Player Preview: The Braden Huff Breakout is Here

When Gonzaga walked off the floor in Wichita after falling to Houston in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, the conversations that followed turned quickly to the future of Braden Huff. It wasn’t unreasonable to think the 6-foot-10 sophomore might test the transfer market. He had spent most of the season backing up Graham Ike, his production limited more by rotation logistics than by ability, and programs like Wisconsin loomed as natural suitors — offering 30-plus minutes a night, lead-center billing, and a lucrative NIL payday. That Huff stayed, and did so after proving in March that his scoring touch demanded starter’s minutes, felt both unsurprising and program-defining. He closed the season in Gonzaga’s starting lineup for its final three games, delivering the kind of efficiency that made opposing defenses crumble when paired with Ike’s interior heft. For a player who might be the most dangerous big man in the country from five to ten feet, with a hook shot that falls from either shoulder and a jumper that keeps defenders honest, the choice to return said as much about Huff’s integrity as it did about his trajectory. With the return of both Huff and Graham Ike, the Zags retained a pairing that has a strong case as the best returning frontcourt tandem in college basketball.

These two dudes on the court together is enough to generate AP All-America preseason buzz on its own. Either one of them on their own is devastating, but the way they create space and opportunities for one another elevates their games to new levels. Gonzaga has produced memorable frontcourt tandems in the past, from Drew Timme with Chet Holmgren to Przemek Karnowski with Zach Collins, to Brandon Clarke with Killian Tillie, but the Huff–Ike combination does not trace cleanly to any of those lineages. Those earlier pairings balanced traditional contrasts: a scorer with a rim protector, a bruiser with a floor spacer, an athlete with a technician. Huff and Ike are different. Both are left-handed, both work best inside the arc, and yet their rhythms diverge so sharply that they create space for each other to do what they each do best. Ike pounds the block with patience and precision, drawing help with each pivot. Huff moves quickly into floaters and hooks, lifting shots before the defense can reset. They share the same real estate on the floor, but they inhabit it in different ways, and that makes them uniquely difficult to guard.

The truth is that Gonzaga has never had a pairing quite like this. It is not a matter of fitting a new Timme, or a new Karnowski, into a familiar template. This is new territory, and the shape of it is still uncertain. We do not yet know how Few will manage rotations when one sits, or how much of the offense will run through Huff when Ike rests, but the potential is obvious. Gonzaga has two bigs who pour in buckets from overlapping zones of the court, and that is a rarity in college basketball. What it looks like over the course of a full season remains an open question, which may be the most intriguing part of all.

Huff’s 24-25 sophomore season was defined by efficiency. He averaged 11.0 points per game on the season in just 16.7 minutes, translating to 26.4 points per 40, a rate that placed him among the top scoring forwards in the country. His overall field goal percentage sat at 57.7, but the more telling figure was inside the arc, where he led the WCC at 70.1 percent. That mark ranked in the 98th percentile nationally for frontcourt players and put him ahead of nearly every other power-conference big who carried similar usage. Even in games where his minutes spiked, the numbers held: across his four starts he averaged 14.8 points on 57.4 percent shooting, proving that his production scaled when asked to shoulder more of the offense.

The efficiency carried across contexts, as well. At home he hit 62.9 percent of his shots, away from Spokane he stayed above 56, and on neutral courts he still finished nearly 56. His month-by-month splits showed consistency after the December/January lull endured seemingly by the entire roster (minus Emmanuel Innocenti), climbing from 47.7 percent in January to 63.0 in February as Gonzaga leaned on him more and more as a scorer. The difference between wins and losses was striking: 60.9 percent in victories compared to 47.9 in defeats, underscoring how tightly Gonzaga’s results tracked to his shooting touch. For a player who took nearly half his attempts from the five-to-ten-foot range — an area that usually sinks efficiency for players of his size — Huff’s ability to turn that zone into a strength marked him as a statistical outlier and one of the most reliable scoring options in college basketball.

The New Frontcourt Puzzle

As thrilling as it is to consider the absolutely devastating scoring punch packed by the Ike-Huff tandem, it was still a seldom-seen combination following the opening 4-5 minutes of each half. And there are legitimate concerns about frontcourt depth behind those two. The rotation puzzle comes down to simple arithmetic. There are 80 minutes to cover between the four and the five spots per game, and neither Ike nor Huff can push far beyond 25-30 per night. That leaves at least twenty minutes unclaimed somewhere in the frontcourt. A year ago those minutes never caused concern because Mark Few had Ben Gregg, who supplied spacing and toughness off the bench, and Michael Ajayi, who brought rebounding and defensive energy. In those three late season games in which both Huff and Ike got starting minutes, the pattern was simple: Ike opened at the five, Huff at the four, Gregg came in off the bench at the first media timeout and shifted Huff to center. After that, Ike came back in at five, Huff went to the bench, and Ajayi came in at the four in place of Gregg. Every lineup had a skilled power forward, and a high-scoring center. Gonzaga never lost balance.

This year the choices are less clear, which makes them more compelling to watch unfold. Freshman Parker Jefferson is the only true backup at the four, and his role will depend on how quickly he adapts to the speed of the college game. If Tyon Grant-Foster secures a waiver, the equation changes overnight. His length and versatility could stabilize rotations and free Huff to take minutes at center. If that option falls through, Gonzaga has a card it has rarely played: Ike at the four with seven-footer Ismaila Diagne anchoring the middle, a move made necessary by the lack of proven depth at power forward behind Huff. It’s a look that would tilt lineups toward size and power, a departure from the spacing and precision Zags fans are used to, but it could offer a defensive upside that outweighs the scoring impact of pushing Ike out of position. The risk is real, but so is the intrigue. Few programs can roll out this much size and skill in different combinations, and seeing how Few arranges the pieces will be one of the season’s most fascinating subplots.

Last year Huff averaged 11.0 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 1.1 assists in 16.7 minutes, numbers that ballooned to 26.4 points and 8.2 rebounds per 40 minutes. In those final three games of the season, he averaged just over 29 minutes per game. If his workload in 25-26 hovers around 25 minutes per game, the translation is straightforward: we can expect roughly 15 points, 5 rebounds, and close to 2 assists a night while maintaining nearly 60% from the field.

The shape of those numbers depends on where he plays. At power forward, paired with Ike, Huff operates more often from the mid-paint, where his floaters and hooks punish single coverage but rebounding chances are thinner. At center, with Ike resting and Diagne or a smaller lineup beside him, he will see more rim touches and more boards, even if the added traffic trims a few percentage points off his efficiency. The balance should leave him somewhere between 14 and 15 points per game on 58 to 60 percent shooting, with 5 to 5.5 rebounds, 1.5 assists, and around a block per night.

The three-point shot has always been a question mark for Gonzaga’s bigs, and Huff is the next in that lineage. Kelly Olynyk added it late, Killian Tillie built a career on it, and even Domantas Sabonis and Rui Hachimura learned to threaten from outside as pros. Huff showed flashes as a freshman, hitting nearly 34 percent, before sliding back to 28 last year. The form and willingness never disappeared, which matters more than the temporary dip. If he climbs back into the low thirties, Gonzaga gains a frontcourt scorer who can punish single coverage inside and still space the floor like Tillie once did. For a team leaning on new guards, that one adjustment could stretch defenses just enough to tilt games.

That projection is realistic without limiting the ceiling. Huff has already shown he can score efficiently against high-major frontcourts, and his touch from five to ten feet is unlike anything Gonzaga has featured in recent memory. If the minutes expand the way the rotation math suggests, his production will follow.

His touch, his versatility, and his expanding workload all point to a breakout for Braden Huff. Whether he lines up at the four or slides to the five, whether he pairs with Ike, Diagne, or Grant-Foster, Huff’s game stretches across every scoring zone that matters. From five feet to fifteen he can already do it all, from the floater that never seems to miss to the hook that rises over defenders to the deep ball that pulls defenses out of alignment. Few players in college basketball enter the season with a clearer case to become an All-American level weapon, and Gonzaga’s system is built to amplify those traits. The truth is that it’s tough to imagine a scenario where Huff fails to meet expectations. There are only degrees of how far he surpasses them.