Weekly Zag Briefing

The Gonzaga Bulldogs may be on pause through December 14, but the college basketball world still marches on. Here’s what’s on tap as we seek to survive this basketball drought together.

• Myron Medcalf does a rundown of the top positionless college basketball players, and names Andrew Nembhard to his list. While Nembhard proved his worth in the win over West Virginia, and is battle tested after starting all 67 games he played at Florida, I’m not sure I would lump him into the “positionless” category and I’m not so sure he’s even the best positionless basketball player on his own team.
• Gonzaga remains atop Jeff Borzello’s Power Rankings over at ESPN, as the Zags still managed to look like an elite offensive team in the second half of the West Virginia game despite a hobbled Jalen Suggs.
• Similar to Borzello, Gary Parrish has Gonzaga in the top spot of his Power Rankings for CBS Sports, with Baylor and Iowa following close behind. That Baylor game really needs to be rescheduled right after the Iowa clash for the sake of settling some of these debates.
• In a recent SportsCenter hit, Seth Greenberg compared Jalen Suggs to Hall of Famer Jason Kidd. That’s quite a compliment from a basketball perspective. For his part, Suggs is committed to staying present and enjoying is time at Gonzaga. The NBA will come soon enough.

“To me, he reminds me of Jason Kidd. Size, feel, athleticism, vision. He’s got that ‘it’ factor. He makes the game easier for others.

• Proceeding with college sports in the midst of a severe second wave of COVID-19 has proven to be as tricky and disruptive as expected. There are a lot of issues that have been exposed and which the NCAA has adequately failed to address, ranging from protecting people’s livelihoods to the ongoing debate regarding amateurism.