Gonzaga is a win away from undefeated immortality, but already deserves to be placed
INDIANAPOLIS -- Gonzaga does not need to beat Baylor to secure a highly perched place in college basketball history.
Championship games understandably carry considerable weight; they are the arbiters of a season. Yet: a single result should not overrun nor overshadow, in Gonzaga's case, an accumulation of 31 wins by an average of 22.4 points. These undefeated Bulldogs are storybook as is. The Jesuit school tucked away in Spokane, Washington, out of the West Coast Conference, a once-plucky outfit with the quirky-sounding name that always showed up in the bracket.
Enough of that.
Such a portrait was painted over long ago. Plucky? Now try powerhouse. Mark Few has built a Goliath of the game. This 2020-21 Zags team, no matter what transpires Monday at Lucas Oil Stadium, is already one of the best teams in men's college hoops of the past four decades. (Minimally.) With a 31-0 record, fresh off a buzzer-beating win that ranks near (if not at) the top of the list of the greatest games in tournament history, Gonzaga has proved its classification among the masters.
One more win doesn't signify greatness; it will secure Gonzaga's immortality.
If the Bulldogs beat Baylor, they'll be a deathless, legendary team in American sports history. In this case, finishing without a loss carries more long-term staying power than winning a championship. We get a championship team every year (pandemics not withstanding). It's been 45 seasons since a men's basketball team ran the table. Should Gonzaga lose -- at the hands of the sport's second-best squad -- then they still should be considered among the greatest teams ever. Put them alongside the likes of 1991 UNLV, 1999 Duke and 2015 Kentucky as the best to not win a championship. Those were amazing teams and are still referred to as such.
We should do the same with Gonzaga, should Baylor become the first team in 36 games to knock off the Zags.
The stakes are as big as they could be for a title fight. It's the fifth national title game in men's history featuring the top two teams in the preseason poll (the most recent being 2001). It's also the first title game since 2005 that features the selection committee's top two seeds. Gonzaga and Baylor combine for two losses, which ties for the fewest (1957 and 1966) ever by two teams entering a title game.
Their combined .967 winning percentage is the highest in a title game. This is a blockbuster.
There is no shame in losing, should Gonzaga fall. Where exactly Gonzaga will rank can be saved for if they win one more game. From a data standpoint, they are going to have a claim as one of the five best teams ever. They are their sport's highest-scoring (91.6 points per game) and most efficient (127.2 offensive rating, according to KenPom) team.
They also enter Monday night's championship game as the most accurate 2-point shooting team in college hoops history (63.9%), and that will probably hold true even if Gonzaga has an off night.
If anything, the fact Gonzaga isn't reliant on 3-point shooting -- it makes a respectable 37% of is attempts beyond the arc, ranking a good-not-elite 42nd -- is even more impressive. This is not a team stuck in philosophies of yesteryear. The Bulldogs aren't allergic to shooting 3s. Instead, they have a knack for distribution, and how to swerve into transition. They beat you with layups after other teams' makes, and use their size, shooting smarts and surgical execution to carve away at your soul.
The split between Gonzaga (38.13) and Baylor (32.38) in KenPom's unbiased adjusted efficiency margin is 5.75 points. In statistical terms, this is enormous. The previous largest gap came in 2015, when Kentucky (36.91) was 3.18 points better than Wisconsin (33.72). Even still, Baylor is now comfortably 2.73 points ahead at KenPom on No. 3 Michigan.
This is a coronation Gonzaga has steadfastly been cresting toward for more than a half-decade. The program has won more than 30 games five years running. It's the only school to make at least the Sweet 16 in six consecutive tournaments, and its 20 wins in those tournaments is the most in the sport. Gonzaga's riding a 35-game winning streak, with 27 consecutive wins this season coming by double-digits -- the longest streak of its kind in six decades.
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