 20 years?
With 19 consecutive tournament appearances, two elite eights and five sweet 16s (now a Final Four), Gonzaga has become the first choice nationwide for second chances.
After all, the central question of the “haters” was an honest one: could Gonzaga really get the needed recruits to come play in the West Coast Conference and contend for Final Fours?
After the rise in transfers began, the question still lingered. (More than 700 Division-I players have transferred in the last two years, a rate of exponential growth in the past decade, mostly due to the graduate-transfer rule.)
While Gonzaga has sent players to the NBA in high picks and have had All-Americans, for the most part, all were, until this year, essentially over-achieving West Coast Conference recruits.
Was Mark Few really getting people to turn down competitive Pac-12, Big-10 and ACC teams to play for Gonzaga?
Zach Collins is the Bulldogs' first McDonald's All-America recruit, and he chose Gonzaga over Cal, Utah, New Mexico and San Diego State.
How does that count as interest from major programs?
Nonetheless, with the building numbers of transfers, change had come. The high school recruits out in the world that would not take the WCC for their first choice, for plan B they would, in exchange for guaranteed trips to the NCAA tournament.
Few other schools can offer that to a transfer.
So, in the end, Gonzaga and its three new starters are in the Final Four, in waters charted by no other program in NCAA history.
And ultimately, after all these years, the “haters” never got an answer to the central question about Gonzaga.
Because, as they say in Hollywood, the story concluded with a “deus ex machina” – a god from the machine – meaning the heroes didn't cause the resolution of the goal, it was a weather event – a rare one, 250 miles west – the implosion of Lorenzo Romar's UW program – along with a contributing larger, unrelated weather trend nationwide; the rise in the availability of transfers.
Most fans say they don't care about meaning in sports. They just look for the name on the front of the jersey and they know who to root for. But when actual meaning – authenticity, the real thing – is part of sports, not to mention other aspects of life, it always seems to be embraced. It's why Gonzaga '99 is so resonant, Villanova '85, Butler '10 and '11, Bill Johnson at the '84 Winter Olympics, Mike Price and Jason Gesser leading WSU to the Rose Bowl. Oregon going in '94 with Rich Brooks and Danny O'Neill.
Gonzaga '17 is different.
It's a Cinderella story after she's added a makeup artist and a dressmaker brought in from Nice.
Gonzaga, needed or not, raised its hand for help and got it.
It's all within the rules, all perfectly upstanding, but it doesn’t mean the same as if they had done it all by themselves.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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