Weekly Zag Briefing

These are tough times in Zag-land, but that doesn't mean we'll stop providing you Gonzaga-related news.

• Jeff Eisenberg of Yahoo Sports writes about Gonzaga finding itself in the unusual position of needing to win the WCC tournament to get a spot in the NCAA tourney field.

• Eric McClellan speaks with the Gonzaga Bulletin (starts around 6:50 mark) to talk about his two years at Gonzaga and the senior night loss to the team from Moraga. The Bulletin also recaps Episode 1 of the HBO show.

• Incoming recruit, Zach Norvell, had quite the weekend as his Simeon Wolverines swept three of the top six teams in the state of Illinois en route to the Chicago city title and a win in the City/Suburban classic. Norvell earned all-city league honors and will begin preparing for the state title run.

• McDonald's All-American, Zach Collins, notched a triple-double of 12 pts, 12reb, 12 blocks in just 20 minutes of action in Bishop Gorman's opening game of the Nevada state tournament.

• We should send Lunardi a nice gift basket as ESPN's bracketology expert is one of the few bracketologists who still has the Zags in the tournament field after last weekend's events...The Zags are one of Lunardi's last four teams in and earmarked for one of the 11-seed play-in games.

• The Sporting News also has the Zags in the tourney field, giving them the nod for the WCC auto-bid despite the regular season . . . (you know what I'd be referring to next so I'm not going to write it)

• Jason Lisk of USA Today's The Big Lead examined the question of how much weight the Selection Committee should place on injuries to tournament-quality teams. Gonzaga, and specifically the impact of Przemek's injury, are discussed which led me to a thought exercise about whether Shem's injury should downgrade the Zags at-large hopes even further, as our best wins of the season came with him still healthy. On the flip side, Washington and UCONN fans could argue that their respective losses to the Zags during the Battle 4 Atlantis should be considered "better losses" for their respective tournament hopes since they occurred at the hands of a full-strength Zag squad with Karnowski still healthy. Likewise for Texas A&M, except their argument is they beat a full-strength Zag squad. The article elicits the opinions of Jay Bilas, Sean Farnham, Nicole Auerbach, Mike DeCourcy, and Jerry Palm so make sure to check it out.

• Eric McClellan warns everyone to stay away from the basketball team! Maybe this explains what happened on Saturday night.

My whole team is either sick or has pink eye. What's going on??! stay away from Zags MBB.

— Eric McClellan (@EasyMcClellan) February 22, 2016