Nov. 1—Even in the offseason, college basketball coaches are inundated with recruiting calls, player evaluations, high school camps, summer workouts and other tasks that characterize the nonstop, 24/7/365 profession. There's not as much downtime as the average fan would think but it does exist, usually in small pockets.
On July 10, Gonzaga assistant Stephen Gentry used one such window to take his son, Gunnar, to a screening of "Monsters & Minions." The animated comedy wouldn't have been Gentry's first selection from the catalogue of motion pictures, but it was more about the father-son bonding time not always guaranteed to a college basketball assistant in 2026.
Ninety minutes you can't put a price on.
Ninety-ish, it turned out.
Midfilm, Gentry felt a buzz in his pocket. He ignored the initial phone call, but vibrations persisted. Subtly, Gentry slid the device out of his pocket and read the notification: "two missed calls from Mark Few." Probably should go see what that's about, he figured.
With Gunnar still locked in on "Monsters & Minions," Gentry left the theater and stepped into a hallway. He dialed Few and immediately learned why his boss was desperate to reach him, and on a Friday no less.
There had been whispers, murmurs about Mario Saint-Supery's potential exit from the program, but this was Gonzaga's coach formally delivering the news that would shake an offseason unlike any the Bulldogs have had since they planted their flag on the national stage three decades ago. In mid-July, after completing offseason workouts in Spokane and sitting in on Domantas Sabonis' jersey dedication ceremony just 24 hours earlier, Gonzaga's starting point guard was leaving to play for Spanish ACB club Valencia. The search to replace him might as well have started yesterday.
"I should've taken the phone call earlier," Gentry said. "What an awful movie."
Nearly 1,000 miles south, the longest-tenured member of Few's staff — and the man in line to replace Gonzaga's newly-minted Hall of Famer when he steps down — was handling one of those aforementioned offseason tasks. It was Friday morning and Brian Michaelson was roaming the Las Vegas Convention Center on a 110-degree day in Sin City, skipping from one court to the next inside the oversized conference hall-turned-bustling basketball venue. Gonzaga point guard commit Dooney Johnson and hundreds of high school prospects were competing at Nike EYBL AAU from July 8-13. Zags assistant Zach Norvell Jr. had been in the day prior for evaluations.
Friday's slate of EYBL games wrapped before Michaelson got wind of Saint-Supery's decision, but he was scheduled to return the next morning. It devolved into a chaotic Saturday — Michaelson juggling live evaluations at the convention center while simultaneously fielding phone calls from agents and high school/AAU coaches feeding him intel on replacement point guard options.
"I felt like that week, 10 days after that my phone was dead before lunch," Michaelson said. "Especially I remember that week in Vegas, truly trying to charge my phone wherever I possibly could for like a minute or two so I could get a little more."
Roughly a month later, Gentry was out at dinner with his wife, Leah, when he made the astute observation that Gonzaga's frenetic offseason, with extreme twists and turns seemingly every week, could probably be distilled into a non-fiction novel.
"I think we got up to nine, where I could write a book about the last nine weeks where it was just every week, it was something," Gentry said. "It was some sort of curveball with Jack (Kayil) and Mario. But I think in a lot of ways it really strengthened our staff and program. I think it just forced us to have our backs against the wall, forced us to communicate even more, to have even more of a plan.
"It's the old adage, the obstacle is the way."
----Many believed Saint-Supery was on the precipice of a breakout sophomore season. The savvy Spaniard navigated bumps as a freshman, but those were anticipated from someone making the often-difficult basketball and lifestyle transition from Europe to the U.S. at the age of 19.
Saint-Supery's closing stretch in 2025-26, coupled with the improvement those close to the program raved about through the early stages of the offseason, had coaches and teammates optimistic about what the point guard's next act could look like.
Add in expectations around the player projected to be Saint-Supery's running mate. Last November, Gonzaga signed prized German prospect and 19-year-old Alba Berlin pro Jack Kayil, a combo guard they figured would pair seamlessly with Saint-Supery in the starting lineup and handle on-ball responsibilities when the Spaniard was on the bench.
The running theory was Kayil would test NBA draft waters, attend the combine, collect feedback from NBA workouts and ultimately withdraw his name to play in college. Some mock drafts had Kayil pegged higher than others, but the consensus was he was a second-round prospect who still needed to fill out his frame and improve on the defensive end — two of the reasons a young prospect might choose to spend multiple years at Gonzaga.
Instead, the outcome with the lowest odds prevailed. Kayil, who reportedly got first-round NBA feedback, kept his name in the draft and went No. 39 overall (ninth pick of the second round) to the Houston Rockets, who traded him to the New York Knicks on draft night. Without a roster spot available, the reigning NBA champions declined to designate Kayil to the G League and instead stashed the guard in Europe. In August, he returned to Alba Berlin on a five-year contract.
"I think any college coach you talk to would say offseasons have been crazy and hectic ... I think ours was probably exacerbated by the two guys we felt last spring when you and I would've talked were going to be our starting backcourt," Michaelson said, characterizing their departures as "fairly late in the cycle," and "definitely after the transfer portal, right?"
By the time Saint-Supery visited Gonzaga's coaching offices on July 11 to meet with Gentry before returning to Spain — "a good chat, but also you can't relish on it," the sixth-year assistant said — Few's staff had already started assembling names, with limited avenues available to them.
Bubbling with options in the spring, the transfer portal had become desolate by the middle of the summer. College basketball players have a three-week period from April 7-21 to submit their names in the portal, but top-end transfers often have a destination in mind before the window opens and make their choice by the end of the month. Case in point, Gonzaga's top portal targets, guard Isiah Harwell (Houston) and center Massamba Diop (Arizona State), announced commitments on April 12 and 29, respectively.
There's typically a few stragglers in May and early June, "but once you get past that, the options aren't as plentiful and they're not as straightforward," Michaelson said.
And, mind you, this was July 11.
Right around the same time, a handful of college athletes, coaches and agents started kicking the tires on a new idea. The NCAA had recently introduced its 5-in-5 eligibility model. Five years to play as many seasons as you can squeeze into that firm window. Every class moving forward would benefit, but the NCAA took a hard stance on the high school class of 2022, asserting last year's seniors would not be grandfathered in.
It rubbed some the wrong way, particularly in a climate where highly compensated college basketball players can earn more from revenue sharing and name, image and likeness in a single season than they might over five years in the G League or overseas. The high school classes of 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 would capitalize from 5-in-5. The class of 2021 had a one-time waiver to play five seasons due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Why should 2022 be excluded?
"It's really unfortunate they're taking this stance," Few said after Kraziness in the Kennel last month. "Classes before all these guys have gotten five, six, seven years. Now with our new rule, the classes after them. So I'm not sure why we're sticking to targeting this one specific group."
On July 9, one day before Saint-Supery's defection, an all-conference point guard from Dayton named Javon Bennett was listed among the plaintiffs in the first of many lawsuits filed against the NCAA from class of 2022 graduates seeking relief. A judge ruled in favor of Bennett and others, granting an injunction that cleared the group to pursue a fifth year of eligibility.
With a new door opened and, in many ways, a new life extended to Gonzaga's coaching staff, Few's assistants started drafting lists. They'd assign players to "buckets," determining which ones might be the best fit from a system and culture fit, but also which ones were most likely to make it through the legal process to suit up in 2026-27.
"We made a bunch of buckets of potential routes to go, potential avenues, and we knew nothing about the possible fifth-year bucket on that day one," Michaelson said. "But it was a bucket that had to be discussed."
Nobody on Few's staff carries a Juris Doctor diploma in their back pocket, but Gonzaga's coaches had to be somewhat versed in the legal terminology and ongoing court procedures to assess which players had the best chance of earning injunctions and temporary restraining orders. Semi-educated throws at the dartboard, more than anything else.
"We did have to try to — I'm far from an expert — become somewhat knowledgeable with what might happen, what could happen, different routes of that," Michaelson said.
Michaelson continued to phone agents, AAU coaches, high school coaches and others to discuss options, ideally looking for players who could meet all six of his designated check marks, but at least four or five of them.
"You probably need to lean on the guy that has six check marks, not the guy that has one," he said. "Hey, this guy's got three. This (other) guy has three, but three different ones. Which three do we like better? The public's seeing it play out now. It was really, really complicated and we're still dealing with that on a day-to-day basis."
The result? Gonzaga picked up commitments from two fifth-year point guards — Bennett and Florida's Xaivian Lee — to fill the Saint-Supery/Kayil voids and one wing, Florida State's Chauncey Wiggins, who'd bring elite outside shooting and size on the perimeter.
Three months later, there's still not a firm answer as to whether all three, none of the three or some combination of the three will be eligible by the time Gonzaga opens its inaugural Pac-12 Conference schedule in January.
Recent court decisions allowed Lee, who has an injunction in California, and Bennett, who's eligible through a stay from the Ohio Supreme Court, to suit up in Gonzaga's preseason exhibitions while Wiggins was forced to sit out after a verdict in his Georgia lawsuit. The situation remains fluid with the effect unclear for Gonzaga. All three players could be one legal ruling from getting a green light to play the rest of the season, or from returning their Gonzaga uniforms and spending the next five months on the sideline.
Coaches, pundits and sports lawyers who've closely monitored the cases are bracing for a reality where certain fifth-year seniors are able to play in 2026-27 and others aren't, solely based off how judges in different jurisdictions view the situation.
"Credit to them, I don't know how they do it every day coming in, putting the work in, just keeping their heads down when some of them don't even know if they're going to be eligible," sophomore forward Parker Jefferson said. "It's a big credit to them, it's a credit to the culture we have here."
The next few chapters of the novel Gonzaga started writing in the offseason could be even more compelling than the first ones.
The Zags open the season Monday with a high-caliber showdown against Purdue in Las Vegas (4:30 p.m., TNT). Fans should probably buckle up for a season where Gonzaga's starting unit changes night-to-night, week-to-week or month-to-month depending on how court rulings shake out. Bennett's eligibility status, for example, has already flipped three times and could change again. Few and other coaches have pressed the NCAA to extend a blanket waiver to the class of 2022, but the regulatory body hasn't budged since making its initial stance.
Gonzaga's coaches are ready to leave a chaotic offseason in the rearview mirror, but they also insist they're better off from the unique circumstances the last seven months lobbed their way — often multiple at a time and sometimes on the same day. Their roster may be better off, too.
"I think it really strengthened our staff and our program in a lot of ways and obviously we're still navigating those curveballs and everything but I think golly, we upgraded at so many spots this offseason which is amazing to think with the curveballs and the situations we were in," Gentry said. "But we feel like we totally upgraded at guard spots and actually came out of this with a better, stronger roster. We think not only the pieces individually upgraded, but I think the pieces fit together extremely well."
It should make for a thrilling story, or novel, or movie. At least one Gentry will be happy to watch all the way through the final credits.
