Recalling the Zags as they used to be

COEUR d’ALENE — I remember checking our sports phone messages one day at the Press, back in the late 1990s.

(For you youngsters, that was back when people used the telephone as a form of communication.)

One of the messages on our sports phone that day was from some assistant coach at Gonzaga, gracious enough to help us out with some information for a story, someone no doubt putting in his time before his big chance came along.

Fella by the name of Mark Few.

THE OFFICE phone is still around, often gathering dust as people have turned more and more to emails and text messages and other forms of internet wizardry to get the word out.

Few is still around as well. A year or so after leaving us a phone message, Few got his big chance and has made the most of it.

Some folks still can’t pronounce his school’s name right, and others only begrudgingly give him and his program credit, but Few and Gonzaga have come a long way over the past few decades.

BEFORE JOINING what was then known as the West Coast Athletic Conference beginning with the 1979-80 season, Gonzaga played in the Big Sky Conference against the likes of Idaho and Montana ... and even Boise State. The Zags tuned up for this rigorous league schedule with nonconference games against Whitworth, St. Martin’s and Central Washington.

(Of course, in their first year in the WC(A)C, the Zags opened up with a rugged back-to-back against Northern Montana and Carroll College.)

These days, it’s big news in the WCC when Gonzaga comes to town.

Back then, it was big news when a big-time program visited Spokane.

Old-timers may recall that DePaul was once good. Early in the 1981-82 season, DePaul played at Gonzaga, the second game of a home-and-home series with the Zags. With a roster boasting Terry Cummings, Bernard Randolph, Skip Dillard and Tyrone Corbin, the Blue Demons left Spokane with a 69-56 win and a sweep of the series. The year before, back in Illinois, the Mark Aguirre-led Blue Demons won 74-56.

In the three years of Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble at Loyola Marymount (1988-90), the Paul Westhead-coached Lions won all eight meetings against the Zags.

Those included a 147-136 defensive struggle in Los Angeles the second season, a 144-100 whipping at LMU the following year, and a 121-84 thrashing later that year in the first round of the WCC tournament. In the first game involving the Zags, Bo and Hank, LMU managed “just” 85 points in a 13-point victory.

FOR THREE seasons (1986-88), something called the Inland Northwest Classic pitted the four area Division I teams (Gonzaga, Washington State, Idaho and Eastern Washington) in an early season two-night tournament at the old Spokane Coliseum.

Had that event happened these days, Gonzaga would likely have romped to the title each year. But the Zags didn’t win any of those tourneys back then. They lost to WSU and EWU in 1986, lost to Idaho and beat Eastern for third place in ‘87, and beat WSU and lost to Idaho in overtime in the championship game in 1988.

How times have changed since then.

Gonzaga doesn’t play Idaho anymore. The teams last met in 2009; the Vandals can brag that they still lead the all-time series 70-64. The Zags last played WSU in the 2015 season, and haven’t scheduled Eastern since 2012. While all are nice regional matchups on paper, the Zags have progressed to the point where they don’t feel it’s worth their while to play those games anymore. The Zags last lost to Eastern in 1990, and have beaten the Eags 24 straight since then. As recently as the 1995-96 season, the Zags and Eastern played twice in a season. Since Gonzaga began its current NCAA tourney run in 1999, the Zags are 14-3 against WSU.

RPI and all that. RIP to the regional matchups.

And the cozy Coliseum was replaced two decades ago by the NCAA tourney worthy Spokane Arena.

FOR FIVE years in the early 1990s, the Zags hosted something at the Martin Centre (the original Kennel) called Shootout Spokane. Among the powerhouses they brought in were Howard, Boston University, Maine, Yale, Sam Houston State, Drexel, New Hampshire, Samford, Georgia State and Maine (again!).

The Zags won all five editions of Shootout Spokane.

I don’t remember which year, but one of those years when I was working at the Daily Bee in Sandpoint, and was back in Spokane over the Christmas holidays, I dragged my brother and his young son to the championship game. If I remember correctly, we showed up during the third-place game and bought general admission tickets upstairs.

Imagine showing up these days on game day at the McCarthey Athletic Center, looking to buy a ticket.

RECENTLY, FEW referenced his first season at Gonzaga, as a graduate assistant in 1989-90, recalling how the Zags beat just four Division I teams in an 8-20 campaign. Gonzaga beat Western Montana, Eastern Oregon, UNC-Wilmington, Montana Tech and Whitman in nonconference play, and San Francisco (twice) and Saint Mary’s in WCC play. UNC-Wilmington was the Zags’ lone D-I win out of conference.

Things have obviously changed a bit since then, with the Zags in their 19th straight appearance in the NCAA tournament, and Few as the head coach for the past 18. Both the Zags and Few have become so comfortable in Spokane that the annual “where will Mark Few go?” talk faded several years ago.

There’s a great piece in USA Today about Oregon trying to lure Few away in 2009. As the story goes, Few met Oregon’s athletic director halfway — at a roadside park just off I-84 in tiny Arlington, Ore. — to discuss the job, and ultimately turned it down.

(Could you imagine Chris Petersen driving up from Boise, and meeting University of Washington officials at, say, a diner in Umatilla, Ore., to discuss the Huskies’ football job?)

Few always maintained he could get it done at Gonzaga, and while few others on the outside believed that, it turns out he was right, of course.

NOW THAT they’ve reached their first Final Four, there’s just one more thing for the Zags to cross off their bucket list.

Well, two, actually.

The school has done a pretty good job of educating the rest of the country how to pronounce its name — Gone-zaga. “Zag” as in “bag,” as longtime former GU sports information direction Oliver Pierce used to say.

Though a few stragglers still insist on calling it “Gun-zawga,” most folks are finally getting the “zag” part right, even if it’s at the end of “Gun-zaga.”

Oh well. If Gonzaga wins two games this weekend in Arizona, the faithful probably won’t care how you pronounce the name of their school.

Just as long as you call them national champions.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.