No job in Spokane carries more weight this season than the one now handed to Braeden Smith. For a year, he waited in the background, redshirting behind Ryan Nembhard, perhaps the most steady hand Mark Few has ever trusted to run his offense. Fans only caught flashes, a few possessions at Kraziness in the Kennel, then it was just glimpses of him on the bench with an iPad, studying every read and first to offer high-fives to teammates coming off the floor. Now the offense is his. He isn’t Nembhard, and he won’t be, but Gonzaga doesn’t need a carbon copy. What it needs is a point guard ready to take the wheel and drive it his own way.
From the Patriot League to the Big Stage
Prior to his redshirt year in Spokane, Smith spent two seasons at Colgate, where he practically never came off the floor. In his two seasons with the Raiders, he started 70 straight games, averaged 31 minutes per night, won Patriot League Player of the Year as a sophomore, and left the mid-majors with the kind of résumé that makes high-major coaches pay attention. He ran a fast-paced and efficient offense built on opportunistic buckets and constant movement, put up 12.7 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 5.6 assists per night, and delivered a Patriot League Tournament MVP run with 16-9-5 averages. He logged five 20-point games, dropped double-doubles in points and assists, and in a November trip to Syracuse, he walked off the floor with 14 points and 11 boards against ACC size.
Smith’s numbers at Colgate showed rare balance for a young point guard. A 27 percent usage rate paired with a 35.7 percent assist rate put him among the nation’s top creators, proof that he could score without neglecting his playmaking. He knocked down 52 threes at a 31 percent clip—not elite, but enough to keep defenders from sagging—and his 19 percent defensive rebounding rate was off the charts for a six-footer. That profile gave Gonzaga every reason to believe he could step into the most demanding point guard role in college basketball and keep the offense moving.
He’s No Ryan Nembhard, and That’s the Point
It’s hard to talk about Braeden Smith without stacking him against the guy whose shoes he’s stepping into. Ryan Nembhard’s 2025 profile was built on his passing brilliance: a 41.5% assist rate, the highest in the nation, 344 total assists (5th most ever by a college player), and a 4:1 assist-to-turnover ratio, all while managing double figures in scoring and 40% from deep. He bent defenses with the pass, controlled tempo with uncanny poise, and rarely forced bad shots.
Despite the similarity in size, Braeden Smith is a different breed of point guard. His assist numbers won’t approach Nembhard’s—few ever will—but he offsets that gap in other ways. At Colgate, his defensive rebounding rate was more than double Nembhard’s, and he had a unique ability to turn those boards into instant offense, pushing tempo from the backcourt in a way Gonzaga sorely lacked last season. He also carried a far heavier scoring load, with usage north of 27 percent compared to Nembhard’s 20. But the biggest stylistic split shows up behind the arc. Nembhard picked his spots, taking only the cleanest looks and hitting them at a 40 percent clip. Smith is wired differently. He’s willing to shoot early, even if the numbers don’t approach 40 percent, because it keeps the offense in rhythm and forces defenses to guard the full width of the floor.
While Nembhard was the ultimate governor, dictating pace and flow, Smith has the chance to be the accelerator. His strength is pressure-release: crashing the glass, kick-starting transition, and absorbing possessions when the offense stalls. Nembhard controlled tempo; Smith’s game thrives when he can tilt it.
Smith steps into a backcourt with clear shooting lanes already mapped out. Adam Miller is a ready-made floor spacer, a marksman who gives Smith room to operate in the middle of the floor. Mario Saint-Supery is the counterweight, a bigger off-ball guard who reads angles, plays out of the pick-and-roll, and makes secondary playmaking feel seamless. With Saint Supery in the lineup, Smith doesn’t have to carry every possession; he can start actions knowing his backcourt counterpart is comfortable finishing them.
The bigger hinge point is how quickly Smith forges chemistry with Gonzaga’s big men. Last year, the Nembhard-to-Ike connection wasn’t just Gonzaga’s most reliable scoring option; it was the backbone of the offense. Smith isn’t the passer Nembhard was, but his willingness to call his own number out of those sets could make the partnership just as dangerous in different ways. Defenses already know Ike’s left-handed post game is a first read; what they don’t yet know is how Smith’s aggression facilitates the second and third.
The defensive side is where Smith may move the needle most. He’s much stronger at the point of attack than either Nembhard or Nolan Hickman, fighting over the tops of screens and playing defense with his hips instead of his feet. Gonzaga won’t be asking him to erase shooters, but with Smith at the tip of the spear, they have a much better chance of keeping the ball out of the interior and trapping ballhandlers in the backcourt. Gonzaga’s backcourt defense was a straight-up problem at times last year, and with Smith running the show, there’s reason for optimism.
Projecting Braeden Smith’s 25-26 Season Stats
You have to triangulate a few different metrics to get a sense of what to expect from Smith this season. There’s what he already produced at Colgate, what Gonzaga point guards typically generate under Mark Few, and how his own strengths and weaknesses fit into this year’s roster.
At Colgate, he averaged 12.7 points, 5.6 assists, and 4.9 boards per game, with a usage rate north of 27%. That level of involvement probably won’t carry over into this upcoming season when Gonzaga faces tougher competition than anything Smith experienced at Colgate, but the rebounding and playmaking scale up. Few’s offense has a long track record of inflating assist totals for guards who make the right reads. Andrew Nembhard, Josh Perkins, and Kevin Pangos, before them all, hovered between five and six assists per game. And with Adam Miller stretching defenses and Ike/Huff/Diagne as steady roll targets inside, Smith has every reason to land in that range. A line in the neighborhood of 5.5 to 6 assists per game feels like a realistic target.
Scoring is trickier. Smith took on volume at Colgate because he had to. This year, with a rogues gallery of bucket-getters around him, the Zags won’t need him to jack up 12 shots a night. The more likely outcome is a dip in usage to something closer to 20–22%, with efficiency climbing and turnovers dropping thanks to better spacing and higher-quality looks. That math points to 10-12 points per game, with an uptick in true shooting percentage if his three-point shooting can creep into the mid-30s. He hit 31% last season on decent volume; if Gonzaga’s system can buy him cleaner looks, he doesn’t need to be elite from deep, just credible enough to keep defenses honest.
But it’s the rebounding that might be the most important holdover for Smith. His 19% defensive rebounding rate is simply absurd for any point guard, let alone a six-foot floor general, and with the losses of Ben Gregg and Michael Ajayi, Gonzaga badly needs that extra push off the glass. Based on his speed, physicality, and vision, we can comfortably pencil Smith in for around 4-5 rebounds per game, assuming he ends up with Nembhard’s share of minutes at the point guard spot.
Turnovers will be the wild card. His 2.3 per night at Colgate was manageable, but the turnovers tended to spike against top-50 competition. High-major defenses will test his ball security regularly, but if he can keep the miscues around 2.5 per game (where Ryan’s hovered), the Zags can live with the trade-off.
Put it together and you get something like 10.5 points, 6 assists, 4.5 rebounds, 1.5 steals per game, with 33-35% from three. That doesn’t replicate Nembhard in terms of orchestration, but it doesn’t have to. Smith’s impact will be measured in tempo, toughness, and the ways he tilts possessions in Gonzaga’s favor.
Patience, Payoff, and the Season Ahead
Gonzaga is not getting another Ryan Nembhard in Braeden Smith. They’re getting something they haven’t had before. Smith is an exceptional distributing point guard, but his real value to this year’s team lies in speed, rebounding, and a willingness to force the issue when the offense bogs down. With Adam Miller and Steele Venters stretching defenses, Mario Saint-Supery and Tyon Grant-Foster providing secondary creation, and Graham Ike and Braden Huff sucking defenses deep into the paint, Smith has the right pieces around him to lean into what he does best.
Everything about this season sharpens around the unknown of how Braeden Smith translates from understudy to lead guard. The questions—his timing with Ike/Huff in the pick-and-roll, his balance in the backcourt with Miller and Saint-Supery, his ability to crash the glass and turn defense into instant offense—will establish Gonzaga’s ceiling. Luckily, there’s probably no single person on earth more capable of showing someone how to be Gonzaga’s point guard than Ryan Nembhard, and Smith has now had a full year under his tutelage. If he settles into that projected line of 10–11 points, five to six assists, and four to five boards per game, if he can elevate the intensity and effectiveness of Gonzaga’s perimeter defense with his hustle and physicality, if he can bring the same toughness and leadership he brought to the lead-guard role at Colgate, then Braeden Smith’s redshirt year will stand as proof positive that patience pays off.
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