Why Final Four-bound Gonzaga can't shed its 'mid-major' label just yet

SAN JOSE, Calif. — As far as Gonzaga is concerned, it is not a mid-major.

It's a powerhouse — a perennial title contender and frequent holder of the nation's No. 1 ranking. And the school's first Final Four appearance, earned Saturday, should kill any conversation about its lesser-than status in the landscape of college basketball — a conversation that athletic director Mike Roth believes was actually put to bed years ago.

Not quite, Mike.

Gonzaga doesn’t act like a mid-major, it doesn’t spend like a mid-major, and it doesn’t win like a mid-major. But for at least one more game, Gonzaga needs to be a mid-major.

Not for their sake — this is a team that can take on any program in the nation and expect to win. No, this is for all the other small schools from out-of-the-spotlight conferences.

Up 20 points late in Saturday’s 83-59 Elite Eight win over Xavier, Gonzaga coach Mark Few pulled his top players off the court and walked up and down the bench, telling them, “We might as well win it all.”

The Zags might do just that.

Gonzaga’s draw is as favorable as one could ask for at this juncture of the tournament — their Final Four matchup will be either fourth seed Florida or seventh seed South Carolina. Should the Bulldogs win that contest, they’ll play for the title. No matter who they play, could you pick against a team this good?

But merely reaching the national semifinals a huge accomplishment for a private Catholic school with an undergrad enrollment of just over 5,000 in the nation's 73rd largest media market.

It was a long time coming, too.

After the final buzzer sounded Saturday, the go-to line from administrators and coaches alike was that it was an arduous journey to reach the school’s first Final Four.

You should believe them. Not because Gonzaga is the first small Catholic school to reach the Final Four — Villanova (undergraduate enrollment: 6,390) won the title last year — or the first small-conference team to make it either (they’re far from it).

You should believe them because the table was stacked firmly against them. Since the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, the Final Four and champions podium has been the domain of big schools and big conferences. There hasn’t been a champion that was both from a non-Power Six conference (or the remnants of one) and had an enrollment of less than 10,000.

Butler became close to being the first double-small champion in 2010 — oh, so close — but Gonzaga is now two wins away from establishing a new precedent.

And that’s why the Zags need to proudly carry the mid-major torch to Arizona next weekend. Not because they are currently a mid-major — they spent more on their basketball program than Elite Eight teams South Carolina and Florida, and made more money than Oregon — but because they were.

When Gonzaga first went to the Elite Eight in 1999, their coach, Dan Monson, made less than $100,000 — he bolted for a big raise at Minnesota after the tournament ended.

His top assistant, Mark Few, took over the program and built on Gonzaga’s Cinderella run for the next 17 years. Now, the team that shocked everyone by making a regional final is expected to be there year in and year out.

Enrollment at Gonzaga has nearly doubled — as has their endowment, and their university budget has almost tripled in that period of time. They built a $25 million basketball arena with mostly large cash donations.

"Gonzaga was really suffering (in 1999),” a trustee and major donor told the Spokane Spokesman-Review in 2013. “The basketball team was the catalyst for changing Gonzaga.”

There were plenty of Gonzaga teams that could have broken through and made the Final Four before this one, but they continued to knock on the door.

Consistent success at a school like Gonzaga isn’t easy — even though they spend as much as some Power Six schools, they still aren’t playing with a full deck while sitting at a table with Kentucky, UNC, Duke and Kansas. To get up — and stay up — has required scrappiness, cunning and steadfastness.

While Butler’s back-to-back title game berths were inspiring, they might have been flashes in the pan. Gonzaga’s sustained success since their 1999 Cinderella run is what every small school from a small conference should aspire to match. Gonzaga hasn’t always been the most impressive program in college basketball, but it is now.

And now that it has reached a new pinnacle, with an even higher peak possibly still to come, it can’t forget how it all started.