Tramel's ScissorTales: Do Gonzaga ties help Chet Holmgren, when it comes to the NBA Draft?
Do Gonzaga ties help Holmgren?
Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren is a potential Thunder target in the NBA Draft. The 7-footer is highly-skilled, with 3-point shooting range, and defensive instincts that make him a possible difference-making shotblocker.
Holmgren also weights 195 pounds, woefully thin for the rigors of the NBA. So he’s a lightning-rod draft prospect, particularly for a franchise with the No. 2 overall pick in the draft.
But Holmgren got me to thinking about other Gonzaga big men. The Bulldogs have sent a plethora of centers and power forwards into the NBA in recent years. How have they fared?
Gonzaga’s basketball story is incredible. The Zags have gone from Cinderella to college basketball blueblood. It’s as if Boise State football had become an annual College Football Playoff contender, with a couple of a playoff appearances.
Gonzaga is a treasure chest of NBA talent. Twenty-three Gonzaga players have made the NBA in the last 19 years. Big men have been Gonzaga’s calling card. Do they give us any insight into Holmgren’s future?
Probably not. It’s not like Holmgren was a fifth-year senior with the Zags. He’s from Minneapolis, signed with Gonzaga, got there last summer and now is NBA-bound.
Still, a college culture can impact a player, especially a basketball machine like Mark Few’s.
So here are the Gonzaga big men over the years, drafted by the NBA.
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Hits
► Domantas Sabonis: The Thunder knows him well, having traded for Sabonis on draft night 2016. Sabonis was the 11th pick in the draft and has become a star.
The 6-foot-11 Sabonis is rugged and refined. The Thunder traded him to Indiana in the Paul George deal, and the Pacers this year traded Sabonis to desperate Sacramento, so his career could go almost any direction.
But with Ben Simmons’ troubles, Sabonis probably is the best player out of that 2016 draft.
And Sabonis, drafted at age 20, was a two-year player at Gonzaga. Holmgren just turned 20.
► Brandon Clarke: The Grizzlies’ power forward was picked 21st in 2019 (by the Thunder, who immediately traded him for fellow draftee Darius Bazley). Clarke has been instrumental in the Memphis rise.
He’s averaged 10.9 points and 5.6 rebounds, with 59.1 percent shooting. The only downside to Clarke is his age; he’s 26 and was 23 when drafted, so he’s reaching his peak.
But so far, Clarke has been one of the better players from the 2019 draft.
► Kelly Olynyk: The 6-foot-11 center was picked 13th overall in the 2013 draft and has carved a solid career, averaging 10.1 points and 5.1 rebounds. He’s been a key bench player for both Boston and Miami playoff teams. Excellent value for the 13th pick.
► Robert Sacre: The 7-foot center was the 60th (last) pick in the 2012 draft but lasted four seasons with the Lakers and even made 35 starts. An NBA overachiever.
► Ronny Turiaf: The 6-foot-10 center was the 37th pick in the 2005 draft but lasted 10 years in the league as a blue-collar backup.
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Misses
► Zach Collins: Picked 10th in the 2017 draft, the 6-foot-11 big man has struggled to stay healthy. He was considered a Portland building block, but Collins played in just 154 games his four seasons with the Blazers.
Collins signed with the Spurs last off-season but played in just 28 games for San Antonio.
Collins averaged 5.7 points, 4.0 rebounds and 17.5 minutes for the Blazers.
A Holmgren warning: Collins is thin but is listed at 250 pounds; 195 has to scare any Holmgren suitor.
► Austin Daye: The 6-foot-11 forward was the 15th pick in the 2009 draft and bounced around for six years, making 29 starts. Only in Year 2, with the Pistons, did Daye play more than 15 minutes a game.
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To be determined
► Rui Hachimura: The 6-foot-8 power forward went ninth overall, to Washington, in the 2019 draft and started all 105 of his games his first two seasons. But Hachimura’s playing time went down in 2021-22, though he actually was more efficient on the court.
Sometimes, you can get lost in Washington. Which has nothing to do with Holmgren or OKC.
So what’s the verdict? Mosty positive. Most Gonzaga big men have outplayed the projection based on their draft status. The busts have been few and circumstantial (injuries).
Holmgren comes from solid pedigree.
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Johnny Bench to sign new book on Oklahoma baseball & Route 66
Nostalgia is a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time, a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.
That describes baseball, don’t you think?
And that describes Route 66, the Mother Road, that’s so important to the development and history of Oklahoma.
Which explains why photographer Jean Fruth and fellow Grassroots Baseball co-founder Jeff Idelson will be at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark on Sunday, along with Oklahoma hero Johnny Bench. Fruth’s new book, Grassroots Baseball: Route 66, was published just this week, with an introduction (and Oklahoma chapter) written by Bench.
The books will be available for sale at the ballpark, and Bench will sign books from 1:15-1:45 p.m. and 2:15-2:45 p.m. Bench will throw out the first pitch for the 2:05 p.m. Oklahoma City Dodgers game.
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Fruth and Idelson, former president of the Baseball Hall of Fame, spent three years traveling Route 66, from Chicago to Santa Monica, California, finding baseball scenes and baseball history.
“It doesn’t get more Americana than Route 66,” Fruth said.
The cover of the book shows some Binger High School (Bench’s alma mater) baseball players, in uniform, riding in the back of a 1968 pickup along an old section of Route 66. Binger, of course, is not on Route 66, but Fruth and Idelson extended their focus to places within “shouting distance” of the historic highway.
“What we learned was just how much of a hotbed baseball is along the route,” Idelson said. Using baseball-reference.com, they found that more than 2,000 major-league players were born in or nearby Route 66 locales.
Commerce, of course, is center stage of Route 66 baseball.
The hometown of Mickey Mantle is the second town on Oklahoma’s Route 66, coming from the northeast, after Quapaw. The old barn against which Mantle learned to switch-hit as a boy still stands in Commerce.
The book includes the glistening minor-league parks in Tulsa and OKC, the Miracle League in Edmond for people with disabilities, youth baseball and high school.
“Route 66 is very much alive,” Idelson said. “It’s an important part of the landscape that helps define Oklahoma. The baseball that’s played is vibrant.
“We love nostalgia. Route 66 is the first federal highway connecting the Midwest to the West in 1926.”
Fruth was a travelling photographer for the Baseball Hall of Fame when she produced her book Grassroots Baseball. And she was drawn to the amateur game.
When she was shooting the World Baseball Classic in Japan, she found little league games in Tokyo. When she shot the Texas Rangers, she would seek out a Dallas-area high school.
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“Nostalgia is so what it’s about,” Fruth said. “That’s what ties the book together. Amateur baseball, baseball in general is nostalgia.
“Everywhere I go, even now when we post on Facebook, everybody has the stories they want to tell you. They remember their hero, their first autograph, how they brought their son to his first game. It connects generations.
“Route 66 does the same. You hear everybody’s personal stories. I never tire of the stories. As soon as you start talking about a project on Route 66, they remember the back of the station wagon, ask if went to this diner or that diner.”
And of course, there’s a lot of Route 66 outside Oklahoma. Fruth and Idelson even found sandlot baseball in the 13-mile stretch of the highway that goes through Kansas, in Baxter Springs.
Among the writers of essays in the book are Hall of Famers Bench, George Brett and Jim Thome, current Astro Alex Bregman and former major leaguer Billy Hatcher, all of whom played baseball in the vicinity of Route 66.
The book contains more than 250 photographs of the game, intertwined with Americana imagery that has come to define the Mother Road. From Wrigley Field to diamonds hard by the Pacific Ocean, baseball is depicted with small-town T-ball, minor leagues hoping to rise to the big show, girls challenging stereotypes and history buffs recreating 19th-century baseball.
And Oklahoma, with the longest stretch of Route 66 among its eight states, where they still play the game that is part nostalgia and part Americana.
The books are priced at $70. In addition to Bricktown Ballpark on Sunday, the books will be in book stores soon and also can be purchased grassrootsbaseball.org.
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Bedlam golf resumes in NCAAs
Football has provided incredible endings in recent years. Wrestling has the tradition. Basketball has the atmosphere. Softball has recency intrigue.
But the best Bedlam rivalry going is in men’s golf, and OSU and OU resume their vaunted play starting Friday in the NCAA Championships at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona.
OU, the 2017 NCAA champion and the 2021 runnerup, is ranked No. 1. OSU, the 2018 NCAA champion and winner of 11 NCAA titles, is ranked No. 2. The Sooners have won six tournaments this spring, the Cowboys four.
Individually, OU senior Chris Gotterup ranks No. 1 in the nation. OSU senior Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra ranks No. 2.
OSU’s lineup consists of Chacarra, 23rd-ranked Aman Gupta, 37th-ranked Brian Stark, Jonas Baumgartner and Bo Jin. Senior Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, ranked 57th nationally by Golfweek, is the alternate.
OU’s lineup is expected to include Gotterup, a transfer from Rutgers; 10th-ranked Logan McAllister; 50th-ranked Patrick Welch; 70th-ranked Drew Goodman and Stephen Campbell Jr.
The tournament consists of four rounds of stroke play to determine the eight teams that advance to match play. The individual champion will be determined by those four rounds of stroke play.
OSU’s golf tradition is profound. All four Cowboy coaches in history have won an NCAA title – Labron Harris (1963); Mike Holder (1976, 1978, 1980, 1983, 1987, 1991, 1995 and 2000); Mike McGraw (2006); and Alan Bratton (2018).
OSU has had nine NCAA individual champions – Earl Moeller in 1953, Grier Jones 1968, David Edwards 1978, Scott Verplank 1986, Brian Watts 1987, E.J. Pfister 1988, Charles Howell 2000, Jonathan Moore 2006 and Matthew Wolff 2019.
Since the NCAA went to the current format, the Cowboys have reached the finals in 2010, 2014 and 2018; and reached the semifinals in 2011, 2019 and 2021.
But the arch-rival Sooners have emerged as the NCAA favorite.
OU’s golf tradition is good – just not compared to the Cowboys.
The Sooners had a run of greatness under Gregg Grost from 1984-90, finishing third, eighth, third, third, second, first and fifth in the NCAAs.
Individually, Walter Emery won the 1933 NCAA title, and Jim Vickers did the same in 1952.
But coach Ryan Hybl has taken the Sooners to incredible heights in recent years. OU won the 2017 NCAA title, reached the semifinals in 2018, the quarterfinals in 2019 and the title match in 2021 (the pandemic wiped out the 2020 NCAAs).
The tournament will be televised on Golf Channel from 4-8 p.m. Monday (final round), 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Tuesday (quarterfinals), 4-8 p.m. Tuesday (semifinals) and 4-8 p.m. Wednesday (championship match).
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Mailbag: Why so many Sooner QBs?
In recent weeks, OU added two quarterbacks – transfers Davis Beville from the University of Pittsburgh and General Booty from Tyler (Texas) Junior College. One new QB seemed imperative for new Sooner offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby, but two?
Brett: “Some thoughts about Lebby’s QBs. Much has been said lately about OU acquiring more QBs, and having so many on the roster. It stands out in stark contrast to (Lincoln) Riley’s teams that seemed to be thin on the sheer number of scholarship QBs. Having depth in case (Dillon) Gabriel gets hurt is probably the No. 1 reason for the new QBs. But was wondering how much other factors might have played a part. Do the coaches think Gabriel could go to the NFL after one season if it is a good season? The other thing I was thinking about was tempo. I have to assume if Lebby wants to go really fast, then he will go really fast in practice as well. Meaning more drills, more plays, more throws in practice. Maybe he needs more arms to run practice without wearing them out?”
Tramel: Excellent points. I think coaches should always worry about quarterbacks turning pro. That’s just the nature of the sport these days. But I think the tempo idea has validity, too. The Sooners ARE going fast-paced in practice, and fatigue is always a deterrent to going too fast. More bodies means more reps, and that’s with quarterbacks, too. However, you’d think that with freshman Nick Evers and Penn State transfer Micah Bowens and non-scholarship Ralph Rucker, OU would have had a third-team quarterback capable of getting practice goals accomplished. At the least, we can say that the addition of TWO quarterbacks means Evers wasn’t anywhere close to being able to play.
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The List: Big 12 Baseball Tournament champions
OSU won the final 16 Big Eight Baseball Tournaments, a streak of dominance that’s not likely to be duplicated. But parity has been the calling card of the 24 Big 12 tournaments staged.
Ten schools have won at least one Big 12 Baseball Tournament; only Kansas State and West Virginia have failed to win at least one of the titles (Iowa State and Colorado don’t field baseball programs). Here’s how they rank:
1. Texas 5 (2002, 2003, 2008, 2009, 2015)
2. Nebraska 4 (1999, 2000, 2001, 2005; the Cornhuskers’ final Big 12 season was 2011)
3. OSU 3 (2004, 2017, 2019)
3. Texas A&M 3 (2007, 2010, 2011)
3. Texas Christian 3 (2014, 2016, 2021; the Frogs’ first Big 12 baseball season was 2013)
6. OU 2 (1997, 2013)
7. Texas Tech 1 (1998)
7. Kansas 1 (2006)
7. Baylor 1 (2018)
7. Missouri 1 (2012; the Tigers won in their final Big 12 season).
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Do Gonzaga ties help Chet Holmgren, when it comes to the NBA Draft?
