Gonzaga basketball: The perpetual cinderella

The history of the gonzaga basketball goes back many decades, but for most people - even avid fans - they were a total unknown until the 1999 NCAA Tournament. In that particular competition they captivated the country, making it all the way to the Elite Eight and then giving eventual national champions the University of Connecticut all they could handle before succumbing in the last several minutes. But even in defeat the gonzaga basketball team put themselves on the map, and now, more than a decade later, they are still in the top twenty five, a yearly force to be reckoned with.

The history of gonzaga basketball is long and storied. They first played competitively over 100 years ago, back in 1908. They went through fourteen different coaches in their first twenty five yeras, and none of those coaches won even fifty games. The first gonzaga basketball to make a lasting impression was Claude McGrath, who took over in 1933 and remained as head coach until 1942. He returned after World War II, coaching the Zags (or the Bulldogs, which is their official nickname) until 1949, and became the first gonzaga basketball head coach to win at least 100 games.

Their next successful coach was Hank Anderson, who compiled 290 wins from 1951 until 1972. After a six year interim, they found another top coach in Dan Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald, like McGrath, coached the Zags two different times. His first stint was from 1978 til 1981, and his second was from 1985 until 1997. McGrath is considered the godfather of gonzaga basketball, and was the first coach to lead the Zags to the NCAA tournament. They earned a 14 seed in the 1995 tourney and were defeated by the University of Maryland of the high powered Atlantic Coast Conference.

Ironically, gonzaga basketball best known product, hall of famer John Stockton, played for the Zags in the four year period between Fitzgerald’s two tenures. Stockton is still the best and most famous player to have ever suited up for the gonzaga basketball team, and is widely regarded as one of the five best point guards ever to have played the game.

When Fitzgerald retired in 1997 to become Athletic Director, he hired protege Dan Monson to take over the gonzaga basketball team. Monson paid off on that trust with the 1999 Elite Eight run, but then he himself left to become head coach at the University of Minnesota.

Monson was replaced by assistant coach Mark Few, and Few is still the head man at Gonzaga today. He’s on pace to win 300 games as early as 2011, and will take over from Anderson as the all-time winningest gonzaga basketball coach just before then.

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