Gonzaga set to face North Carolina in title game

For those who follow college basketball, the idea that Gonzaga is playing North Carolina for the national title doesn’t seem all that strange.

The biggest drawback some other schools have is that someone in that hierarchy says, ‘We can’t do that,’ or ‘We can never be like ...’

In the mid-1990s, Gonzaga was a nothing program, an afterthought in the WCC with a dandy of mascot, the Bulldog, that wore a sailor’s cap.

Dan Monson, a longtime assistant coach, got the top job and put some other pieces in place.

When we first started coaching, our boss, Dan Fitzgerald, would always say, ‘Don’t waste the school’s money on (recruiting) a Pac-10 player.

A 6,000-seat arena opened in 2004, and at around the same time, Gonzaga became the first WCC school to charter flights to all its road games.