Mark Few and the Gonzaga Bulldogs retained three key contributors from last year’s roster and added two excellent transfers to build a starting lineup that can compete with anyone in college basketball in 2026-27.
The problem? They hardly have anyone else on the team – and the guys they do have have a combined zero games played at the collegiate level.
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Mario Saint-Supery, Davis Fogle, and Braden Huff will all start for the Zags this upcoming season, with Arizona State transfer center Massamba Diop and Houston transfer wing Isiah Harwell stepping into the starting five alongside them.
Real Madrid big man Izan Almansa, 21, is an experienced player – but has never played college basketball. He’s joined on the bench by redshirt freshman Parker Jefferson and a pair of 4-star freshmen in the 2026 class, wing Luca Foster and center Sam Funches.
As such, Gonzaga desperately needs more experience and more guard depth in order to compete in the new-look Pac-12 and get back to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
Enter Tijan Saine, a Washington native and senior guard who is widely considered the best point guard – and one of the best players – still available in the transfer portal.
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Who is Tijan Saine?
Saine is a 5’11 point guard from Everett, WA, who was a three-time All League selection at Mariner High School. Despite a decorated career, Saine ended up walking on at DII Western Washington in Bellingham, redshirting in the 2022-23 season.
He then won GNAC Freshman of the Year in 2023-24 by averaging 10.9 points and 2.3 assists, and returned to earn First Team honors in 2024-25 when he posted 17.3 points, 4.0 assists, 2.8 rebounds, and 1.3 steals in 21 games with WWU, shooting a blistering 39% from three and 89% from the line.
That led Saine to hit the transfer portal, where, amongst a handful of D1 offers, he ended up heading to Ogden, UT, to play for Weber State in the Big Sky.
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Saine picked up right where he left off, posting 17.5 points, 4.3 assists, 2.3 rebounds, and 1.1 steals in 32 games for the Wildcats, earning First Team All Big Sky honors. He finished fourth in the league in assists per game, seventh in points, and 14th in steals, while shooting 52.2% on twos, 34.7% from three, and 89.6% from the free throw line – 18th nationally.
After a mini adjustment period to D1 basketball, Saine exploded as a scorer. He scored in double figures in each of his final 22 games last year and scored 15 or more points in 19 of those games. That included a 29-point performance on 4-7 shooting from deep on the road in an upset win over Idaho, as well as 27 points, three steals, and two assists on 7-12 shooting and 11-12 from the free throw line in the Big Sky Tournament, where his Wildcats fell to Dan Monson and Eastern Washington.
Saine has been in talks with multiple Power Five programs this offseason, including Washington, Seton Hall, UCLA, NC State, LSU, Mississippi State, Missouri, and Georgia Tech, as well as Oregon State, San Francisco, High Point, and Duquesne.
Fit at Gonzaga
Saint-Supery, Harwell, and Fogle are projected to start in the backcourt, leaving Foster and walk-on guards Alonzo Metz and Carter Nilson as the only other guards on the roster.
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Gonzaga not only needs to add experience in the backcourt, they need outside shooting as well. While Saine’s 34.7% last year doesn’t pop off the page, that was on a whopping 6.0 attempts per game – and his 50 made threes would have led the Zags last year. That, combined with his 39% as a sophomore at Western Washington, seems to point to a young man who can really light it up in the right circumstance.
Saine is similar to Malachi Smith or Ryan Woolridge, two mid-major guards who transferred to Gonzaga after playing huge, ball-dominant roles in their previous programs. Both players adjusted well to different roles while in Spokane, and if Saine is willing and able to do so, he could be the perfect backup point guard and microwave scorer on Gonzaga’s second unit in 2026-27.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/gonzaga as Why this Washington native could be Gonzaga’s ideal transfer portal addition.
