Report: Gonzaga’s Mark Few voted into Basketball Hall of Fame

Gonzaga men’s basketball head coach Mark Few has been voted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, according to a report from CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander on Tuesday.

Few, who transformed the Zags from a Cinderella darling into a perennial national powerhouse, will be inducted as part of the 2026 Hall of Fame class. Other inductees include Amar’e Stoudemire, Doc Rivers, Candace Parker and Elena Delle Donne, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania.

The 2026 class will be formally announced at 9 a.m. Saturday on ESPN2 as part of the NCAA’s Final Four weekend. The enshrinement ceremony will take place Aug. 15 in Springfield, Mass.

Few, 63, has amassed a 773-156 career record over his 27 seasons as the head coach at Gonzaga, where he turned a little-known university in Spokane into a household name that’s become synonymous with March Madness. Few’s 773 career wins are the 19th-most in Division I men’s basketball history and his .832 career win percentage ranks No. 2 all-time.

Few has reached the NCAA Tournament in every season as a head coach, with the exception of the 2020 tournament that was canceled due to COVID. The Creswell, Ore., native has a 45-26 record in the Big Dance, including a pair of national championship game appearances in 2017 and 2021.

Since 2015, Few’s Bulldogs rank second behind Duke with 29 NCAA Tournament wins. They made nine consecutive Sweet 16 trips from 2015 to 2024, which is tied for the longest such streak since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

Few also has piled up 23 West Coast Conference regular-season titles and 21 WCC Tournament titles.

In the 1990s, Gonzaga was struggling with declining enrollment, increasing deficits and layoffs. The men’s basketball program had never been ranked in The Associated Press Top 25 poll. At one point, university officials reportedly suggested the school leave Division I athletics and move to a lower level.

But in March 1999, everything changed. With Few serving as the top assistant for then-head coach Dan Monson, Gonzaga stunned the college hoops world with its maiden Cinderella voyage to the Elite Eight. Monson then departed after the season to become the head coach at Minnesota, which opened the door for Few to take over the reins at GU.

Few immediately guided the Zags back to the Sweet 16 in each of his first two seasons at the helm, ensuring the program didn’t fade away as a one-hit wonder. And from there, he kept elevating Gonzaga basketball to new heights that once would have seemed unfathomable.

“It is one of the greatest success stories, I think, in American sports history,” ESPN broadcaster Jay Bilas, one of college basketball’s most prominent voices, said during the Zags’ 31-1 national runner-up campaign in 2021.

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