There is once again a new No. 1 team in KenPom, and it’s the Zags. Gonzaga rolled into Round 2 of the Players Era Festival and tore through Maryland 100-61, a result that felt settled long before the final horn. The Zags were coming off a ten-point win over Alabama less than twenty-four hours earlier, while Maryland arrived with momentum from its win over UNLV, and the opening minutes of Tuesday’s matchup showed two supremely confident teams looking for another statement win. Once Gonzaga found its rhythm, the night tilted hard. The game had its odd beats and uneven officiating, but the larger story centered on a Gonzaga team that hasn’t shot well from three this season, suddenly making perimeter rhythm the priority, finishing the night 14-for-33 from deep while racking up 30 assists on 37 makes. The 39-point rout over Maryland sends Gonzaga into tomorrow’s championship game against No. 7 Michigan, a brutal turnaround that will push this rotation’s depth and conditioning before anyone can sit down for turkey on Thursday.
The Bulldog directive was clear from the opening tip: run and gun. The Zags seemed determined to show the world that their offense is not nearly as one-dimensional as their frontcourt dominance might suggest. Graham Ike lined one up from the top of the key. Braden Huff followed from the corner. Mario Saint-Supery and Tyon Grant-Foster joined in from way outside. Guys were getting the ball in rhythm and at their preferred spots, mostly the corner and the top of the key. The Bulldogs relied heavily on dribble-drive penetration and push passes from the middle of the lane to get the ball in the right guys’ hands and at the right times. Four different starters hit threes before Maryland even settled into the game, and the pace stayed steady as the lead climbed past 20.
Then the officiating detonated the rhythm. A soft flagrant on Ike, a perimeter shooting foul on Grant-Foster, some off-ball whistles and reach-in calls that stalled the tempo, and a Maryland run built almost entirely at the free-throw line shifted an early blowout into a single-digit margin. Maryland finished the half with 17 free throw attempts to Gonzaga’s two. Maryland’s Pharrel Payne and Darius Adams combined for 20 in the first half, with nine coming at the stripe. The only reason the floor didn’t tilt further was Gonzaga’s relentless offensive attack and timely shot-making. The half culminated on a buzzer-beating corner three from Steele Venters to bring the Zags’ total to 10 made threes on 19 first-half attempts.
Gonzaga opened the second half by leaning into everything that worked earlier. Push the pace, let the wings shoot, let the bigs go to work in the paint, and keep the ball moving side-to-side until the right shot opens up. Defensively, meanwhile, the Zags put the clamps on Maryland’s backcourt. Braeden Smith finished the game with five steals in just 16 minutes of action while also dishing out five assists.
With 16 minutes remaining in the second half, the 14-point threshold necessary for Gonzaga to participate in the tournament’s championship round looked less aspirational and more inevitable. And the game’s final ten minutes became an extended demonstration of just how deep and dangerous this year’s Gonzaga team really is. By the six-minute mark, Ismaila Diagne and Davis Fogle were off the bench. By the two-minute mark, Noah Haaland, Cade Orness, and Joaquim Arauz-Moore were on the floor, a late-game signal that Maryland had effectively checked out while Gonzaga kept accelerating through the finish. The night closed with a +39 point margin that erased any question about what comes next, since the Players Era bracket alchemy had determined its championship contenders 25 points ago.
Emmanuel Innocenti turned in the most surprising performance of the night, dropping 15 points on five triples in seven attempts and crashing the glass for five rebounds, three of them on the offensive end. The outburst would have grown even louder if he had avoided the technical foul he earned for blowing a kiss at the Maryland bench, a moment that sent him straight to Mark Few’s penalty box until the second half. The larger point lies in how unexpected the barrage felt, since he would not have cracked anyone’s top five candidates to go five for seven from deep in this matchup. If this version of Innocenti becomes a regular feature of the Gonzaga offense, the rest of college basketball needs to adjust its scouting reports in a hurry.
Braden Huff kept up his run of absurd efficiency with 20 points on 9-for-10 shooting, his only miss coming from three. He played 24 minutes and flipped between the four and five spot without ever losing the rhythm of the offense, moving the ball inside-out and finishing through heavy contact on a night when the officials swallowed the whistle at the rim while calling everything on the perimeter. Possession after possession flowed through him, and he kept converting with the kind of inside-out versatility that stretches scouting reports thin and gives Gonzaga a stabilizer whenever the game starts to tilt.
Gonzaga’s passing clinic might have been the most impressive part of the night, because 30 assists on 37 made shots is an almost ridiculous marker of how connected this group has become. The ball zipped around the perimeter with purpose, rotations had real intent behind them, and every clean look felt like the product of five guys hunting the best shot on the floor rather than the first one available. Ike finished with only 13 points, yet he added four assists and zero turnovers from the post. Mario Saint-Supery chipped in just 5five points, yet he stacked nine assists in 22 minutes while running one of the hardest positions in the sport. Gonzaga’s scoring depth has never been in question; what we’re seeing now is a team getting sharper and faster at delivering the ball to the right spot at the right moment, which is when the offense becomes something far more dangerous.
Gonzaga’s defense shredded Maryland from every angle, forcing 18 turnovers, swiping 12 steals, and turning those mistakes into 32 points, which means a full third of the final total came directly off live-ball pressure. Maryland never settled into rhythm, shooting 5-for-21 from deep and 36 percent overall, and the gap widened every time the Zags turned a loose handle into a breakout. The metrics caught up to the eye test immediately, since Gonzaga now sits 4th nationally in KenPom’s defensive efficiency and climbed to the No. 1 overall ranking after the drubbing. There has been talk that this might be coach Mark Few’s best defensive roster ever, and the numbers are beginning to show that this might not only be true, but that it might be true by a wide margin.
Gonzaga walked off the floor in Vegas looking like a team that understood exactly what this tournament demands, because the performance against Maryland checked every box: threes falling from every layer of the rotation, ball movement that carved up a scrambling defense, and a swarm of pressure that turned Maryland’s guards inside out. The efficiency, the depth, the defensive bite, all of it pointed toward a group settling into form at the right moment. Now the bracket funnels straight into a championship matchup with Michigan, a top-10 team with one of the strongest frontcourts in the country and a style built to test Gonzaga’s pace, spacing, and conditioning on a brutal turnaround. The stage is set, the margin for error shrinks, and the Zags look ready for it.
