Post-Kraziness Zag Tracks

For all intents and purposes, the 2008-09 football season in Washington has died and been buried. The Huskies and Cougars have been atrocious and the Seahawks have limped through the season, signing and then cutting every wide receiver in sight. The mental sanity of every Washington sports fan now rests on the shoulders of the upcoming basketball season...err...I mean college basketball.

-- Recruiting news is the best kind of news but sometimes it can bite you in the rump. A kid that I loved, Devonte Elliott, has reportedly given a verbal commitment to Mark Fox and the Nevada Wolfpack. As the biggest supporter of upside in the world, this is bad news for the Zags in my opinion. It seemed like all of the pieces were falling into place for Elliott to be in Spokane in 2009; we were supposed to be Devonte's first visit (didn't happen), he had a great relationship with our assistant coaches (what happened?), and Nevada had recently locked up Steve Bjornstad, a similar player to Devonte, for the 2009 (Fox loves upside as well). I remain on the "Few knows what he's doing" bandwagon but I hope we have some adequate backup options to field a strong 2009 recruiting class.

-- Remember Bak Bak? I'll be honest and say that I completely forgot about the power forward from California. Bak was one of the biggest names in Gonzaga recruiting over the summer but vanished after he did not attend the Zags Elite Camp. He's back in the news again and has a top four list all secured. He favors Oregon State, Cal, USC, and UCLA. Translation: He's going to Oregon State.

-- There were plenty of surprises at Kraziness in the Kennel and one of them was the amount of recruits that attended. While we don't know who was there for sure, we can sure guess. The guys we know were there are Shane Harris-Tunks and Brett Kingma. The guy I'm pretty sure I spotted was Guy-Marc Michel. We also received word that there was a player from South Dakota there who was strikingly similar looking to Cody Larson.

-- Shifting focus to the guys that are already enrolled at Gonzaga University, it appears that Gonzaga is sweeping the nation as one of the elite preseason teams. Gary Parrish submitted his preseason Top 25 and slates the Zags at #8. Similar to the rest of the reviews, Parrish notes that this is Mark Few's most talented team, but there are still question marks about how far that talent can take them.

-- Gonzaga is also mentioned in Andy Katz's blog. Katz who should be given an honorary diploma from Gonzaga for his extensive coverage of the program came away very impressed by Kraziness in the Kennel. Katz said that it was an extremely well-managed scrimmage and that Demetri Goodson was exceptional. He also noted that Josh Heytvelt looked very good. I think the Heytvelt bandwagon is really going to start picking up some steam really soon.