'Zags March-ing on

YOU KNOW you have become really big when the pundit class no longer focuses on your long run of excellence, but your lack of recent significant NCAA success and absence of any Final Four appearances.

Gonzaga has been so good for so long that Mark Few's team is examined like it is one of the game's superpowers. It's not fair, of course, but who said fair is part of the 21st-century equation.

When your program is a lock to be in its 18th consecutive NCAA Tournament this March and your coach is 405-100, that really is quite enough. And this may be the Gonzaga team that gets to the Final Four. They are that good. Saint Joseph's is going to find out how good this evening at the 10-year-old McCarthey Athletic Center, aka "The New Kennel."

If this was last March and that Saint Joseph's team was in Spokane to play Gonzaga, it would be a high-quality game. This is early November and the young Hawks are 1-1, with a 58-57 loss to FDU Friday and a 52-49 win at Drexel. After beating Sacramento State, 104-58, Friday and a very good SMU team, 72-56, Monday, Gonzaga is 2-0 and perhaps even better than expected.

SJU's team did fly charter across the country yesterday so it at least got there in style. The Hawks will try to leave with their dignity.

The issue is simple: Gonzaga has a very good offense, SJU does not.

Gary Bell, Kevin Pangos and Przemek Karnowski return from a 27-win team. They are joined in the starting lineup by Kentucky transfer Kyle Wiltjer who was good enough to average double figures for the Wildcats, and Byron Wesley.

The bench is deep and talented, led by freshman Domantas Sabonis. Yes, he is the son of the great Lithuanian big man Arvydas Sabonis, the unstoppable inside force behind Russia's 1988 gold medal-winning team.

The understated Few orchestrates all of it.

"First of all, what Mark does in my opinion in a business full of monster egos, he has none," SJU coach Phil Martelli said. "It's always about the team, always about the program. There's no gray area."

It is big time in every way.

"They have done a remarkable job in niche recruiting,"' Martelli said. "They're very good internationally. I hate clichés, but he is a player's coach. The players love him . . . And he's such a nice man."

Gonzaga probably set the bar too high in 1999 when its first long NCAA run ended up in the Elite 8, where the Bulldogs lost to eventual champion Connecticut. Gonzaga made the Sweet 16 in 2000, 2006 and 2009. The Bulldogs play for the West Coast Conference championship every year. When they don't win the championship game, it's big news. Yes, they have had a few early NCAA upsets. So have Duke, Kansas and Syracuse. It is simply the nature of the tournament where matchups and timing are so important.

Consider 2008. Really, how could little Davidson upset Gonzaga in the first round? Nobody was asking that question a week and a half later when Steph Curry and his team nearly knocked out eventual champion Kansas.

Consider 2013, when Gonzaga played brilliantly in a third-round NCAA loss but was upset by Wichita State, which went on to the Final Four, outplaying Louisville for most of the game before losing late and then went 35-0 last season before finally losing.

Gonzaga has usually been knocked out of the NCAA because its defense was rarely on par with its offense. That has much to do with the players it recruited and could actually get. Few schools have done much better with international recruiting, which is why they got Sabonis, the 7-1 Karnowski from Poland and Pangos from Canada.

Last season, the Bulldogs' defense actually was better than its offense, finishing 15th in efficiency, holding teams to .944 points per possession. They lost in the NCAA because they ran into a more athletic Arizona team that suffocated just about everybody they played.

Do not be shocked if 2015 is the year the Bulldogs put absolutely everything together in March, get favorable matchups and win the four games it will take to get to the Final Four in Indianapolis. They really are good enough. The Hawks are going to get a firsthand look tonight.