Gonzaga Preseason Favorite for College Basketball

This has been a wild year for sports; all sports were cancelled and suspended for handful of months, the NBA vacationed in Walt Disney World for the NBA Finals, cardboard cutouts are now season pass holders, and I found myself watching a lot of NASCAR (for lack of any other option).

Add to the list: Gonzaga is the Preseason #1 for the NCAA 2020-21 basketball season, according to the AP Top 25 posted on November 9th.

This is the first time the Zags have opened up the season ranked #1, and it has probably never happened before for good reason. They finished last season (prior to the COVID suspension) ranked #2, sitting at #1 for four straight weeks during the season. Their stiffest conference competition is BYU, who took down the #2 Zags 91-78 in a late-February matchup, when the last coat of buff is (ideally) supposed to be applied to any team.

Personally, I don't think a West Coast Conference team should even be considered for any ranking over 10. Gonzaga is a team that year-after-year glides through a laughable conference schedule, makes it to the NCAA Tournament as a high-seeded team, and inevitably exits in a mid-tournament round, at best. It is no coincidence they are still searching for their first National Championship banner.

The rest of the AP Top 10 are as follows:

1. Gonzaga
2. Baylor
3. Villanova
4. Virginia
5. Iowa
6. Kansas
7. Wisconsin
8. Illinois
9. Duke
10. Kentucky

Looking at that list of teams, it is beyond me how some people decided that Gonzaga was going to be 1st. The Zags lost their leading scorer, Filiip Petrusev, who left Gonzaga to go play professionally in Serbia, hoping to enter the draft later. That alone speaks to Gonzaga's subpar nature; their best player left the school to play overseas in order to become draft-ready. 

This is going to be an interesting season for college basketball, just as it has been interesting for all sports. I am curious to see how COVID will affect the play of student athletes; near-empty stadiums, strict practice guidelines being translated to true-game experience, incoming freshman receiving a strange freshman season, etc. There is an abundance of factors to make this season strange. 

Maybe the AP thought it would be funny to foreshadow how strange the season would be by throwing Gonzaga to #1? Fortunately for us, Gonzaga's first matchup as #1 will be against #2 Baylor on December 5th before opening up conference play with a riveting WCC matchup against San Francisco.