Former Gonzaga guard Gary Bell Jr. promoted to Coordinator of Basketball Administration with Bulldogs

In some ways, the trajectory of Gary Bell Jr.’s tenure with Gonzaga’s coaching staff has mirrored his time as a player with the Bulldogs.

In the same way Bell’s responsibilities and impact on the floor grew during his junior season, the former GU guard will have an expanded role with Mark Few’s coaching staff in his third year since returning to Spokane in 2019 to jump-start his post-playing career.

After spending two seasons as a graduate assistant under Mark Few, the Tacoma native who played four years for the Bulldogs from 2011-15 will take a new position with the basketball program in 2021-22. Bell will serve as the Bulldogs’ coordinator of basketball administration, according to an updated roster/coaching staff released by the school two weeks ago.

Bell replaces TJ Benson, who was GU’s coordinator of basketball administration for one season before leaving to join former Bulldogs assistant Tommy Lloyd at Arizona, where he’s now a special assistant to the head coach and recruiting coordinator.

After playing professional basketball in Poland, France and Greece, Bell moved back to the United States to be closer to his wife and kids. The Bulldogs, in need of a graduate assistant, made a call to Bell, who was looking into high school coaching in the Phoenix area, where his family lived at the time.

“When I was here before, Tommy thought I’d be a good coach one day,” Bell told The Spokesman-Review in 2019. “For him to call and ask me to do this, he kind of saw it from the jump.”

As a player, Bell was a standout 3-point shooter and lockdown defender for the Bulldogs, appearing in 135 games while starting in 124. He’s eighth in program history with 219 3-pointers and in the top-30 on the career scoring list with 1,219 career points.

Bell was a 41% career 3-point shooter and was the WCC’s Defensive Player of the Year in 2015 while helping the Zags reach the Elite Eight.