‘I do believe it’ll come for (Gonzaga coach) Mark Few in time’: TV analysts Grant Hill, Bill Raftery detail how tough it is to win it all

Gonzaga didn’t make the Final Four in New Orleans, but the Zags’ successes and shortcomings in March Madness continue to be a hot-button topic in national circles.

The Zags were sent home by fourth-seeded Arkansas 74-68 last Thursday in the Sweet 16 in San Francisco. They’ve been the top overall seed each of the past two seasons and a No. 1 seed in four of the past five tournaments, but they’re still chasing an elusive national championship.

They’ve come close twice, falling in title games against North Carolina in 2017 and Baylor last season, the latter ending Gonzaga’s bid at an undefeated season.

Bill Raftery and Grant Hill joined Jim Nantz on the television broadcast team for Thursday’s season-ending loss at Chase Center. They’ve been courtside at every Final Four since 2015, calling GU’s national semifinal victories over South Carolina in 2017 and UCLA last year as well as the title-game setbacks.

“I do believe it’ll come for (Gonzaga coach) Mark Few in time,” Hill said Tuesday during an online session with media. “I believe the basketball gods will reward him, but it doesn’t take away from what he’s done with that program and just building a perennial favorite and perennial great teams.”

Raftery and Hill described the countless challenges that highly successful programs and even legendary coaches, including Hill’s coach Mike Krzyzewski in the early 1990s at Duke, encountered before hoisting the trophy.

“I always think of Dean Smith where they always talked about Dean, ‘He’s got all those players and he’s never won the championship,’ ” Raftery said of Smith, who was at North Carolina for two decades before winning the first of his two titles in 1982. “I just think it’s not trial and error but a progression. That semifinal game (against UCLA) took so much out of them, and then you have a Baylor team. I honestly think if the regular-season game had been played (vs. Baylor instead of being canceled by COVID-19 protocols), Gonzaga would have been in better form to understand how strong and tough Baylor was defensively.

“It’s a break here or there, you lose a player, somebody plays better and steps up … there’s so many things that go into winning a championship. Grant can better speak to it because he’s won (two of) them, but I just know it’s hard to get there for most programs and then it’s really difficult to win it all.”

Hill offered Krzyzewski’s path to his first title as an example. Krzyzewski reached Final Fours in 1986, 1988, 1989 and 1990 before the 1991 team, led by Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley and Hill, earned the first of the coach’s five championships.

Hill, by way of comparison to Gonzaga’s overtime win against UCLA last season, recalled how tough it was for the Blue Devils to refocus after knocking off defending champion UNLV in the semifinals. Duke edged Kansas 72-65 in the title game.

“I still have images of Coach K telling us to calm down and we were celebrating like we won the championship,” Hill said. “And the next day we showed up and he kicked us out of practice. He basically said, ‘You guys are happy, North Carolina lost to Kansas (in the other semi), we don’t have to worry about that, you guys beat UNLV, let’s just go back to Durham and we’re happy that we beat Vegas.’ And so he walked out of practice on that Sunday.

“We had to regroup and get refocused and go get him, bring him back and say, ‘OK coach, we’re ready to go.’ Or even when Christian hit that shot against Kentucky (in the 1992 tournament), I’m not sure we emotionally recovered from that moment. We didn’t play our best against Indiana and almost lost that game, and that was a week later. So the circumstances and just the nature of the tournament, it makes it difficult.”

Gonzaga is the only program to reach the past seven Sweet 16s. In that time frame, the Zags rank first with 22 NCAA Tournament wins, followed by three of this year’s Final Four qualifiers – Villanova and North Carolina with 18 and Duke with 16 – but those three programs have combined for four national titles.

Duke defeated Gonzaga 66-52 in the Elite Eight en route to winning the 2015 title. North Carolina edged GU 71-65 to win the 2017 championship and Villanova captured titles in 2016 and 2018.

“I am starting to question Gonzaga’s championship DNA,” analyst Wally Szczerbiak said on CBS Sports Network following GU’s loss to Arkansas. “I don’t think they have it. When they get smacked, they don’t react the way Duke reacted against Texas Tech (later Thursday night), and that’s what you need to do to win a national title.

“They’ve been a one seed a bunch. They haven’t delivered.”

Szczerbiak reiterated a familiar criticism that Gonzaga doesn’t face enough quality competition in the West Coast Conference.

“You look at how those players match up, Arkansas was stronger at every single position, physically just overpowering, you could tell,” he said. “They had better athletes it looked like at every position and they just willed themselves to a victory. And Mark Few on the sidelines, he looked confused. He looked like he didn’t know what hit him and that’s because Gonzaga does not play the level of competition that other teams in this tournament play to get them ready for moments when they get punched.”

“I mean they were in two of the championship games in the last four years,” interjected Steve Lappas, a former college coach and Szczerbiak’s colleague. “We can’t forget that either.”

Raftery, Hill and Nantz will be on the call for No. 2 Duke-No. 8 North Carolina and No. 2 Villanova-No. 1 Kansas on Saturday and the championship game Monday.

“I think the prep this week, you’re going to see the best from these teams,” Raftery said. “And then the one-day prep (for the final) is a tough thing.”

“There have been some teams that were dominant, that were worthy of winning a championship. I think of that 1999 Duke team with Elton Brand, Trajan Langdon and Corey Maggette,” Hill said. “Dominant throughout the year and they lose in the finals to UConn.

“Unlike other sports leagues like the NBA or NHL, where they have a best-of-seven series and typically the better team wins, you can have an off game or half or off two games and still win it all. (In March Madness), you have a bad moment or stretch or foul trouble or whatever the case may be, and you’re out.”