With the 86-69 victory over Loyola Marymount on Saturday night, the Gonzaga men’s basketball team completed its first unbeaten regular season – becoming the first Division I team to submit unbeaten in Kentucky since 2015.
While this season has been full of uncertainty due to COVID-19 – namely abbreviated sketches for non-conferences, breaks for teams across the country and more than 1,500 postponed or canceled matches – Gonzaga’s dominance and 24-0 record is striking.
While many teams’ non-conference schedules were drawn up due to COVID-19 factors, the Zags pursued one of the country’s toughest early-season leagues – and won big. They knocked-No. 6 Kansas with double figures in their season opener and has the no. 11 West Virginia one week later.
After a positive COVID-19 Test wiped out a potential game of the year between top teams Gonzaga and Baylor on December 5, the Bulldogs returned from a break from COVID-19 to the no. 3 Iowa teen 11.
As a replacement for Baylor, the Zags faced – and trampled – then – No. 16 Virginia 98-75 as the Cavaliers surrendered their most points in more than a decade.
In the process, Gonzaga became the first team in Division I men’s college basketball history to beat four AP-20 teams in its first seven games of the season.
It was the Bulldogs’ fourth consecutive double-digit victory as the leading team in the AP poll. Today, the series has 21 consecutive double-digit victories, scored by the UCLA team coached by John Wooden and the Bill Walton-led UCLA in 1971-72, which scored 30-0 en route to a national championship.
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Jalen Suggs passes the ball to Anton Watson in transition for a shot against Loyola Marymount.
Only three teams (regardless of rank) have won 21 consecutive games with double figures over the past 60 seasons, according to the Elias Sports Bureau: Gonzaga 2020-21, Gonzaga 2018-19 and Gonzaga 2016-17. The previous two iterations of Bulldogs teams could not extend the series to 22.
The typical beat against Gonzaga is that it plays in the West Coast conference, which is not comparable to a big conference. KenPom.com’s adjusted efficiency margin, which measures how much better a team is than the average Division I team on 100 possessions, has the WCC as the ninth best conference in DI this year – between Atlantic 10 and the Missouri Valley.
The adjusted efficiency margin also says that Gonzaga belongs at the highest level, regardless of the conference. Since KenPom launched the benchmark in 2002, only two teams have completed a season with an adjusted efficiency margin of 35 or higher. Gonzaga is on the verge of third place, behind the 2014-year-old Kentucky team that lost in the Final Four:
Best adjusted efficiency margin since 2002
According to KenPom.com
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2014-15 Kentucky +36.9
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2020-21 Gonzaga * +36.6 (until 27 February)
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2007-08 Kansas +35.2
How did the Zags work? Gonzaga has been cutting opponents in paint all season, averaging 51.2 PPG, the highest such average over the past 15 seasons. There were only five games this season in which a team scored 70 points in the paint against a Division I opponent; Gonzaga is responsible for three of the five.
And the dominance of the paint was also not just against the WCC or weak enemies not assembling. In Gonzaga’s five games against teams from major conferences – Kansas, Auburn, West Virginia, Iowa and Virginia – the Zags scored 264 points in the paint, good for 52.8 per game, more than a point better than theirs. seasonal average. The 264 points in the paint are the most by any team in any five-game match against the major conference opposition over the past 15 seasons. Even against the toughest competition, this team was a paintbrush.
As a result, the Bulldogs are shooting 64.4% from the 2-point series, fitting for the highest point during the last 25 seasons, and shooting 55.3% off the field, at the highest pace since 1988. -89 national champion in Michigan shot 56.6%.
However, do not be mistaken with a plodding team that can only score on the edge in the half. Gonzaga’s average possession lasts only 14.2 seconds, the third shortest in the country, and the team scores almost 23 points per game in transition, also in the top five at national level.
What does this style of play mean for March? Before Gonzaga, North Carolina 2008-09 was the last team to lead Division I in KenPom’s adaptive attacking efficiency while playing at a top-10 pace. That team, led by Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Tyler Hansbrough, won a championship.
Gonzaga’s combination of efficiency and pace delivers 92.9 PPG. The last national champion to average at least 90 PPG was Duke in 2000-01. In total, four teams led Division I in points per game and won the NCAA Tournament in the same season:
The DI led in PPG and won National title
Gonzaga leads DI this season in PPG
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2018 Villanova
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2005 UNC
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1963 Loyola-Chicago
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1960 Ohio State
Like every year the story, Mark Few’s team will be defined by its ability to take a deep turn in March – and, if all goes according to plan, until April.