It isn’t just that it’s been 45 years since the last clean sheet. That’s amazing enough. Forty-five years ago the Indiana Hoosiers of Scott May and Kent Benson and Quinn Buckner — and a boss named Bob Knight — played 32 games and won 32 games. It capped a two-year stretch where the Hoosiers went 63-1.
More remarkable is that in the 82 years and 81 NCAA Tournaments since the first one in 1939, only seven champions have gone undefeated. And since UCLA is responsible for four of those — 1964, 1967, 1972 and 1973 — only four schools — four! — have done it.
Bill Russell’s San Francisco Dons were first, rolling up a 29-0 mark in 1955-56. North Carolina duplicated the feat a year later, Frank McGuire’s team going 32-for-32. Then UCLA, four times in 10 years. And then Indiana.
It is a reminder of precisely what the Gonzaga Bulldogs are trying to do in this most unusual college basketball season. Mark Few’s Zags improved to 28-0 on the season by holding off an early Oklahoma surge and then running the Sooners clear out of Hinkle Fieldhouse, 87-71.
“It feels good to go to the Sweet 16!” Gonzaga’s 6-foot-10 sophomore Drew Timme gushed when the damage was done, when the Zags qualified for their sixth straight Sweet 16. It may sound like a pretty disingenuous reaction from a team that wins so much.
But then Few replaced Timme in the Zoom room and had clearly been given an Aquafina shower by his players since he was drenched from head to toe. This is who the Zags are. Maybe it also explains why they are.
“We’re going to celebrate every win, and if we’re fortunate to win another game we’ll celebrate that, too,” Few said. “This whole tournament needs to be celebrated.”
The Zags know they have the largest targets on their backs and they’ve seen the way the tournament has played out across the first five days, so many double-digit seeds advancing, a 15 seed taking a spot in the 16. If they needed the reminder that in a one-and-done an off night delivers dire consequences, there have been plenty.
“We’ve seen the games going on,” said Timme, who scored 30 points and grabbed 13 rebounds and went 12-for-14 from the foul line. “It’s March and anything can happen. We treat it like we’re the 16 every game every time out because all it takes is one game and your season can be gone.”
Added Few: “There are just a lot of good teams out there and when you’re playing just one game and not a seven-game series? Anything can happen and usually does. You give a good coach time to prepare, and maybe someone you never heard of gets hot. You see it every day in this tournament.”
It just hasn’t happened to Gonzaga, yet, in this 28-game dream ride of a season that now sits two wins away from the program’s second Final Four in five years, and four away from joining San Francisco, North Carolina, UCLA and Indiana among the select group of perfectos.