Michigan, UConn, Arizona and Illinois all descended on Indianapolis for the Final Four last weekend, with Dusty May\u2019s Wolverines clipping Dan Hurley\u2019s Huskies 69-63 on Monday in the national championship game.<\/p>\n
Back on Oct. 13, those four ranked No. 4 (UConn), No. 7 (Michigan), No. 13 (Arizona) and No. 17 (Illinois) in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 poll.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard enough to accurately pick the Top 25 two weeks before the regular season begins, let alone seven months earlier after the final buzzer sounds at the national championship game.<\/p>\n
Michigan players were still forming confetti angels Monday evening when dozens of media outlets released \u201cway-too-early\u201d 2026-27 college basketball rankings \u2013 many of which were compiled hours or days before the title game tipped off in downtown Indy.<\/p>\n
With no fewer than nine outgoing players, Gonzaga\u2019s roster is hardly complete just one week into April, but most outlets still figured Mark Few\u2019s team into the top 15 or top 20 of early rankings, reasoning the Zags will still be one of the top teams in the sport if three key contributors return next fall to play for the program\u2019s newly inducted Hall of Fame coach.<\/p>\n
Gonzaga is losing four players to graduation \u2013 five if Steele Venters is unable to obtain an eligibility waiver \u2013 and five others, including Venters, had already entered the transfer portal as of Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
The Zags could still be in better shape than most if they\u2019re able to retain a trio of rotation players from a team that won 31 games and captured West Coast Conference regular season and tournament championships.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Braden) Huff\u2019s ability to recover from the knee injury he suffered in January is the key to Gonzaga\u2019s success in the newly reconstituted Pac-12,\u201d wrote Hoops HQ\u2019s Seth Davis, who slotted the Zags in at No. 5 in his \u201cnever-too-early\u201d poll. \u201c(Davis) Fogle and (Mario) Saint-Supery had up-and-down freshman campaigns but should be headed for breakout seasons as sophomores. (Emmanuel) Innocenti announced his intention to transfer on Sunday, robbing Gonzaga of a valuable Glue Guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, much will hinge on the trio of Huff, Saint-Supery and Fogle, who contributed at different points of the year but didn\u2019t share the floor after Huff dislocated his kneecap in January. As of Tuesday, those three were also the only members of Gonzaga\u2019s rotation with eligibility remaining that hadn\u2019t entered the transfer portal.<\/p>\n
Among the outlets that released 2026-27 rankings, Hoops HQ was the highest on Gonzaga\u2019s potential while ESPN was on the low end, sliding the Zags in at No. 21.<\/p>\n
\u201cGraham Ike is out of eligibility, and two other starters are out the door, leaving coach Mark Few with as uncertain a roster as we\u2019ve seen in Spokane recently,\u201d ESPN\u2019s Jeff Borzello wrote.<\/p>\n
The Zags have a strong track record when it comes to the transfer portal, adding high-impact players such as Ike, Ryan Nembhard and others in recent years. Few and his coaching staff will no doubt be active in the portal in the coming weeks and months, but the Zags could get a boost from their incoming freshman class, consisting of German combo guard Jack Kayil, four-star wing Luca Foster and four-star center Luca Foster.<\/p>\n
\u201cJack Kayil will likely be one of the top international imports,\u201d wrote the Athletic\u2019s CJ Moore, who ranked Gonzaga No. 12. \u201cThe 20-year-old guard is currently averaging 11.6 points and 3.8 assists for Alba Berlin, one of the top professional teams in Germany. That\u2019s a really good addition, and I love the potential of the backcourt with Kayil and Mario Saint-Supery.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Zags also made appearances in way-too-early polls formulated by Sporting News (No. 9), FanDuel (No. 10), Sports Illustrated (No. 12), On3 (No. 13) and Bleacher Report (No. 19).<\/p>\n
Gonzaga\u2019s first opponent next fall, Purdue, can generally be found in the 10-20 range in way-too-early polls. Kentucky, which is slated to host the Zags at Rupp Arena for the fifth game in a six-year series between the schools, was ranked between 20-25 in a few polls but omitted from others. It\u2019s possible the highest-ranked team on GU\u2019s nonconference schedule will be Michigan State, which found itself in the top-10 of most \u201cway-too-early\u201d rankings.<\/p>\n
Gonzaga should experience a bump in competition when it joins the Pac-12 next season, but none of the Zags\u2019 eight new conference opponents appeared in the aforementioned top 25 polls. Jon Rothstein, who ranks 45 teams for FanDuel, slotted San Diego State in at No. 42.<\/p>\n
FanDuel\u2019s national championship odds list Duke (+700) as the current favorite to bring home a title next April, followed by 2026 champion Michigan (+750) and Arizona (+1200), which made the school\u2019s first Final Four in 25 years under former GU assistant Tommy Lloyd.<\/p>\n
Gonzaga (+3000) is tied with Virginia and ranked 14th among FanDuel\u2019s title favorites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michigan, UConn, Arizona and Illinois all descended on Indianapolis for the Final Four last weekend, with Dusty May\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,231,772,1544],"class_list":{"0":"post-704888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-basketball","12":"tag-ncaab"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116368174156944462","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}