Mark Few’s place in basketball history is now official, and for Gonzaga, it felt like another milestone in a rise that once seemed impossible.
Few was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame on Saturday as part of the class of 2026, earning the nod in just his second year of eligibility. He joined NBA head coach Doc Rivers, former Phoenix Suns and New York Knicks forward Amar’e Stoudemire, and WNBA standouts Candace Parker, Elena Delle Donne and Chamique Holdsclaw in this year’s class.
For Gonzaga, the moment carried extra weight. Few is now the second Bulldogs figure enshrined in Springfield, following John Stockton. Stockton, the Spokane native, was one of three Hall of Famers who presented Few on Saturday night.
“I grew up on campus and snuck into the gym and had to sell programs to get into the games and when you do that, you never imagine there would be a situation where a coach of the Gonzaga University Bulldogs would be a Hall of Famer," Stockton said. "To watch a man do this over 20 some seasons and earn this and retain his humble nature. It’s pretty exciting.”
Few also became the fifth active head coach in the Hall, joining Rick Pitino of St. John’s, Bill Self of Kansas, Tom Izzo of Michigan State and his longtime friend John Calipari of Arkansas. Calipari was among the presenters, along with Stockton and Grant Hill, who worked with Few at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Few used his speech to acknowledge the role Calipari played in helping Gonzaga grow into the program it is now. At a time when high-profile opponents often avoided the Bulldogs, Calipari was willing to play them.
"My main man Cal, for a friendship that started because nobody wanted to play us and we couldn’t get a game against the quote-unquote blue bloods," Few said. "So we started our own series and that worked out pretty dang good for us."
That series included four games against Calipari’s Memphis teams in the early 2010s, all Gonzaga losses. Even so, those matchups helped prepare the Bulldogs for March and brought more attention to Gonzaga and Spokane.
Few’s record against the current group of Hall of Fame head coaches sits at 6-7. He is 2-4 against Calipari after beating him twice at Kentucky, 2-0 against Self and Kansas, and 2-3 against Izzo and Michigan State. He has not faced Pitino yet, though that could change this season at the Players Era Festival if both teams win their first three games in Las Vegas.
The larger story, though, is what Few has meant to Gonzaga and Spokane over 27 years. Even after Stockton’s standout career, the school was barely a presence in the athletics world until the 1999 run under Dan Monson. When Monson left for Minnesota, Gonzaga could easily have slipped back into obscurity.
Instead, the program promoted Few, and he kept the Bulldogs in the NCAA Tournament year after year before Gonzaga truly broke through in 2006 behind Adam Morrison’s iconic season.
Few had plenty of chances to leave for jobs with more money and more resources, but Spokane remained home. The city embraced him, and his family-first approach fit perfectly.
Now Gonzaga is a nationally recognized brand, one of the biggest names in college basketball, and it enters the Pac-12 this year as a full-share member. That unprecedented financial investment reflects just how far the program has come under Few’s leadership.
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