Transfers a key to Gonzaga’s success

. In recent years, transfers have become the norm in men’s college basketball, but it hasn’t always translated into winning a national championship.

Gonzaga hopes to end that trend this weekend.

Since 2007, six Final Four teams have had Division I transfers in their starting lineup, but none has won a national title. The Bulldogs will start three transfers – Nigel Williams-Goss (Washington), Johnathan Williams (Missouri) and Jordan Mathews (California) – against South Carolina on Saturday.

“I think, in the back of our minds, we saw the same thing. We wanted to leave something that wasn’t working and go to something that could possibly work,” Matthews said. “As you see, we all have been instrumental in our success, so it has been huge.”

Adding transfers has been the norm during coach Mark Few’s tenure at Gonzaga, but the Zags have hit the jackpot this year. Since 2000-01, 24 percent of the Bulldogs’ roster has been transfers, and two of the more recent ones, Kelly Olynk and Kyle Wiljter, are on NBA rosters.

The only down side to being a nongraduate transfer is having to sit out a season, but Williams-Goss looked at that as a positive, and used it to refine his game.

“Their redshirt plan for me was second to none with all the other schools I was looking at,” Williams-Goss said. “I feel like they had a very deliberate plan from day one, as far as what I was going to work on during my redshirt year.”

Williams-Goss is a John Wooden Award finalist. He leads the team in scoring (16.7 ppg), rebounds (5.9) and assists (4.6).

The 6-foot-9 Williams, who led Missouri in scoring as a sophomore, leads the team in rebounding and helped shore up Gonzaga’s front court. Matthews, a grad transfer who didn’t arrive on campus until September, gives the Zags the outside shooting presence they need. He leads the team with 79 3-pointers.

The transfers, along with possible one-and-doner Zach Collins and Zags’ heavy international contingent, led by center Przemek Karnowski, have been the right combination to finally put them over that Final Four hurdle. Gonzaga had appeared in 19 straight NCAA tournaments, but had never made it past the Elite Eight before this season.

This story was originally published March 31, 2017 at 6:07 PM with the headline "Transfers a key to Gonzaga’s success."