Why Santa Clara’s game against Gonzaga might be its biggest in decades

Marlon Garnett played 14 seasons of international basketball, worked nine years as an NBA assistant coach and currently helps coach a team in the Baloncesto Superior Nacional, Puerto Rico’s professional league.

Now 50, Garnett was a junior at Santa Clara and Steve Nash’s backcourt mate when the Broncos most recently made it to the NCAA tournament in 1996.

Three decades later, Garnett is excited by the prospect that his alma mater could get back to the Big Dance. At 22-5, the Broncos are off to their best start since the 1969-70 season. They sit atop the West Coast Conference with a 13-1 mark.

On Saturday night, they put their nine-game win streak and 13-0 home record on the line against 12th-ranked Gonzaga (24-2, 12-1) at the Leavey Center. Tipoff for the ESPN matchup and Santa Clara’s biggest game in years — maybe decades? — is at 7:30 p.m.

For Garnett, who was the West Coast Conference Player of the Year as a senior in 1997, this is a long time coming. “It’s been an impressive run this year. It’s really refreshing to see,” he said. “They’re basically on the brink of a historic season with that record.”

Garnett and many of his former Broncos teammates maintain a text thread, and these days there is a lot of chatter about the old school, led in scoring by 40 percent 3-point shooter Christian Hammond.

“We’re kind of following it day by day to see where they’re going,” Garnett said. “They’re making it as difficult as they can for (the NCAA selection committee) with the stretch they’ve been on.”

ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi currently has three WCC teams in his projected NCAA field: Gonzaga as a No. 4 seed, Saint Mary’s (22-4, 11-2) at No. 10 and Santa Clara as No. 11.

Lunardi is impressed by the team coach Herb Sendek has put together. The Broncos are riding their longest win streak in 31 years and boast a solid No. 41 NET ranking.

“I’m not sure this is the most talent he’s had — I mean, he’s had NBA players,” Lunardi said, referring to ex-Broncos Jalen Williams and Brandin Podziemski. “But for some reason, they seem to be greater than the sum of the parts.”

Aside from Hammond, Santa Clara’s roster includes a pair of freshmen — Allen Graves and Sash Gavalyugov — who combine for 20 points per game. The 6-foot-9 Graves also leads the Broncos with an average of 7 rebounds, and senior forward Elijah Mahi is second in scoring and third in rebounding among the nine players who see double-digit minutes each night.

Sendek won’t compare one team to another, but said this squad has plenty of talent and praised his players for giving consistently great effort, playing together and maintaining a good attitude. “They have a good set of intangibles,” he said.

Beyond that, he declines to address where his team fits into the NCAA picture. “Really, we just have to let the season play out. There’s still so much basketball left to play. It doesn’t serve us any purpose to go there.”

The Broncos’ resume has just one “bad loss,” an 80-78 neutral-site defeat to Loyola Chicago, which is 6-19 record with No. 310 slot in the NET computer rankings.

Otherwise, their record is impressive, including a road triumph at Xavier. “They’re better than Xavier but nobody wins there outside the Big East,” Lunardi said. “So I’m feeling good about them.”

The Broncos also beat Saint Mary’s 62-54 at Leavey last month, just their fifth win in the past 33 meetings in the century-old rivalry.

“For better or worse, Saint Mary’s has owned them, even when Santa Clara’s been good enough,” Lunardi said. “For them to break through and win that game this year, I thought, was significant for Santa Clara and for the league.”

But the job isn’t finished. To boost their NCAA chances, Lunardi believes the Broncos probably need one more big WCC victory — either Saturday night over the Zags, on Feb. 25 against Saint Mary’s in Moraga, or at the conference tournament in Las Vegas.

Gonzaga beat the Broncos 89-77 at Spokane in early January, powered by 34 points from forward Graham Ike. “If anything, he’s taken it to a whole other stratosphere,” said Sendek, alluding to the 6-foot-9 senior averaging 27.7 points over the past six games. “He’s got to be playing as well as most anyone in college basketball right now.”

Lunardi won’t bet against the WCC landing three NCAA bids for the first time since 2022.

“I would say a little less than 50-50, but not much. More things have to go right than go wrong, but it sets up that they can,” he said. “It could also be that the (WCC tournament) semifinals between Saint Mary’s and Santa Clara, if it comes to that, will be essentially an elimination game because they’re both right there.”