Weekly Zag Briefing

Coping with the lack of daylight at 4:00 pm is much easier when you have college basketball to turn on in the evening, wouldn’t you agree? Tuesday night marked the official tipoff of college hoops around the country, which means the content is beginning to flow!

• The Zags were awarded a #8 ranking in the national polls to open the season, but our colleagues over at Mid-Major Madness know that the number 1 looks much better next to Gonzaga in their opening rankings of the best non-power 5 schools in the country.
• The Athletic polled its college basketball staff on a wide range of topics covering the sport, and distressingly, Gonzaga tied as a runner-up with Duke for the Top-10 program that would be the biggest disappointment behind Maryland. I’ll take it as a backwards compliment that Gonzaga has set extremely high standards over the last few seasons.
• Sticking with The Athletic for a second, Jackson Frank put together a great profile on Drew Timme and examines what makes him tick. I came away from reading his story extremely pleased that Timme is on this roster, and not just because of his on-court talent. He’s a guy you want around your program.
• Over at Blogging the Bracket, Chris Dobbertean took a shot at analyzing the non-conference schedules of 15 key mid-major programs using KenPom’s rankings. Gonzaga comes in with just the 84th most challenging schedule of all D1 programs thanks to an “underwhelming” slate of home games. BUI (#37) and Saint Mary’s (#58) are both rated with tougher non-conference schedules.
• At ESPN, John Gasaway evaluates what each of the programs ranked in the Top 10 needs to do to win the national championship. For the Zags, it’s all about figuring out how to integrate a remade roster into a cohesive unit.