Weekly Zag Briefing

We’re only in the second week of the season and ranked teams are already falling left and right. The headliner, of course, was #12 Oregon getting absolutely obliterated by BYU to the tune of a 32-point shellacking at the Moda Center in Portland. #4 Michigan lost at home to Seton Hall, which will delight everyone outside of the maize and blue. #10 Illinois lost to Marquette in a road game, while #20 Florida State lost to rival Florida in Gainesville. Let’s not forget that #25 Virginia lost to Navy last week which saw it fall out of the rankings before getting steamrolled by Houston last night to drop the Cavaliers to 1-2 on the season. I love college basketball.

• ESPN’s college basketball crew weighed in with their takeaways following Gonzaga’s win over Texas last weekend.
• Matt Norlander writes that Drew Timme is the best player in the country playing on the best team in the country. We think so too.
• Sam Vecenie put together a must-read article for The Athletic with his scouting thoughts and takeaways from the Gonzaga-Texas and UCLA-Villanova games over the weekend. Vecenie tries to deduce how the 24 NBA scouts in attendance at Gonzaga’s game viewed Holmgren’s performance and his draft stock, along with what Timme’s performance means for his own NBA aspirations. Vecenie also had this little nugget regarding Julian Strawther which I think may be spot on:

My bet is that this year, we see Strawther have some big games and some more role-player-like games like we saw against Texas. Then next year, he takes a leap as Corey Kispert did as a junior in that small forward role.

• Drew Timme was so good against Texas on Saturday that he left The Athletic’s Dana O’Neil and Brian Hamilton pondering illogical and unrealized problem scenarios. That’s impressive work from Timme.
• Eamonn Brennan had Gonzaga down at third in his Power Rankings, and behind Duke and Kansas, which was published before the win against Texas. I would hope the Zags move up in his esteem on the next go around.
• Kyle Boone of CBS Sports thinks the Zags are as good as advertised after watching the win over Texas.
• Not Gonzaga-related, but notable news in the college basketball landscape is the announcement that Loyola Chicago was leaving the Missouri Valley Conference for the Atlantic 10, which seems like a good conference fit for the Ramblers both from a sporting and university profile/ideology perspective. To replace Loyola Chicago, Matt Norlander reports that the MVC is eyeing Murray State, University of Texas Arlington, and University of Missouri Kansas City as additions/replacements. There’s no rumblings that this will have a knock on effect that relates to the Zags, but it’s always interesting to watch as the conference musical chairs continue to play out.