Anton Watson covered up many of Gonzaga’s defensive flaws. What’s in store for the Zags without their ‘problem solver’?

They each spent the 2023-24 season at brand-name college basketball programs, commanded significant attention from opposing teams both on the court and in pregame scouts and heard their names called early in the 2024 NBA draft, representing 50% of the players taken within the top-10 picks.

Those are just a few of the things binding Reed Sheppard, Stephon Castle, Donovan Clingan, Rob Dillingham and Zach Edey together.

Another one?

At different points last year, Anton Watson was called on to guard all five.

That would be much less obvious to someone who doesn’t closely follow Gonzaga, but it isn’t lost on Mark Few and his coaching staff as the Bulldogs search for ways to replace their defensive ace since Watson moved on to the NBA.

“He guarded ones, he guarded threes, he guarded fives,” Gonzaga assistant Brian Michaelson said. “He literally guarded Zach Edey and Clingan down to point guards. That is a loss that can’t be measured. So how does this group, through the intentionality, through the depth, through their experience, improve their defense when you lost the best cog to your defense?”

For the first time since 2018-19, Gonzaga enters a college basketball season without Watson at its disposal. The forward’s positional versatility, hustle and defensive prowess made him one of the most valuable players to come through Mark Few’s program in more than two decades and thus one of the toughest to replace.

“It’s hard. Anton just brought a lot – brought a lot to the game, brought a lot to us,” senior guard Nolan Hickman said. “He’s one of one.”

“Nobody’s like Anton,” Few said.

“I mean, he’s as good a winner as has ever played in this program,” Michaelson said. “He was the problem solver to every single problem on both ends of the floor. Nobody’s replacing that, no one person is replacing Anton. No way.”

It puts Gonzaga at a crossroads entering the 2024-25 season, representing one of the few question marks – but easily the largest – facing a group ranked sixth in the preseason AP Top 25, and considered to be a legitimate Final Four candidate in Few’s 26th season.

Watson covered up many of Gonzaga’s defensive blemishes, but the Bulldogs still finished the 2023-24 season ranked No. 51 nationally in adjusted defense, according to Ken Pomeroy’s metrics. That signified slight improvement from the year prior, when the Zags slipped to No. 73, but still marked the program’s second-lowest rating in a decade.

With Gonzaga’s “problem solver” now playing for the NBA’s Boston Celtics, will a few more of the team’s defensive flaws come to light? Or, will an experienced group of returnees with a few talented newcomers demonstrate the resolve necessary to make major improvements on that end of the floor – the kind needed to assure the Zags are still playing meaningful basketball in April?

“The last two years our defense has not been at the current Gonzaga standard,” Michaelson said. “They were probably closer to some of our old teams. Not what we’ve been previous to those two years and last year’s team took a really nice jump year to year, from the year before. It did improve, but like we talked about, you lost the best defender and the most versatile defender.”

With the nation’s second-rated adjusted offense, Gonzaga’s margin for error on the defensive end is wider than most. But the Bulldogs enter the year with the 44th-rated adjusted defense and recent history suggests they should hover somewhere inside the top 30 for the best chance of reaching another Final Four.

Gonzaga’s national runner-up teams in 2017 and 2021, for example, finished first and 10th, respectively, in adjusted defense. Since Pomeroy’s ratings debuted in 2001-02, the lowest-rated national champion in terms of adjusted defense was Baylor, which upended Gonzaga 86-70 to claim the title in 2021. The Bears, led by Naismith Defensive Player of the Year Davion Mitchell, finished No. 21 in adjusted defense.

National championships teams have posted an average adjusted defensive rating of 9.13 since 2002, with only two finishing outside the top 15.

The Zags may not be privy to those facts, but they’re firmly aware of the ground they need to make up after two below-average defensive seasons.

“I think everybody took it as a personal challenge this summer as something to improve on,” senior forward Ben Gregg said. “Their on-ball defense, off-ball defense. Everyone. All the bigs, the guards, that was a big emphasis in the summer. It’s on everybody else just to step up and collectively take on that role. It’s going to be difficult, but (Watson) was such a big piece last year, so everyone’s going to have to step up and contribute.”

There were promising signs toward the tail end of the 2023-24 season: holding Kentucky’s high-powered offense to 32 points in the first half of a season-turning win at Rupp Arena, limiting McNeese State to 33% shooting in an opening-round NCAA victory and shutting off Kansas in a Round of 32 game that saw the Jayhawks score only 24 points in the second half.

“As the year went on, we were hitting our coverages more, we were getting in the right gaps and things like that,” senior Graham Ike said. “It started out a little rough, but as the year got on we just continued to get better and we plan to do that this year.”

As for how this Gonzaga team will excel, seemingly without the key defensive components of past Final Four groups? It remains a pertinent question entering Monday’s opener against No. 8 Baylor.

The backcourt isn’t loaded with the size and athleticism that allowed players like Jalen Suggs, Andrew Nembhard and Corey Kispert to run opponents off the 3-point line in 2020-21, nor does the frontcourt have the stable of rim protectors that made the 2016-17 team so effective. Three players from that group – Zach Collins (1.8 blocks per game), Johnathan Williams (0.9) and Przemek Karnowski (0.9) – each averaged more blocked shots than any of GU’s returners or newcomers in 2024-25.

Gonzaga will have to rely on other traits in 2024-25.

“I’d just say the nastiness of what we’re going to be playing with,” Gregg said. “Being in gaps and not giving driving lines, no direct drives, no open catch-and-shoot 3s. Just easy shots, taking those away from teams. Then rebounding, only giving them one opportunity, one possession. Then getting out and running and scoring on them.”

In Gonzaga’s exhibition opener against USC, the Bulldogs allowed 96 points to a Trojans team that, albeit loaded with experienced Division I transfers, had only played one game together under first-year coach Eric Musselman.

Gonzaga’s backcourt struggled to keep USC’s guards out of the lane. The Trojans got to the foul line 33 times, and the Bulldogs came up with just two blocked shots.

“One-on-one defense is a big thing,” point guard Ryan Nembhard said after that game. “I think I was pretty bad tonight playing defense 1-on-1. So we’ve got to learn how to level our guy off and when it’s 1-on-1, we’ve got to win that matchup as well as rebound, I think. We’ve got to go hit and we’ve just got to be physical. That’s the physicality of the game and that’s something we need to improve on, for sure.”

With an upcoming slate of challenging nonconference games, beginning Monday at the Arena, the Zags probably need to operate with some level of urgency, too. Gonzaga made the adjustments necessary last season to qualify for the NCAA Tournament and reach a ninth straight Sweet 16, but it came after the Bulldogs squandered a handful of opportunities, in nonconference and West Coast Conference play, that could’ve helped their seed line.

“To reach the goals they want to reach, 51 isn’t going to work. Fifty is kind of the number I’ve been using, isn’t going to work,” Michaelson said. “Again, the 2017 team was No. 1 in the country, and that’s something I think we’re going to have to continue to work on and improve.”