Mark Few's coaching talents are many, as are Zags' tournament appearances

RALEIGH, N.C. — You won't find Mark Few fighting for a seat in Bristol on the "ESPN GameDay" set. His idea of glamour is a flexible fly rod and a river full of hungry steelhead.

Some coaches live for the buzz, the bright lights, the fame. Few prefers the solitude of an empty gym, with just his players and his coaches and with another big game looming.

In a world that is as loud as a landing strip, the Gonzaga coach seeks the quiet like a moth seeks a light bulb. He is straight as a laser beam. Consistent as the tides.

"He tells us before every game, 'I'm willing to go to battle with anyone of you in this room,' " starting freshman guard Steven Gray said. "And we believe him."

A decade ago, Gonzaga was everybody's cute, brainy upset pick. The Little 12th-seed That Could. The NCAA tournament felt more like a gift to Gonzaga than an expectation.

Since he took over the roll that Dan Monson began, Few has raised expectations. He has remade Gonzaga in March into must-see TV. Gonzaga, which opens the tournament today against Davidson, isn't cute any more. The Zags aren't little.

Gonzaga, under Few, has become a March perennial.

"You find some coaches that have strengths in recruiting or some that have strengths in X's and O's, some that even have strength in scheduling," said Leon Rice, Gonzaga's associate head coach who has been at the school since 1999, a year before Few became the head coach. "The thing about Mark is his versatility. He's good in all aspects."

Good coaches have trademarks, things their teams do consistently every year, no matter what the talent level.

Few's teams win most of the 50-50 balls. His teams rebound. And his players improve, game by game, year by year. Some coaches are screamers. Many are profane. But Few rarely screams and never swears.

"One thing I'm thankful for, he never quit on me," forward David Pendergraft said before Thursday's public practice at the RBC Center. "He kept pushing and pushing and pushing. He never saw a ceiling or a limit to my ability. He's never let me settle or get comfortable with where I was."

Pendergraft, a senior, has been called the quintessential Zag. He's an overachieving, little-recruited kid who has made himself into an all-purpose wing man.

"Coach Few treats us with a lot of respect," Pendergraft said. "He treats us like young men. He doesn't put you down and we respond with respect from that. Respect for him and total attentiveness."

With Few, coaching is about perspective. Winning is supremely important; after all, he has won 80 percent of his games in his nine seasons at Gonzaga. And he never has won fewer than 20 games in a season.

But he has created a culture at Gonzaga that transcends the game.

"He talks to guys about a lot of things in the outside world," Rice said. "Back to 9/11, we kind of took some days and talked about that. He provided leadership through that time. He tries to not just be about basketball."

Few and assistant coach Ray Giacoletti first became friends when Giacoletti was an assistant at Washington. During recruiting trips, Few, then a young assistant, would stay at Giacoletti's house and they would talk basketball philosophies, sketching X's and O's on napkins, late into the night, arguing over esoteric ideas like the best way to defend a ball screen.

Eventually, the families grew close. When Giacoletti got the Eastern Washington job, he and wife Kim baby-sat Few's kids. The families vacation together every year in Cabo or the Bahamas.

"Mark, in my estimation, for as successful as he's been, is the most balanced human being I've ever been around," Giacoletti said. "He understands family and how important that is. And in our business, family never comes first.

"Yeah, he's been incredibly successful, but how he balances everything is different from how most people balance things. His balance and humility combined with all his success, is very unique, I think, today."

That balance is translated into the way he relates to his players.

"There are times when most coaches would get upset and blast a team, where Mark doesn't," Giacoletti said. "He really picks his spots and has a very unique way of getting his point across to the players without ever cursing and a lot of times without even raising his voice. If you can show me somebody else who's able to do that, that's a pretty impressive feat."

Because it's March and because of his success, this is the season Few's name gets linked to coaching vacancies. Could he be the next Indiana coach? If Ernie Kent is fired, would Few leave Spokane and return to his hometown to coach Oregon?

Or will he be a Zag for life?

"He's a genuine guy and he tells us he's happy and he's comfortable here," Gray said. "Just hearing that, I mean, he's behind us 100 percent in everything we do. He's willing to do anything for this team and it's hard to imagine somebody saying that every day and then, in the back of their mind, they're thinking about leaving."

Mark Few has been at Gonzaga for 19 years. If you believe in his consistency, if you believe in the notion of permanence, you would expect him to be there another 19 years.

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com