SEATTLE – With Saturday’s result at Climate Pledge Arena, news that Gonzaga and UCLA would be adding a few extra chapters to their storied history on the basketball court may have landed differently with Bruins fans than it did with Zags fans.

Gonzaga’s 82-72 victory in downtown Seattle extended the school’s all-time series record to 8-3 against UCLA, giving Mark Few’s program its fifth victory in six games against Mick Cronin’s team.

Nevertheless, a report from CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein indicating the Zags and Bruins were closing in on another multiyear, neutral-site series should be music to the ears of college hoops fans who’ve followed one of the West Coast’s most compelling rivalries the last three decades.

Gonzaga and UCLA are still the only schools in the Pacific time zone with multiple Final Four appearances this century. The Zags and Bruins also represent two of the only three West Coast programs to make the third weekend of the NCAA Tournament within the last five years, accompanying San Diego State.

Rothstein’s report, which surfaced on social media before Saturday’s game, didn’t specify when the next nonleague series between Gonzaga and UCLA would begin, or where the games would be held, but Cronin confirmed the schools have held preliminary conversations about future matchups after the latest series culminated at Climate Pledge Arena.

“I don’t think it’s done, but I know (associate head coach) Darren (Savino) works on that stuff for me,” Cronin said. “I know it’s in the works.”

Gonzaga and UCLA have played a total of 11 times since the first matchup in 2000, but just three of the games have been held at campus sites. Nonleague games at venues like Climate Pledge Arena and the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, Calif., where last year’s GU-UCLA game was held, offer valuable revenue-earning opportunities that can’t be replicated when teams play on campus.

As schools enter the uncharted waters of student-athlete revenue sharing, identifying ways to raise money through nonconference scheduling continues to be a top priority.

“I try to do what’s best for UCLA basketball and right now, we’re all trying to raise money,” Cronin said. “Hence all the neutral ones, we’re not the only ones. Look around on this Saturday. Anybody add them up today? I’ll bet it was a lot. Kind of is what it is. But no, I would hope that would get done (with Gonzaga).”

Since a 2015 game at McCarthey Athletic Center, five of the last seven Gonzaga-UCLA meetings have been decided by two possessions, with three decided by three points. Although the Zags have come out on the right side more often than not, 27th-year coach Mark Few suggested he and his staff have had a number of sleepless nights preparing for Cronin’s teams, which tend to play with high intensity and unmatched physicality.

“It’s a tough game, you’re not like jumping for joy preparing for it,” Few said. “But it’s great for college basketball, I think it’s great for both programs.”

It was better for one than the other on Saturday.

Brawling with Bilodeau

One week before last year’s game in Southern California, UCLA forward Tyler Bilodeau matched his career-high with 26 points in a two-point loss to North Carolina. Bilodeau rightfully occupied one of the top spots on Gonzaga’s scouting report, but the former Kamiakin High School standout probably wouldn’t care to review his individual statistics from his first career encounter with Few’s team. Bilodeau scored just seven points on 2 of 10 shooting and committed three turnovers, but he happily settled for the trade-off of a 65-62 victory.

Saturday might as well have been the exact opposite. UCLA came out on the losing end, but the Bruins may have been buried much earlier had it not been for Bilodeau and his superb scoring efforts.

“It was a great matchup with Bilodeau,” Gonzaga forward Graham Ike said. “I knew I’d get a little more fight out of him this year.”

No kidding.

UCLA spent all night trying to cook up defensive solutions for Gonzaga’s Ike and Braden Huff. The Bruins came up empty-handed on the front, giving up 46 combined points to the Gonzaga duo. UCLA, meanwhile, continued to force-feed Bilodeau, perhaps hoping the senior could at least go bucket-for-bucket with Ike and Huff.

That plan eventually fizzled out, but not before Bilodeau scored 16 points in the first half on perfect 3-point (2 for 2) and free-throw (6 for 6) shooting. He picked up his second foul 25 feet from the hoop with a couple ticks remaining in the opening frame and played five fewer minutes in the second half, in part due to foul trouble. Bilodeau still added eight points in the second half to finish with 24 for the game, making 7 of 13 from the field, 4 of 6 from the 3-point line and 6 of 7 from the free -throw line.

“Kudos to him, he’s a great player, great team and he did some great things,” Ike said. “He tried to fight to keep them in the game, but it was a fun matchup at the end of the day.”

The Bruins often use Bilodeau at the “3,” playing him alongside forward Eric Dailey Jr. and center Xavier Booker, but the Billings, Montana, native who moved to Kennewick before high school played long stretches of Saturday’s game as a small-ball center. That was an effective look on the offensive end, but Bilodeau, similar to Dailey Jr. and Booker, had no such success dealing with Ike and Huff, a tandem Cronin characterized as the best scoring frontcourt in America.

“They’re both really good. We let them get to their strong hand, their left hand,” Bilodeau said. “They were able to capitalize on that, so we’ve got to be better there.”

Bluer the blood

After wins over Kentucky and UCLA the past two weeks, it’s worth revisiting Gonzaga’s recent track record against college basketball’s blue -blood schools.

Determining which schools qualify is up to one’s own interpretation. Programs like UConn, Villanova and possibly even Gonzaga meet the criteria now, but generally speaking, most associate the blue -blood label with a group of schools that consists of UCLA, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke and Indiana.

For our purposes we’ll stick with that pool, too.

Over the last decade, Gonzaga owns a 13-5 record against those six schools. The Zags are 5-1 against UCLA, 3-1 against Kentucky, 2-0 against Kansas, 1-0 against Indiana, 1-1 against Duke and 1-2 against North Carolina.

“Fortunately we’ve been lucky enough to come out on top,” Few said, speaking specifically of the UCLA series. “I think this is the biggest margin we’ve had in all of them, in quite some time.”

Double-digit point margins haven’t been the norm for Gonzaga against UCLA, but they have been for the 2025-26 Zags.

All 11 games up to this point have been decided by at least 10 points, including seven victories against power-conference opponents: Oklahoma (83-68), Creighton (90-63), Arizona State (77-65), Alabama (95-85), Maryland (100-61), Kentucky (94-59) and UCLA (82-72).

“We did a lot of great things tonight against a great team, a Hall of Fame coach,” Cronin said. “He should be.”