Mid-major Basketball: 5 biggest takeaways from 2019 recruiting classes

1. Gonzaga becomes a recruiting juggernaut in their own way

For the longest time, Mark Few and Gonzaga have long struggled to find a true recruiting pipeline within the United States of America. States out on the west coast such as California and Oregon have been struggles as those players tend to look down on the WCC compared to the Pac-12. And the city of Seattle and their recruits have typically been hostile to the Bulldogs in favor of rival Washington.

It’s usually been a mixture of transfers and under the radar players through the country combined with developing them into future stars. They look to do the same with arguably the best overall class in program history. There’s a quartet of incoming four-star recruits ranked in the top-80 overall, led by Anton Watson and Drew Timme.

Clearly, the Bulldogs were anticipating the loss of multiple frontcourt players from this past season, bringing in three centers and having the ability to redshirt at least one of them. That includes a pair of foreigners in Oumar Ballo from Mali and Pavel Zakharov from Russia. And along with Watson, Gonzaga made sure to clean up on the eastern side of the state of Washington with the commitment of three-star combo guard Brock Ravet.

This program will still land transfers as well as target the best international prospects. And the early parts of the 2020 class show that they’re finally making inroads in the state of California. This is what happens when you make the Sweet 16 five straight seasons, currently the best active streak. The last thing left to do is land a five-star recruit straight out of high school.

If you follow Gonzaga Basketball recruiting, that may come very soon.