You might be surprised to know that next year's recruiting class will be Gonzaga's FIRST Top 25 recruiting class. We picked up our first ever McDonald's All-American in Zach Collins. Truth is SMC and Gonzaga have found ways to put together strong teams without elite recruits. SMC has the ultimate connections in the Australian pipeline and GU has done remarkably well overseas and with high profile transfers (i.e. Wiltjer and McClellan this year, 3 big time transfers next year). I wouldn't say that SMC is clean, they had some major infractions very recently revolving around recruiting in Australia and are under heavy sanctions from the NCAA right now.

If I'm being totally fair GU does pick up elite recruits but in a very non-traditional way. Sabonis very well could have been a Top-15 type player and McD's AA but because foreign players aren't ranked we will never know. I do know I'm not sad to have him on the team and would be ecstatic to keep him after this year

As for me, I'm a Spokane native AND BYU alum. I'll always be loyal to my local team (though it doesn't hurt that I was at BYU in 2001-2002 and then 2005-2007 so there wasn't much to pull me away from my Zags).

I wish all the best to BYU with the exception of 2-3 games/year, however, this whole rhetoric of "BYU is too good for the WCC" gets a bit tiring.