Depth, balance among the many assets for Gonzaga men’s basketball entering 2024-25 season

Two things might have been immediately apparent to anyone who stopped by and watched the 5-on-5 portion of Gonzaga’s practices last season.

Depending on the day your visit landed, the Bulldogs may not have had 10 scholarship players available to run through the competitive, live sessions that tend to take place near the end of practice.

When they did have the numbers necessary, there was a clear talent disparity between the two groups on the floor, underscoring the depth issues Gonzaga faced at nearly every position throughout a bumpy regular season.

One year later, the same scrimmages have left Gonzaga’s coaching staff with another set of problems related to the team’s depth.

Good problems in this case.

“Last year, there was a lot of days we didn’t have 10 players, so it was one group playing and a group walking through. That to me is the difference,” Gonzaga assistant Brian Michaelson said. “The depth of that practice and that it’s even on even. You’re getting great competition that you literally every single day know it’s going to be close, but you have no idea which group’s going to win.

“Whereas last year you clearly had a group that was ahead or you only had one group certain days. We were so low that you only had one group, so it was a lot of like walk through, jog through.”

Flip the calendar forward a year and one group might consist of point guard Ryan Nembhard, shooting guard Nolan Hickman, wing/forward Michael Ajayi, forward Ben Gregg and forward Graham Ike.

That unit contains 40% of the players selected to the 10-man All-WCC preseason team on Oct. 17, includes the program record-holder for single-season assists (Nembhard), a fourth-team preseason All-American, per ESPN’s Jay Bilas (Ike) and someone The Athletic projects to be a second-round pick in the 2025 NBA draft (Ajayi).

It does not, however, include the only player on Gonzaga’s roster to score 40 points in a college game (Khalif Battle) or team’s returning leader in points-per-minute (Braden Huff). It doesn’t include a transfer wing who could wind up being the Bulldogs’ top all-around defender (Emmanuel Innocenti) or someone who started the first 15 games of the season for the last year’s team (Dusty Stromer).

The Zags would probably feel comfortable filtering through a nine-man rotation most nights this season and they could go even deeper than that.

The roster also features a two-time Patriot League Player of the Year, Colgate’s Braden Smith, who plans to redshirt and will use the next five months learning under Nembhard before succeeding the point guard next season.

Junior wing/forward Jun Seok Yeo has untapped potential and the South Korea native could sneak into the rotation if reports about his improved perimeter shooting are accurate.

Outside of Smith, the scholarship player with possibly the lowest odds of seeing the floor is Ismaila Diagne, a 7-footer with legitimate professional experience. Diagne signed with Gonzaga after starring for Real Madrid’s U-18 team, but he also made four appearances for the senior squad, which listed ex-NBA players Rudy Fernandez, Mario Hezonja and Facundo Campazzo on its roster.

It’s hard to see where Diagne fits in with this group, but Zags fans could quickly point to a few scenarios last season – two games against 7-4 Purdue giant Zach Edey come to mind, as does one against UConn and 7-foot Donovan Clingan – where the Bulldogs might have been able to use his big frame in spot minutes.

Consider this: This is the team that remained after a season-ending Achilles injury to sharpshooter Steele Venters, another player who’s earned conference MVP honors at a previous stop (Eastern Washington).

“I would say this is one of the deepest teams I’ve been on in the four years I’ve been here,” Hickman said during WCC Media Day.

Is it reasonable to think there’s seven potential starters on this roster? Eight even?

“Most definitely,” Hickman said.

When the Zags finally took one of their competitive intrasquad scrimmages to a live audience at Kraziness in the Kennel, the “White” squad was leading “Blue” 34-33 when Innocenti rose up from the 3-point line and drilled the winning shot.

“That’s literally how everything has been, so you definitely feel it with the depth not even being comparable, the balance not even being comparable and that leading to the competitiveness,” Michaelson said.

It’s a solid starting point, but the next five months will be about identifying the right lineups, overcoming the departure of program icon Anton Watson and handling the adverse situations that often compounded for Gonzaga last season, leaving little margin for error in the win-loss column over the final two months.

Preliminary results from practices – and tightly contested intrasquad scrimmages – have left the Zags optimistic they can succeed in many of the aforementioned areas.

“I think the biggest piece that you would see is the competitiveness that has changed from last year to this year’s team,” Ike said.

“Every day is a dogfight and that’s only making us better. The iron is getting sharpened every day.”