Sunrise Christian coach reunites with Zags buddies at Final Four

They all came to Phoenix and what a pickup basketball game it could have been.

The Zags. The guys who got the story started and the ones who kept it going. The ones who upset Stanford and St. John’s and the ones who endured painful defeats to Arizona, UCLA and Wichita State. The walk-ons and the NBA players.

Players such as Adam Morrison, Dan Dickau, Richie Frahm, Cory Violette, John Stockton, Ronny Turiaf and Fort Scott’s Stephen Gentry. Coaches such as Dan Monson, Ray Giacoletti and Leon Rice.

“It’s a big reunion,” said Kyle Bankhead, Sunrise Christian Academy coach and former Gonzaga guard. “Nobody’s missing it.”

No pickup game, however. No H.O.R.S.E contest among some of college basketball’s most prominent shooters of the past 20 years.

“All the guys that are my age — it would be a pretty ugly pickup game,” Bankhead said.

Early Monday afternoon, Bankhead was on his way to the stadium to give himself and his friends time to enjoy the atmosphere before the title game against North Carolina.

No hoops means more time to tell stories, eat, drink, renew friendships and watch Gonzaga play in its first Final Four. Bankhead, who took over Sunrise’s prep team in 2015, played for Gonzaga from 1999-2004. He arrived from Walla Walla, Wash., 153 miles from Spokane, in 1999 as a walk-on and started 30 games as a senior.

He can tell the story from 2002 — recently unearthed by the Spokane Spokesman-Review — of his visit to the emergency room hours before a tournament game against Wyoming. A piece of chicken lodged in his throat and he refused anesthesia to fix the problem.

Gonzaga’s story is not typical for the Final Four. It’s a small, Catholic school in eastern Washington, about 20 miles from Idaho. It plays in the West Coast Conference. There are no pro sports in that part of Washington, so the Zags grew into a regional passion and a national favorite.

“Back when this thing started in 1999, the group of guys that they had on the team, not only were they talented, but they’re very easy to approach and be around,” Bankhead said. “No issues off the court. Professors liked you. People around campus liked you. In that sense, I think it’s different.”

While coach Mark Few can recruit lottery picks now — freshman Zach Collins is blowing up in this tournament — it didn’t start that way. Coaches built the program with the over-looked and the developing talent, four- and five-year players easy to relate to and so easy to cheer.

All those circumstances create a bond, Bankhead said, and a special kind of pride when their school gets to this stage. The coaching line — from Dan Fitzgerald to Dan Monson to Few in 1999 — is stable so all those former players feel remembered and wanted. After the team watched video on South Carolina on Friday night, the former coaches and players came into the hotel meeting room to talk and mingle.

“The Zags program is a little bit unique compared to a lot of these other programs that have been bluebloods from the start,” Bankhead said. “In our group and school and community, there’s this group that everybody always says they’re ‘True Zags’ and if you’re lumped into that group then you’re here.”

When Bankhead started at Gonzaga, making the NCAA Tournament caused a celebration. That became routine quickly and now the program is measured by some by what it didn’t accomplish. Now that knock on Few and the Zags no longer applies.

“The expectations have changed so much over time,” Bankhead said. “It’s been somewhat hard on Coach Few. You hate hearing it all the time on TV and the radio about how he’s never made the Final Four.”

As a coach, Bankhead is immune to many of the emotions fans experience. On Saturday, he felt every basket and turnover as powerfully as the student section in the Kennel. He watched Saturday’s 77-73 win over South Carolina at University of Phoenix Stadium from the lower level behind the Gonzaga bench.

“I was a mess,” he said. “I’ve never been so invested as a fan in my life. I almost felt nauseous. I told my parents I didn’t know how they did that all those years.”

This story was originally published April 3, 2017 at 4:14 PM with the headline "Sunrise Christian coach reunites with Zags buddies at Final Four."