Best and worst NCAA Tournament seeding scenarios for Gonzaga on Selection Sunday

One final trip to the Orleans Arena for the WCC Tournament is all that stands between the Gonzaga Bulldogs and Selection Sunday, but where they will land in the NCAA Tournament is far from determined.

Once you get past the top three teams in college basketball - Duke, Arizona, and Michigan - there is a huge swatch of programs moving up and down the bracket on a daily basis.

On Tuesday alone, four teams widely projected as top-five seeds took losses to unranked opponents, with Nebraska falling to UCLA, Kansas falling at Arizona State, Alabama losing at Georgia, and Texas Tech taking a brutal home loss to TCU.

That means things could change quite a bit for Gonzaga's projected NCAA Tournament seed over the next four days - before the team even hits the floor again in the WCC Tournament semifinals.

Gonzaga will face one of Oregon State, San Francisco, Washington State, Portland, or Pepperdine on Monday at 6:00 PM PT. Portland and Pepperdine square off in the first round on Thursday at 6:00 PM, with the winner set to play Washington State on Friday.

That game will be either Quad 3 (Oregon St, San Francisco, or WSU) or Quad 4 (Portland or Pepperdine) for Gonzaga, while a projected championship matchup against either Saint Mary's or Santa Clara would be Quad 1.

With so much movement among the projected No. 2-5 seeds, and Gonzaga's injury issues leading to a higher-than-usual variance of outcomes next week, it's hard to pin down exactly where Few's team will land on Selection Sunday.

Here is a look at the projected best and worst case scenarios:

Best Case: No. 2 Seed

Winning the WCC championship - ideally in a convincing fashion - would give Gonzaga a 30-3 record heading into Selection Sunday. Gonzaga has gone into the NCAA Tournament with three or fewer losses eight total times in the Mark Few era. Five of those years they earned a No. 1 seed, while they grabbed a No. 2 seed in 2015 and a No. 3 seed in 2006.

The lone time they were lower than that was way back in 2002, when they were a No. 6 seed - long before the program had been established as a national powerhouse.

Of course, none of those seasons featured a loss as bad as Gonzaga's defeat this year at the hands of Portland - or as lopsided as the 40-point massacre at the hands of Michigan. In fact, the margin of defeat in every regular season loss from 2005-06, 2012-13, 2014-15, and 2016-17 combined is...41.

But Gonzaga's win equity this year is certainly notable - and it continues to improve. While Alabama's loss to Georgia on Tuesday wasn't great, the fact that Arizona State and UCLA both knocked off top-15 teams, while Oklahoma blasted a projected NCAA Tournament team in Missouri by 16, certainly helped bolster what is already a very solid strength of schedule.

As of this writing, Gonzaga sits No. 6 in the NET with a 6-2 record in Quad 1 games and 11-2 combined Quad 1 and Quad 2. The Zags are also No. 11 at KenPom and in Wins Above Bubble, or WAB, which is among the most referenced data points by the Selection Committee.

That resume doesn't scream No. 2 seed necessarily, but winning out would likely put the Zags at 7-2 in Quad 1 games, and could land them inside the top five of the NET and top 10 at both KenPom and WAB.

That alone probably doesn't put Gonzaga on the No. 2 line, but if teams like Texas Tech, Kansas, Iowa State, and Illinois keep losing, it remains a distinct - albeit slight - possibility.

Gonzaga winning out and getting a healthy Jalen Warley back in the mix, combined with a positive update on Braden Huff, is the best-case scenario leading into Selection Sunday. It still is likely to result in a No. 3 seed for the Zags, but at least opens up the possibility of a No. 2 for just the third time in school history.

Worst Case: 6 Seed

Gonzaga has not missed the WCC championship game since 1997, an extraordinary feat that is discussed far less often than it should be. Mark Few's team should keep that streak alive in 2026, especially since they earned the No. 1 seed and therefore don't have to face Saint Mary's or Santa Clara in the semifinals.

Still, the injury to Warley and the continued absence of Huff do make this team more vulnerable than usual. Gonzaga losing to any of these teams would be a big ding on their resume, as it would not only hand them a Quad 3 (or Quad 4, if Portland or Pepperdine pull off a miracle) loss, but it would deny them the opportunity to add a Quad 1 win via the championship game.

While this feels quite unlikely, falling to Oregon State or San Francisco would put Gonzaga at 28-4 overall, with two of those being Quad 3 losses. It would take a reckoning of nearly every other team in the 3-5 seed range for Gonzaga to stick around the No. 4 seed territory, and it wouldn't be a shock if that knocked them all the way down to a No. 6 - especially if the team was without Warley and Huff, and was not expected to have them back for the first round games.

Projected Outcome

If we assume Gonzaga will win on Wednesday and will face either Saint Mary's or Santa Clara on Tuesday, the range of outcomes for Gonzaga thins out a bit. A loss to either SMC or SCU results in a 29-4 Gonzaga team that is very strong in the metrics. Still, the Zags would basically be guaranteed to miss the No. 2 line, and a No. 3 seed would be extremely, extremely unlikely.

The most likely outcome here is a No. 4 seed, while a win in the championship game most likely leads to a No. 3 seed.

Obviously, other results around the country could change these projections by Monday, but right now it feels safe to expect coach Few's team to be either a No. 3 or No. 4 seed on Selection Sunday.

The difference may seem minute, but with the talented crop of No. 1 seeds this year it is worth rooting hard for Gonzaga to end up on the three line - where a matchup with a No. 2 seed and a path to the Elite Eight feels far more attainable.