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Gonzaga eyes the big-time as team gears up for hoops

Before jetting east for a first appearance on the Broadway stage, Mark Few and Gonzaga University were dotting i's and crossing t's, preparing to announce the signing of three prize recruits. The most celebrated David of college basketball is apparently experimenting with growth hormones, with becoming a national Goliath.

"These kids are ranked top 50 to top 100, with all the big schools beating down on them, and when we announce it, people will see how our success has impacted on our recruiting," Few said by telephone from the Gonzaga campus in Spokane, Washington, where a new field house -- albeit one of modest size -- is going up.

Growth, a tricky concept, can breed expansion, temptation and, when good sense goes the way of the two-hand set shot, conflagration. Under Few, 41, who is beginning his fifth season as the Bulldogs' coach and his 14th on their basketball staff, Gonzaga (enrollment 5,400) has compiled a robust 105-29 record and has twice landed in the Round of 16 of the NCAA. tournament. Now comes an existential crossroad: must Gonzaga inevitably grow from, in Few's words, "a team that wrecks your tournament bracket" to one that rolls into March with enough talent to win it all?

Ranked 10th in the Associated Press preseason poll, Gonzaga has already made it to the Madison Square Garden marquee, matched against St. Joseph's on Friday night as the college season begins locally Thursday night and Friday with the Coaches versus Cancer Classic.

New season notwithstanding, the sport is still stinging from the multiplicity of last spring's -- let's be diplomatic -- situations. Embroiled in controversies ranging from the standard student-athlete myopia to a sad and shocking murder, college basketball has become more than ever a lightning rod for sports ethicists everywhere.

Just last month, 300-plus coaches, Mark Few among them, left the comfort of their campuses to gather under the banner of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, promising to recite heartfelt pledges and raise serious questions. In Few's earnest opinion, the most pertinent of them all was rhetorical: What are we doing here in the first place?

"I was one of the people who thought we were overreacting by having a meeting," he said. "I just thought going in and coming out that college basketball is in great shape. We had a few incidents that came up at the same time, but to do something like have a meeting, you give off the indication that it's everybody."

Whether you've spent the last decade breathing the fresh, scandal-free air of eastern Washington or whether you've been near the stench of a program built on lies and neglect, it is virtually impossible to quantify the pervasiveness of serious impropriety, and it is unfair to blanket everyone with blame. Conversely, it is dangerously naive to assume that only those who are caught are the ones stretching the margins of decency in the chase for that career-defining moment.

Few's team may have what he calls a "cultlike following," thanks to Gonzaga's well-earned reputation as the little program that could, but Jim Boeheim of Syracuse is the current coaching kingpin, thanks to the one-year commitment from a fond memory named Carmelo. Without suggesting that Syracuse did anything more than recruit a great player, its national championship last spring only reinforces the wisdom of the quick hit, the shortcut, as a viable road to the Final Four.
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