It was a weekend of celebration for Zag Nation, as longtime Gonzaga basketball head coach Mark Few was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame on Saturday as part of the class of 2026.
Few was voted in by the committee in just his second year of eligibility, joining the HOF alongside NBA head coach Doc Rivers, former Phoenix Suns and New York Knicks forward Amar’e Stoudemire, and a trio of WNBA legends in Candace Parker, Elena Della Donne, and Chamique Holdsclaw.
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Few joins John Stockton as the second Gonzaga icon to get enshrined in Springfield, and the Spokane native was one of three HOFers to present coach Few on Saturday night.
“I grew up on campus and snuck into the gym and had to sell programs to get into the games and when you do that, you never imagine there would be a situation where a coach of the Gonzaga University Bulldogs would be a Hall of Famer,” Stockton said. “To watch a man do this over 20 some seasons and earn this and retain his humble nature. It’s pretty exciting.”
Rarified air
Few became the fifth active head coach to earn this honor, joining Rick Pitino (St. John’s), Bill Self (Kansas), Tom Izzo (Michigan State), and longtime friend John Calipari (Arkansas), who was one of the three HOFers to present Few, alongside Stockton and Grant Hill, who worked with Few at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Nov 20, 2022; Spokane, Washington, USA; Kentucky Wildcats head coach John Calipari, left, shakes hands with Gonzaga Bulldogs head coach Mark Few. | USA TODAY Sports
Few was complimentary of coach Cal, in part because he was willing to play Gonzaga at a time when many other high-profile programs shied away.
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“My main man Cal, for a friendship that started because nobody wanted to play us and we couldn’t get a game against the quote-unquote blue bloods,” Few said. “So we started our own series and that worked out pretty dang good for us.”
Few played Cal at Memphis four times in the early 2010’s, losing all four, but those matchups were key in preparing Gonzaga for the NCAA Tournament – and helped bring national attention to Spokane and the Zags.
Few has gone 6-7 in his career against this group of HOFers, with a 2-4 record against coach Cal after beating him twice at Kentucky, as well as a 2-0 record against Self and Kansas and a 2-3 record against Izzo and Michigan State. Few and Pitino have yet to square off, although a matchup is possible this season at the Players Era Festival if both teams win their first three games in Las Vegas.
Lasting legacy
It’s hard to fully encapsulate what coach Few has meant to Gonzaga University and the city of Spokane. Even after Stockton’s excellent career, the school was a non-factor in the athletics space until the miracle run in 1999 under Dan Monson.
Gonzaga Bulldogs head coach Mark Few. | Photo by Erik Smith, Myk Crawford
Monson left for the Minnesota job, and 99% of programs would have faded back to irrelevance after that. But instead, Gonzaga promoted Few and he kept getting them back to the NCAA Tournament, year after year, before the team really broke through in 2006 thanks to an iconic season from superstar forward Adam Morrison.
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Few had many, many opportunities to take a job with more resources and more pay, but he felt at home in Spokane, a place that fully embraced him and his family-focused style.
The program is now a nationally recognized brand, among the biggest in college basketball, and enters the Pac-12 this year as a full-share member, an unprecedented financial investment that proves just how valuable Gonzaga has become thanks to Few’s leadership over the last 27 years.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/gonzaga as Mark Few’s Hall of Fame induction adds another chapter to Gonzaga’s remarkable rise.
