Mark Few has coached at Gonzaga for 27 years. In that time he’s had All-Americans, NBA lottery picks, and players who went on to become the best in the world at what they do. He’s never had anyone quite like Jalen Warley. That’s not hyperbole. That’s what Few said himself, out loud, at a postgame press conference in January, after watching Warley guard a seven-footer and a point guard in the same possession and then score 19 points on 7-of-10 shooting against the San Francisco Dons.
There has simply never been another Zag like Warley, and although the Zags only got one actual season of play out of him, he kept finding ways to make himself indispensable at every step along the way.
When Gonzaga announced it had added Warley in November 2024, the reaction in Zag circles was somewhere between cautious optimism and genuine confusion. A midseason addition from the transfer portal from the Florida State Seminoles, a 6-7 point guard from the Atlantic Coast Conference, one year of eligibility left, ineligible to play until 2025-26. It was a big get, a huge deal to have a player of his caliber on the roster, but it was unclear from the jump as to what exactly he was being brought to Spokane, Washington, to do for the Zags.
His recruitment profile out of high school was enticing, though. Warley came out of Westtown School in West Chester, Pennsylvania, as a top-35 national recruit, the third-ranked combo guard in the country, a McDonald’s All-American nominee averaging 15.6 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 7.0 assists as a senior on a team that included Dereck Lively II. Had he committed to Gonzaga as a freshman, he would have been one of the top-5 highest ranked recruits in program history.
He started 58 of 96 games at Florida State and improved in nearly every statistical category every single year. But it never seemed like the Seminoles ever cracked the code of what exactly to do with a player like Warley. By his junior season, he was averaging 7.5 points, 2.8 assists, and 1.3 steals on 42.4 percent shooting in 24 minutes a night, second in the entire ACC in assist rate per KenPom. He entered the transfer portal and committed to play for Virginia, but coach Tony Bennett suddenly retired 17 days before the season opener, and Warley elected to take his talents elsewhere.
Warley instead committed to Gonzaga and joined the team mid-season, actually arriving in Spokane in January despite signing on in November. Then he sat. A “redshirt season” until 25-26. He was in practice every day, doing presumably a little bit of everything, while Zag fans waited to see what they actually had. I called him Gonzaga’s least understood x-factor heading into this season. As it turns out, that might have been an undersell.
Questions and Speculation
Before this season kicked off, the best anyone could do in terms of forecasting Warley’s role with the Bulldogs was to speculate. He had spent three years playing point guard in the ACC, but Gonzaga already had Braeden Smith (who had himself redshirted the season prior) and Mario Saint-Supery. Fine, at 6-7, you could put him on the wing. Except he’s not a three-point shooter at all. Also, the wing was already crowded with Steele Venters, Davis Fogle, Emmanuel Innocenti, and (fingers-crossed) Tyon Grant-Foster. So what could Warley actually do?
He’d been practicing with the team since last season and understood the system better than any incoming recruit or transfer. But what if all he’d learned in that time was that a player of his size and skill profile didn’t fit tidily into it anywhere?
Mark Few’s solution in the first half of the season was simple, and it was also kind of brilliant: just go do everything. We’ll see what sticks and ask you to do it more and more. Guard everyone. Hustle. Move the ball. Push in transition. Make winning plays. That’s exactly what he did. Warley came off the bench as a small-ball four, playing minutes on the wing and in the frontcourt while also occasionally taking over ball-handling responsibilities in the backcourt. He did everything and figured it out as he went.
He began the season averaging between 15 and 27 minutes a night, off the bench. He dropped 13 points and 8 rebounds against Oklahoma. He had 9 rebounds and 3 steals against Creighton. At San Diego, with the Toreros making a game of it on a tense New Year’s Eve game, he went for 22 points, 14 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 steals in 35 minutes. That was the version of Warley that Zag fans were starting to understand: not a guy with a defined role, but a guy who showed up when the game needed something and delivered it, whatever “it” ultimately was.
When Gonzaga lost Braden Huff to a knee injury, Warley stepped into the starting lineup and over his next five games averaged 11.8 points, 5.0 rebounds, 2.4 assists, and 2.0 steals in 30.4 minutes. That included a 14-point, 6-rebound, 4-assist, 4-steal performance at Seattle U, where he guarded a seven-footer on one side and then ran the offense on the other. The former point guard was now Gonzaga’s starting power forward, and he was thriving.
A Bad Night for a Bunch of Reasons…
February 4th, on the road at Chiles Center, a game Gonzaga lost 87-80 to the lowly Pilots. The loss was hard to swallow, but the real nightmare of that night was what happened to Warley, who picked up a quad contusion early and never recovered. He tried to play through the pain for six games, averaging 18.8 minutes and looking nothing like himself in his time on the floor. Eventually, Few just had to shut him down completely. He sat out senior night. He missed the regular season finale at Saint Mary’s. The sixteen days between that game and the WCC Tournament opener were all Gonzaga had to get him right, and it was clear that they weren’t going to get back to being themselves without him.
That’s where Travis Knight comes in. Gonzaga’s strength and conditioning coach has been one of the most quietly indispensable people in this program for the better part of two decades, and this March, he gets credit for the most important intervention of the 2025-26 season. Whatever he found in those 16 days, it worked when nothing else had. Quantum tissue harmonization? Reverse hypnotherapy? Infrared quad whispering? Neuro-muscular moon phase recalibration? Artisanal leech therapy? Deep tissue exorcism? Few wouldn’t say, but whatever it was, Warley went from barely walking to posting a double-double in the NCAA Tournament. Coach Travis Knight made that possible.
In his first-ever NCAA Tournament game, at 23 years old in his fifth year of college basketball, Warley finished with 12 points, 12 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 steals. With Ike in foul trouble late in the first half, he shifted to center and hit three consecutive layups to keep Gonzaga afloat. When Saint-Supery fouled out late, and Kennesaw State cut it to five, Warley converted an offensive putback to push it back to seven, then stepped in at point guard to close it out. Every position, every situation, whatever the moment required. Warley did it all, and along the way earned his second double-double of the season.
Against Texas two days later, Warley was very good. Ten points, eight rebounds, five assists on 4-of-7 shooting in 29 minutes. He did his job, and he did it well. The Longhorns just did theirs better, hitting the shots that mattered in the final minutes and sending Gonzaga home 74-68.
All told, Jalen Warley played 33 games at Gonzaga, averaged 7.1 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 2.1 assists, shot 56.6% from the field, and never once attempted a three-pointer. Not one. Consider the skill set necessary to become one of the most versatile players in program history without even attempting a three-pointer.
Warley built his entire value on everything else: length, instincts, facilitation, defensive versatility, and winning plays. Mark Few has coached some of the most skilled players in the history of college basketball and said he’d never had anyone quite like Jalen Warley. An elite-level defender with the heads-up offensive instincts of a point guard who still stood at 6’7” but could bring the ball up the floor, initiate the offense, and then go take his position in the low block. Warley played in the backcourt or frontcourt, whatever the moment called for, inside or out, facilitating on the perimeter, following shots around the rim, and sparking everything in transition. The dude was just everywhere at all times and always exactly where he needed to be.
The Zags have never had a player quite like Warley before. And it’s safe to say they won’t have one again for some time. The most heartbreaking aspect of Warley’s career at Gonzaga is simply that it wasn’t longer.
