Gonzaga WCC opponent preview: Can Saint Mary’s overtake the Zags again?

It’s quite fitting the top two programs in the West Coast Conference are led by the league’s longest-tenured head coaches.

While Mark Few has Gonzaga in the national limelight year after year, Randy Bennett has completely turned around the Saint Mary’s men’s basketball program over the last 23 years at the helm. The Gaels were 2-27 under Dave Bollwinkel the year before Bennett took the reins in 2001. Since then, Saint Mary’s has finished with 25 or more wins in 14 seasons and has appeared in 10 NCAA Tournaments, including four of the last five (would’ve been five of the last six if it wasn’t for a global pandemic).

“Because coach Bennett's been here for 23 years, you have a lot of continuity with the way things are done,” Saint Mary’s associate head coach Mickey McConnell told Gonzaga on SI back in October. “The way we do our preseason, our offseason, the type of guys we recruit; a lot of that stuff is just so built in and ingrained now that if you can keep your players and return enough guys, they help to kind of continue on with that culture. And it kind of goes from one group of seniors to the next.”

In a world where student-athletes can make six to seven figures annually through NIL opportunities, Bennett and company’s big selling points to bring recruits into Moraga, California, is the program’s consistency and stability. Saint Mary’s has been to 17 straight postseasons between the NCAA Tournament and NIT, which trails only Gonzaga, Michigan State and Kansas for the longest active postseason streak in the country. In that span, the Gaels have won at least a share of the WCC regular-season title five times and have claimed the league’s conference tournament championship four times — not too shabby considering they share the league with Few and the Zags.

That being said, consistency doesn’t necessarily mean everything is static. A key ingredient to the Gaels’ winning ways has been their head coach’s willingness to make slight tweaks to his style of play over the years to fit what best suits the players he has readily available.

“[Bennett’s] seen a lot of change throughout the years, but he's willing to adapt,” McConnell said. “Just kind of little tweaks here and there, but also keeping the same program concepts about how we want to play, the type of shots we want to shoot, playing unselfish … I think those consistent values are there, but he’s willing to adapt to, all right, we have guys that can shoot, can’t shoot; he has a unique ability to kind of feel out what each team's strengths are.”

Bennett’s sixth sense will surely come in handy as the Gaels prepare to defend their WCC crown without three of their five starters from last season’s squad. Two-time All-WCC guard Aidan Mahaney left his nearby hometown to play for Dan Hurley at UConn, while 6-foot-8 forward Joshua Jefferson went to Iowa State. Sharpshooting wing Alex Ducas has graduated and is currently carving out an NBA career for himself with the Oklahoma City Thunder, leaving a massive void for Saint Mary’s to fill in regard to Ducas’ versatility and veteran leadership.

“[Mahaney and Jefferson] were great for us the past two years,” McConnell said. “But I think the beauty of Saint Mary's and having the consistency of the head coach being here for so long, is guys just have to step into new roles. And that’s how it's been since day one.”

Here’s an in-depth look at who might step up for Saint Mary’s this season, as well as the returners and newcomers at each position.

GUARDS:

The Gaels’ methodical pick-and-roll offense relies heavily on 6-foot-4 senior Augustas Marčiulionis, a crafty Lithuanian guard who can score from inside and out. Though he wasn’t known to fill up the scoring column on a night-to-night basis, Marčiulionis’ ability to come through in crunch time for the Gaels earned him WCC Player of the Year honors as a junior last season. Combined with Mahaney’s shotmaking, the starting backcourt for Saint Mary’s made for quite a tandem with their complementary skill sets.

With Mahaney now in Storrs, Connecticut, 6-foot-3 Jordan Ross has stepped into a starting role in the lineup. The only true freshman on the roster last season, Ross averaged less than 6 minutes off the bench in 28 appearances. In 22 starts as a sophomore, he's played 26.2 minutes while scoring 9.1 points per game. His backcourt mate Marciulionis is putting up similar numbers to what he did last season, as he leads the team with 13.6 points and 5.7 assists per game.

“He has a great feel, so he can compliment Augustus and Augustus can complement him,” McConnell said of Ross. “They're both guards that are going to want to play with the ball in their hands and the way that our offense has always been structured is play with two guards that can create and play in pick and rolls."

McConnell compared the Gaels’ current backcourt situation to when he was a player for Bennett and Saint Mary’s had to replace its star point guard at the time, Patty Mills, after he went to the NBA following his sophomore year in 2009. Fortunately, a freshman by the name of Matthew Dellavedova, a 6-foot-4 Aussie who was tough as nails, came in and picked up right where his predecessor left off as he guided the program to its first Sweet 16 in over 50 years in his first year at the helm.

The Gaels couldn't have expected their latest recruit, 6-foot-3 guard Mikey Lewis, to come in and have the same level of impact as the aforementioned NBA guards did right off the bat. Though the Napa, California, native was rated a four-star recruit coming out of Prolific Prep, making him one of the highest-ranked prospects ever to commit to Saint Mary’s, most freshmen usually go through some sort of adjustment phases before they're able to settle into their new surroundings.

“Just like any freshman there'll be a learning curve, but he's got some good skills that he's coming in with that they should be able to help us out,” McConnell said of Lewis. “He's got Augustus and a guy like Jordan Ross; they're going to get in the paint, they're going to attack the basket. So [Lewis] can compliment those two guys just with the shooting ability and being able to space the floor.”

Lewis puts up 8.7 points in 16.3 minutes off the bench. He scored a season-high 23 points in a win over Nebraska on Nov. 17.

The Gaels’ 2024 freshman class also features 6-foot-3 Australian Joshua Dent and 6-foot-4 Liam Campbell, who was the No. 2 player in the 2024 class to come out of the state of Idaho. Dent has appeared in 16 games so far this season.

Redshirt sophomore Cade Bennett has played in 17 games this season. He and 6-foot-5 redshirt freshman Rory Hawke round out the Gaels’ backcourt.

“We'll have six new guys this year, so we'll kind of go at a little different pace to make sure that we kind of build the foundation of how we want to play,” McConnell said.

WINGS/FORWARDS:

In the short runs he had with Arizona last season, 6-foot-8 sophomore Paulius Murauskas shot the lights out from behind the arc. The Lithuanian forward made 51.9% of his attempts from deep, though he only attempted 1.2 per game and averaged 5.0 minutes in 23 contests as a freshman. He put more of his skillset on display this summer with the Lithuanian U-20 national team, as Murauskas averaged 18.1 points and 10.3 rebounds in seven tournament games.

Now with the Gaels, Murauskas has looked more like the player he was on the international stage last summer as opposed to the freshman who barely played at his previous school. He's second on the team in scoring at 13.1 points on 46.1% from the field, while leading the way in rebounds at 8.9 per game. Murauskas has recorded nine double-doubles this season, which is tied for seventh-most in the country.

With his size and skill set, Murauskas plays a few different positions as a stretch forward who’s also physical inside. Likewise, Memphis transfer Ashton Hardaway adds a lot of versatility to the table. The son of Penny Hardaway appeared in 30 games for the Tigers last season, though he never really found his fit with the team. With Saint Mary's, the former three-star recruit is averaging 11.4 minutes off the bench.

Redshirt senior Luke Barrett is near the end of his storied college basketball career at Saint Mary’s, where he first arrived as a walk-on during the COVID-19-affected 2020-21 campaign. Since then, the 6-foot-6 Piedmont, California, native has steadily progressed into a key rotational player for Bennett and the staff.

“He’s the type of guy you want to return,” McConnell said of Barrett. “As a fifth-year senior, he cares a lot about the program, cares a lot about the success of our team and kind of is just one of those guys that will do whatever he needs to do to help the team win. He’s a big part of our leadership."

Barrett is on pace to nearly double his scoring output from last season, as he's third on the team with 10.5 points per game. He's also pulling down 6.8 rebounds per game.

CENTERS:

The backbone of the Gaels’ toughness and grit is undoubtedly their frontcourt. Led by the reigning WCC Defensive Player of the Year, 6-foot-10 post Mitchell Saxen, Saint Mary’s is No. 3 in the country in rebounding margin (+11.2) and ranks No. 7 in scoring defense (61.0 points allowed per game). Saxen had a lot to do with that, as he leads the league with 1.6 blocks per game during conference play while chipping in 11.3 points.

The Seattle native is far from the only big body the Gaels throw at their opponents. A pair of 7-footers in junior Harry Wessels (7-foot-1, 275 pounds) and redshirt freshman Andrew McKeever (7-foot-1, 275 pounds) bolster the frontcourt with plenty of size and defensive skillsets.

Wessels, who missed a few games late last season with a shoulder injury, spends most of his time at center but can also rotate in at the “4” spot.

WRAP IT UP:

As Few would say, it's a "rinse, lather, repeat" operation right now in Moraga, California. Despite losing key pieces from a team that won the WCC regular season and conference tournament titles last season, the Gaels (19-3, 9-0 WCC) are in a position to pull off both feats again after reloading through the transfer portal and recruiting trail.

“The goal is always get back to the NCAA tournament,” McConnell said. “We’ve been able to keep pushing our seat up and obviously the goal is to keep going higher and higher, but at the same time, we want to get off to a better start than we did last year and not dig ourselves a hole. I think we'll be pretty focused on kind of this early, early seasons and going kind of day by day, practice by practice, and make sure we're as locked in when the season starts as we can be.”

MORE GONZAGA NEWS & ANALYSIS

Gonzaga sits 'just out of the field' in new NCAA Tournament resume evaluator

Gonzaga's Mark Few calls out 'idiotic' WCC travel schedule

What Gonzaga's Mark Few said after win vs. Oregon State

What Gonzaga's players said after win vs. Oregon State

Gonzaga shows 'great spirit' in dominant win vs. Oregon State: 3 takeaways

Gonzaga's Mark Few sends message with new starting lineup

How to watch every Gonzaga WCC men's basketball game in 2025

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Continue to follow our Gonzaga coverage on social media by liking us on Facebook and following us on Instagram and Twitter.