Fire Mark Few? Social media loses its mind after Gonzaga falls to Texas in NCAA Tournament | Commentary

Spokane, WA — Within minutes of Gonzaga’s 70-66 Round-of-32 loss to Texas on Saturday, a FanDuel tweet lit the match: “Should Gonzaga fire Mark Few?” The reaction was swift, loud, and—according to anyone who has followed college basketball this century—absurd.

Few has guided the Bulldogs to 27 consecutive NCAA tournaments and nine Sweet 16s in the past 11 years. Over the last decade, no program owns more March victories than Gonzaga’s 28, a total that eclipses blue-blood brands Kansas, Duke, and Kentucky. Yet the Zags’ third seed and early exit were enough to turn Twitter into a digital kangaroo court.

Kansas-centric account @RockChalkBlog, followed by 23,000 users, typified the pile-on: “Another year where Gonzaga boatraces a swath of crap in the WCC, racks up lots of wins, gets a bloated seed, and comes up short in the NCAA tournament. It’s never happening for Mark Few, ever.”

The facts suggest otherwise. Gonzaga finished 30-3, defeated eight Power-Four opponents, and beat three teams that advanced out of the tournament’s first round. The West Coast Conference placed three schools in the field, and Santa Clara—one of those supposed “cupcakes”—had Kentucky on the ropes until a last-second half-court heave. The Bulldogs checked in at No. 7 in the NCAA’s NET metric, and a season-long injury to second-leading scorer Braden Huff likely cost them a No. 2 seed.

Historical context also undercuts the critique. Gonzaga is 2-0 versus Kansas in the past five seasons, including an 89-68 thrashing of the fourth-seeded Jayhawks in the 2024 NCAA event.

Former ESPN analyst Darren Rovell offered a different angle to his 1.8 million followers, suggesting the Bulldogs’ relevance was an “anomaly” that name-image-likeness money would erase. Since NIL’s 2021 arrival, however, Gonzaga has produced an Elite Eight and two Sweet 16s—hardly a program poised to cede ground to the next High Point.

Critics from NBA meme pages, Missouri radio hosts, and Seattle sport-talkers joined the chorus, but none could explain how a Jesuit school in Spokane with no football bowl budget keeps outrunning most of the nation. The answer remains Mark Few, whose nearly three-decade tenure provides the continuity that modern mid-majors almost never achieve.

As Gonzaga prepares for its move into the restructured Pac-12—where it will devote the bulk of its resources to basketball while future league mates subsidize football—the path to a 28th straight tournament berth looks more probable than another early exit.

Zags backers, the message is simple: let the timeline rage. History, metrics, and the roster returning in 2025 all say Few’s program will be back in the second weekend sooner than the detractors think.

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