For a school whose mascot is a Bulldog named Spike, Gonzaga sure punches like a heavyweight. You know the buzzer-beaters. You know the deep March runs. You probably know that a small Jesuit university tucked into Spokane, Washington has somehow turned itself into one of the most consistent basketball brands in the country.
The full story is wilder than the headlines. Gonzaga has been quietly building since 1887, dropped football in 1941, picked basketball as its identity sport, and then — starting in 1999 — went on a run that has not slowed down for a quarter century. This is the fan’s tour of how the Zags got here, what makes The Kennel one of the toughest gyms in the country, and what’s coming next as Gonzaga leaves the West Coast Conference for the rebuilt Pac-12.
The Setup: How a Jesuit School in Spokane Became a National Basketball Brand
Gonzaga opened its doors in 1887 with seven students and a couple of Jesuit priests. It was small. It was scrappy. It picked up a baseball team almost immediately, fielded football until 1941 before dropping it, and shared a national boxing title with Idaho in 1950 before that sport got dropped too.
What was left was basketball — and a whole lot of patience. From the 1940s through the early 1990s, Gonzaga was an afterthought, a regional curiosity, the kind of program that could go an entire decade without making a postseason tournament. The Bulldogs didn’t even make the NCAA tournament for the first time until 1995.
Then 1999 happened. A 10-seed Gonzaga team made a Cinderella run to the Elite Eight, knocking off Minnesota, Stanford, and Florida before losing a heartbreaker to eventual champion UConn. Casey Calvary’s tip-in against Florida with four seconds left is still the play every Zag fan can picture without trying. That tournament didn’t just put the school on the map — it kicked off the streak that defines the program.
Mark Few and the 26-Year March Madness Streak
When Dan Monson left for Minnesota that summer, assistant coach Mark Few got the job. He’s still got it. Few is now in his 28th season, and under him the Bulldogs have made every single NCAA tournament held since 1999 — 26 in a row, with the 2020 cancellation being the only year the dance didn’t happen.
The numbers under Few are absurd:
- Two national championship game appearances (2017 vs. North Carolina, 2021 vs. Baylor).
- A nine-year Sweet Sixteen run from 2015 through 2024 that tied for the longest such streak in NCAA history.
- Six Elite Eight appearances since 1999.
- The first-ever #1 ranking in both major polls during the 2012–13 season — when Gonzaga went 32–3.
- 27 West Coast Conference tournament titles, including the program’s last as a WCC member in 2026.
And the talent has poured into the NBA. John Stockton was the original, and his number 12 hangs in the rafters. Then came Adam Morrison (Co-National Player of the Year in 2006), Dan Dickau, Kelly Olynyk, Domantas Sabonis, Rui Hachimura, Brandon Clarke, Corey Kispert, Jalen Suggs, Chet Holmgren, Drew Timme, Julian Strawther, Andrew Nembhard, and on and on. Few has turned a school with a tiny recruiting footprint into a draft pipeline that rivals the blue bloods.
Inside The Kennel: The Loudest 6,000-Seat Gym in America
The Kennel is McCarthey Athletic Center, but the nickname goes back further than the building. It started at the Charlotte Y. Martin Centre, the 4,000-seat box Gonzaga called home from 1965 until 2004, and it transferred over when McCarthey opened.
The current streak is hard to fathom: McCarthey has sold out 297 straight games since it opened in 2004. Combine that with the late Charlotte Y. Martin years and the home sellout streak runs 319 games, dating back to the 2001–02 season. Every single home game, for two-plus decades. Bring earplugs.
The student section, the Kennel Club, is the engine. Coordinated chants, mass-produced T-shirts, choreographed stunts, and a wall of sound that has rattled top-five opponents on national TV. Gonzaga went 41 games without losing at home at one point. BYU finally snapped it in 2015 — a streak that was the longest active home winning streak in the country when it ended.
If you ever get to a Zag game, get there early. The pregame energy is half the show.
The Rivalries Every Zag Fan Needs to Know
Saint Mary’s. This is the one. Two small Catholic schools, one conference, a quarter century of trading championships, and — for most of that run — the Mark Few vs. Randy Bennett coaching matchup, one of the longest-running coach-vs.-coach storylines in the sport. Bennett is out now, with first-year head coach Mickey McConnell taking over the Saint Mary’s Gaels program. Gonzaga leads the all-time series 83–38 as of 2026 and has won 11 of 15 WCC title-game meetings. The Pac-12 move puts a sad asterisk on this one — the rivalry doesn’t get the conference matchups anymore, but smart scheduling can keep it alive in non-conference.
BYU. A more recent rivalry, born when BYU joined the WCC in 2011–12 and immediately became one of the few teams that could win in Spokane. BYU left for the Big 12 in 2023–24, so this one is also on the back burner — but the games when they happened were some of the most physical in the league.
Washington State. The in-state rivalry. The Washington State Cougars are 79 miles south in Pullman, and the two schools have played 152 times. Washington State leads the series 98–54, but Gonzaga has won 15 of the last 18, and the rivalry is about to become annual conference business — both schools are in the new Pac-12 starting in 2026–27.
Washington. The other in-state series, more on-and-off than Wazzu. The Huskies lead 30–20 all-time, though Gonzaga has won 14 of the last 16.
The Pac-12 Move: What Changes in 2026–27
Starting July 1, 2026, Gonzaga is officially out of the West Coast Conference and into the rebuilt Pac-12. After a 47-year run in the WCC, that’s a seismic shift — and it’s the right one for a program that has outgrown its league.
The new Pac-12 lineup is nine schools: Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Oregon State, San Diego State, Texas State, Utah State, Washington State, and Gonzaga. Every one of those programs has made an NCAA tournament in the last eight years. San Diego State played in the 2023 national title game. This is the deepest “mid-major” basketball league on the West Coast, and it now exists largely to give programs like Gonzaga a tougher conference schedule and a bigger media platform.
There’s also a fun quirk: Gonzaga is the only non-football school in the new Pac-12. The other eight members give the conference the NCAA-minimum eight football programs needed to keep FBS status — meaning the Zags are essentially the basketball-and-baseball anchor of a football-driven league. And while McCarthey holds 6,000, Fresno State’s Save Mart Center — at 15,544 — will be the largest basketball venue in the conference. Welcome to the road games.
For fans, the practical changes are easy to follow: tougher games, a new rivalry slate, a real Battle of Eastern Washington against Washington State every season, and the return of Boise State head coach Leon Rice — a former Few assistant — as a conference opponent.
Don’t Forget the Women: Lisa Fortier’s Zags
Mark Few gets the headlines, but Lisa Fortier has quietly run one of the more consistent women’s basketball programs on the West Coast. She’s in her 12th season, with 16 total NCAA tournament appearances for the program, an Elite Eight in 2011 (led by all-time program great Courtney Vandersloot), and a Sweet Sixteen as recently as 2024.
Vandersloot’s number 21 is the only retired women’s basketball number at Gonzaga, and she’s still playing professionally in the WNBA — a reminder that the Zag pipeline isn’t just a men’s basketball story.
Baseball, Bing Crosby, and Other Things You Should Know
Baseball is back on campus and going to the Pac-12 too. Patterson Baseball Complex and Washington Trust Field opened in 2007, returning baseball to campus for the first time since 2003 (when the old field was razed to build McCarthey). Head coach Mark Machtolf has run the program since 2004, and like everyone else, the team moves to the Pac-12 in 2026.
Bing Crosby is a Zag. Yes, that Bing Crosby. The crooner attended Gonzaga in the early 1920s and never finished his degree — but the school has a statue of him on campus, and the music library is named for him. He’s a piece of Zag identity that has nothing to do with basketball, which is rare.
Spike the Bulldog is the mascot. The nickname “Bulldogs” replaced the earlier “Fighting Irish” moniker in 1921. “Zags” and “Gonzos” are both unofficial fan nicknames that have stuck around.
Football used to exist. Gonzaga played football from 1892 to 1941, going 129–99–20 overall, before dropping it during World War II. Ray Flaherty, a Pro Football Hall of Famer, coached at Gonzaga in 1930. The school never brought football back, which is part of why basketball became the sport rather than just a sport.
The NIL Era: How Zag Fans Can Get in the Game
Name, Image, and Likeness has rewritten what it means to follow a college program. Enrolled Gonzaga student-athletes can now earn through compliant fee-for-service NIL deals — sponsorships, social media work, appearances — and fans have new ways to participate alongside the athletic department and the official collectives.
One option is RallyFuel, a platform where fans can purchase conditional NIL engagements that may convert into an NIL agreement if an enrolled athlete voluntarily participates. It’s not a recruiting tool, and it’s not a direct payment to a player — it’s a verified, compliant pathway that operates through third-party payment processors and within NCAA rules. If you want to take a look, Gonzaga’s RallyFuel team page is the starting point. And if you’d rather understand the legal scaffolding first, RallyFuel’s breakdown of Washington’s NIL laws is a useful primer on what’s allowed under state law and how it interacts with NCAA rules.
What’s Next
Gonzaga goes into the 2026–27 season as a Pac-12 program for the first time, with a new conference schedule, a returning Mark Few in his 28th year, and the kind of expectations that only come with sustained success. The Bulldogs will open Pac-12 play with a real Washington State rivalry game on the schedule every year. Saint Mary’s will probably show up in the non-conference. The Kennel will sell out, because the Kennel always sells out.
If you’ve never been to a Gonzaga home game, here’s the bucket-list version: get to Spokane in February, grab a seat in McCarthey, watch the Kennel Club go to work, and stay for the postgame walk through the snow. It’s not the loudest big-school atmosphere in college basketball, but for a program this size, it might be the most fun.
Q&A
How long has Mark Few been at Gonzaga, and what’s the headline accomplishment? Few took over as head coach on July 26, 1999, and he’s now in his 28th season. The biggest line on his résumé is the streak: 26 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances, two national championship game runs (2017 and 2021), and a nine-year Sweet Sixteen run from 2015 through 2024 that tied the longest in NCAA history.
Why is The Kennel such a big deal? McCarthey Athletic Center is small — 6,000 seats — but it’s been sold out for every single home game since it opened in 2004. That’s 297 straight, part of a 319-game home sellout streak going back to 2001–02. The Kennel Club student section runs coordinated chants and stunts, and the building gets genuinely deafening. Bigger arenas are louder in raw decibels, but few are louder per square foot.
Who’s the biggest rival? Saint Mary’s, hands down. Gonzaga vs. the Gaels is the defining West Coast Conference rivalry of the last 25 years. Gonzaga leads the all-time series 83–38, but Saint Mary’s wins enough big games to keep it real. The Pac-12 move ends the automatic conference matchups, but expect the schools to keep finding each other on the non-conference schedule.
What changes when Gonzaga joins the Pac-12 in 2026–27? Tougher conference schedule, new media platform, and a real annual rivalry game against Washington State for the first time in decades. The new Pac-12 lineup is nine schools (Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Oregon State, San Diego State, Texas State, Utah State, Washington State, and Gonzaga), with Gonzaga as the only non-football member. It’s the deepest West Coast basketball league outside the Big 12.
Who are the biggest Zag alumni in the NBA? The Hall of Famer is John Stockton, Utah Jazz legend and Gonzaga’s all-time assists and steals leader. After him, the modern era pipeline includes Adam Morrison, Kelly Olynyk, Domantas Sabonis, Rui Hachimura, Brandon Clarke, Corey Kispert, Jalen Suggs, Chet Holmgren, Drew Timme, Andrew Nembhard, and Julian Strawther, among others. Few has turned Spokane into a real NBA factory.
Is football coming back? No. Gonzaga dropped football in 1941 and has shown no interest in bringing it back. That’s part of the identity now — basketball is the show, baseball matters, and the school doesn’t try to be something it isn’t.
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