Gonzaga’s 2024–25 season was defined by its frontcourt dominance and its backcourt volatility. The Zags could score with anyone—but only when the outside shot was falling. When it wasn’t, the offense jammed up, spacing shrank, and the team became far easier to guard. That’s what makes the 2025–26 roster so intriguing. The addition of high-volume shooter Adam Miller, a (hopefully) healthy Steele Venters, and an expanded stretch-four role for Braden Huff gives Gonzaga a completely different perimeter profile. And if Mario Saint-Supery commits—as expected—they’ll add a 6’4” scoring guard who shot 36% from deep on over five attempts per game last season in Spain. He’s not a starter, but he could become a safety net. Between Miller’s rhythm shooting, Huff’s emergence, and real bench upside, the Zags finally look like a team built to stretch the floor—and survive cold nights from the arc.
The Problem Last Year
Gonzaga’s perimeter shooting didn’t hold up last season—at least when it came to consistency night after night. And when Nolan Hickman and Khalif Battle went cold at the same time, the offense became painfully predictable. The high-low game stayed elite, but the Zags didn’t have a Plan B when the shot wasn’t falling.
Hickman finished the season as one of the highest percentage outside threats in the country—but if his first couple threes missed, he tended to disappear. He rarely attacked off the bounce and almost never got to the line, which made those quiet nights feel even louder. With the loss of the best distributing point guard in college basketball, the margin for error in the half-court is razor thin. The Zags need more reliable outside scoring and a deeper menu of perimeter options if they want to win close games. The good news: they’ve reloaded with shooters who can change the geometry of the floor from day one. We’ve got options we simply didn’t have last year.
A Statistical Dive Into the Issue
Gonzaga shot 35.4% from three last season, good for 91st nationally. The year prior, they shot 36.2% and finished 29th. That drop might seem minor, but it played out in ways that changed outcomes. For a team that lost more close games than any team in recent memory, missed perimeter looks became the difference between finishing teams off (UConn, Kentucky, Saint Mary’s, Houston) and letting them hang around. It was the program’s worst team three-point percentage since 2012 and the first time in over a decade Gonzaga finished outside the top 50 in that category.
The Zags responded by shooting less from outside. Their three-point rate—how often they even attempted threes—plummeted to 312th nationally. Among top-25 teams, only Saint Mary’s took fewer. (A hilarious and life-affirming stat, somehow.) Gonzaga didn’t just shoot worse from deep—they lost trust in it entirely if it wasn’t falling early. When the backcourt froze up, the offense went back to its bread and butter: post seals, high-low looks, and slow-cooked two-point possessions. It still worked. It just made the margin for error chest-clutchingly precarious.
The Collapse of the Backcourt
There were nights when Gonzaga’s backcourt looked dangerous from deep—and then there were stretches where it vanished. Nolan Hickman hit 44.5% from three on the season, the 28th-best mark in the country, and for a stretch of last season, the dude was in the top 5 nationally. But he finished outside the top 100 in total attempts, a reflection of how selectively he hunted his shot. When the touch wasn’t there early, he rarely pressed the issue, whether this was for better or worse will remain alongside the “was-Josh-Perkins-actually-a-good-point-guard?”-caliber questions plaguing Zagville for years to come.
Battle, meanwhile, brought volume but far less efficiency from deep—and when both guards slumped, they often did it at the same time. That’s when the wheels came off. He dropped 5-of-6 from deep against Georgia, only to follow it with an 0-for-2 night against Houston. That’s Hickman in a nutshell.
Battle finished the year at 34.7% from deep, his lowest mark in his last three college seasons. But the larger problem came during a five-week stretch from January 16 to February 22, when he went 12-of-44 from three (27%). Hickman, in that same span, shot 12-of-53 (22.6%). That’s 24-for-97 between your two primary backcourt scorers—just 25% from deep. Gonzaga went 7–11 during that stretch. In those four losses, Battle went 1-for-14. Hickman went 11-for-28. That’s 12-for-42—under 29%. And it wasn’t just cold shooting—it was synchronized droughts that forced the offense inward and shrank the floor for everyone else.
Stretching the Frontcourt
Gonzaga’s outside shooting from the four spot was perhaps the biggest offensive problem the Zags faced all year. Ben Gregg, who shot 40-of-106 from deep in 2023–24 regressed to 19-of-70 last year. That drop—from 37.7% to 27.1%—collapsed spacing and let defenses sag freely. Gregg was tough to keep off the floor as one of the best glue-guys the Zags have ever had, but his outside shot was nowhere near what it was expected to be. Michael Ajayi’s outside game cratered even harder. After hitting 39-of-83 from three at Pepperdine, he went just 8-of-44 at Gonzaga. For a team that relied on post creation, playing 4-on-5 from the arc became a recurring problem. After building an offense around Anton Watson and Ben Gregg’s ability to stretch the 4, the Zags could no longer generate scoring from the power forward spot without him.
Reinforcements: The Shooting Overhaul
This offseason, Gonzaga addressed its most glaring weakness with precision. Adam Miller arrives as a high-percentage, high-usage shooter. Miller shot just under 43% from deep last season on 4.4 attempts per game. He took five or more in more than half of Arizona State’s games, even while drawing heavy defensive attention. He moved off-ball, hit spot-ups, and stayed aggressive expertly while defenses were preoccupied containt ASU big man Jayden Quaintance (now a projected starter for the Kentucky Wildcats). At Gonzaga, where he’ll play off not one, but two dominant post presences and experienced playmakers alongside him in the backcourt, Miller should see the cleanest looks of his career. There’s simply no reason to suspect Miller’s outside shooting will regress at Gonzaga, a better offense with cleaner ball movement and more open looks than he saw with ASU.
Steele Venters returns with a reputation as one of the cleanest perimeter threats in the country. And if he can stay healthy, the shot is hopefully still there. In his final two seasons at Eastern Washington, he went 164-of-408 from three—over 40% on ridiculously high volume and as the number-1 defensive priority for opponents. He won’t have to create offense for Gonzaga like he did at Eastern, and if he can move well enough to relocate and shoot in rhythm, one of last year’s biggest problems is more or less totally solved if the minutes are there.
Huff’s role might be the biggest change for the Zags in 2025-2026. He shot 32.1% from deep last year—modest, but well ahead of the 24% mark the Gregg/Ajayi duo left behind. But the dude made his name as a high school recruit not as a back-to-the-basket guy, but as a high usage stretch-4. Huff attempted 102 threes his senior year of high school and made 43%. Now that he’s stepping into a revised role and increased minutes, even average shooting at higher volume reopens key parts of the floor that defenses had the freedom to just ignore last season.
Pair that with Ike’s 13-for-33 clip from deep (technically 3rd best on the team though the sample size is small), and the Zags enter 2025–26 with a frontcourt that can both pound the block and stretch the defense out of rhythm. This is the kind of versatility the Zags lacked last year when its backcourt got cold and the 4-spot disappeared from the scoring column. The high-low game was enough on its own to beat plenty of teams, but Kentucky, UConn, Saint Mary’s, and ultimately, Houston, were not among them.
A Rebuilt Backcourt
Last year, when the shot was falling, Gonzaga looked nearly unbeatable. The Battle-Hickman tandem gave fans a glimpse of what the most efficient scoring offense in the country was capable of when it was working. But when Battle and Hickman went cold at the same time, the offense felt like a coin flip. This year’s group won’t fix everything—but it has far more built-in stability and way more dynamism.
The Outlook: Reasons for Optimism
Last year’s offense led the nation in scoring despite its inconsistent perimeter woes. The interior was dominant throughout, and that same frontcourt returns for 2025-2026 even stronger and more experienced. The roster now features multiple credible outside threats in Miller, Venters, and (fingers crossed) Saint-Supery, a clearer distribution of roles, and spacing options at four positions. The system hasn’t changed—but its ingredients have.
There are still open questions. Can Venters stay healthy? Will Davis Fogle contribute as a freshman? Does Emmanuel Innocenti take a step forward as a shooter? Will Parker Jefferson spell Huff at the four, or redshirt? Will Saint-Supery actually earn meaningful minutes or is he Luka Krajnovic 2.0? These are thrilling variables to toy with. And if even a few of them tilt the right way, Gonzaga enter the top 10 conversation.
Although the Hickman/Battle scoring hole is a big one to fill, Gonzaga has quietly retooled its roster masterfully in the offseason. They don’t just have more shooters, they now have balance on the perimeter, outside scoring from the 4, and more ways to beat you from every position on the floor. Perhaps most exciting of all, if Saint-Supery commits, that still leaves only 11 of 15 roster spots spoken for.
… The Zags aren’t done building yet.
