Maybe last year was the year, the culmination of 22 seasons, the March when the Gonzaga men’s basketball team would complete the final step in its remarkable transformation. Gone were the Cinderella upstart years, the happy-to-make-the–NCAA tournament years, the not-again-early-upsets years. The 2019–20 Zags were a national power missing only a national title, and they had built out a résumé befitting the No. 1 overall seed. With Spokane slated to be a tournament site, that should have meant home games with sold-out crowds, everyone breathing and screaming and pushing the Bulldogs to upend their history, to tear off the always-good, sometimes-great, not-yet-champions tag that all but hangs above their jersey numbers.
How Gonzaga Zagged
