Gonzaga’s previous season ended against Houston with a gut-punch familiar to anyone who has followed the program for the last two decades. Houston, a one-seed built on defense and toughness, squeezed the life out of the Bulldogs for forty minutes, stifling our guards on one end and getting bucket after bucket on the other. But in the middle of it stood Graham Ike, putting together one of the greatest individual efforts the program has ever seen. He scored 27 points, 23 of them in the second half
alone, and for long stretches he kept the Zags competitive on his own. He was a force of nature. Possession after possession, when everything else on the floor looked like a struggle, Ike went straight at the best frontcourt in the country and nearly dragged the Zags into the Sweet 16 singlehandedly.
It was a loss, the kind that stings, but it was also a half of basketball that belongs in Gonzaga’s history books. Top ten, maybe top five, among the best individual stretches ever played in a Bulldogs jersey. It was hard not to read it like a farewell, the swan song of a transfer who had already outpaced every expectation. What more could Graham Ike possibly give the program after a performance like that?
The fact that he’ll be back for his final season of eligibility changes Gonzaga’s outlook entirely, turning what could have been a rebuilding year into one built around a proven All-American caliber anchor in the middle.
From Dice Roll to Dominance
Graham Ike’s commitment to Gonzaga was met with cautious optimism. He had averaged nearly 20 points and 10 rebounds at Wyoming, but he also hadn’t played in over a year, and questions about his health and fit in Mark Few’s Timme-Tailored system lingered. Skeptics saw a gamble: an undersized center, injury-prone, asked to replace the program’s all-time leading scorer in an offense built around efficiency and pace.
Two seasons later, that picture looks laughably off-base. In his first year in Spokane, Ike gave Gonzaga exactly what it needed, a steady interior presence who averaged 16.5 points and 7.4 rebounds while shooting over 60 percent from the field. By the following year, he had leveled up. Ike finished at 17.3 points and 7.3 rebounds per game, kept his field goal percentage near 60, and added a reliable jumper from the elbow and the arc. He hit 39% of his threes on limited volume, knocked down more than 80% of his free throws, and carried a usage rate north of 30% without sacrificing efficiency.
What began as a dice roll has turned into a two-year run that exceeds anything Zag fans could have scripted. Two years in, Ike has turned the transfer gamble into one of the most important roster moves of the Mark Few era.
The Numbers Behind the Dominance
Grahambo exists in rare company coming into the 25-26 season. His elite-level scoring, physicality, intensity, and rebounding skills have him on preseason All-American watchlists all around the college basketball landscape. Few big men in the country carried his kind of offensive burden with the kind of efficiency he showed in 24-25, and it’s why he landed in KenPom’s Player of the Year top 10 and Evan Miya’s pre-season top 20.
But the stats only tell part of the story. Ike’s real presence has always come through his sheer competitive intensity; in terms of sheer meanness, Ike’s been unlike anything the Zags have had inside since Domantas Sabonis. He barks at defenders, stares down benches, and lets referees know exactly how he feels. He’s played with a mean streak the box score can’t capture. And when he finds his rhythm, he looks nigh unguardable.
For Gonzaga fans, Ike’s arrival created whiplash. The Timme years had been marked by mustache twirls, spins, and smiles at the crowd, a mix of showmanship and control that kept the edge from ever tipping into chaos. Ike brought none of that. He was all business, snarling through possessions and imposing himself with force rather than flair. The shift in tone was jarring at first, but as the 20-point nights piled up, fans came to see it less as a departure from Timme than the start of something different, a new kind of star stepping into the spotlight.
The Edge and the Risk
Ike’s fire marks him as an outlier, a presence whose competitiveness recalls Elias Harris, Brandon Clarke, or even occasionally Adam Morrison in his bluntness and volatility, though none of those former Zag legends ever matched the sheer volume of snarling and jawing and chest-to-chest defiance Ike brings nightly. He plays with a physicality so unrelenting that games bend to his mood, the pace and tenor of play shifting around him. That energy is what makes him formidable, though it carries the risk that intensity at that pitch rarely sustains itself without someone to redirect it.
Enter Ryan Nembhard. Last season, Ryan Nembhard’s job in Spokane was more than running the offense. He was also the Ike Whisperer, steadying him when the temperature rose, feeding him when the defense cracked, and pulling him back when emotion threatened to spill over. The partnership worked both ways—point guard and center sharpening one another, each making the other harder to stop. With Nembhard gone, the question becomes who takes on that role. The responsibility presumably now falls to the guy stepping into Nembhard’s role in the offense, Braeden Smith, and it will test him beyond his duties as the lead guard. He will have to run Gonzaga’s attack while also keeping Ike in the space where his edge fuels the team instead of overwhelming it.
Expectations for 2025–26
Bart Torvik’s model says Graham Ike will average 20.1 points per game this season, good for fourth in the nation behind JT Toppin (Texas Tech), Josh Hubbard (Mississippi State), and Marcus Burton (Notre Dame). That projection makes sense after watching him climb from 16.5 points to 17.3 while playing fewer minutes, the rare case where efficiency and production both moved upward at once.
But scoring is only half the picture. Ike has averaged better than seven rebounds per game in each of his two seasons at Gonzaga, and the way he clears space inside remains central to how the Zags operate on the glass. And with 6’10 Braden Huff now alongside him in the starting lineup instead of behind him, the frontcourt has the chance to control the glass at a level few opponents can match. But that dominance only matters if Ike is on the floor.
The one thing that has slowed him down in the past has been fouls. When he is in the game, Gonzaga has stability. When he is on the bench, the team looks different. Last year those minutes Ike spent on the bench saddled with fouls went to Huff, who handled them well. That luxury is gone. Huff is now his partner rather than his safety net, and the second option is 7-footer Ismaila Diagne. But for every stretch Diagne looked the part as a freshman, there were other times last season where he struggled to keep pace. If that continues, Ike will need to log heavier minutes than he has in either of his first two seasons in Spokane, and that raises the premium on avoiding foul trouble while still playing with the edge that defines him.
The rest of the roster gives him help. Huff is a scorer in his own right. Adam Miller and Steele Venters can stretch the floor. Tyon Grant-Foster (God willing…) brings another proven wing option while Mario Saint-Supery can both produce and create off the dribble. If Grant Foster’s waiver remains in NCAA purgatory, Davis Fogle, Emmanuel Innocenti, and Jalen Warley all offer high upside at the position somewhere on the floor. Gonzaga has weapons everywhere, which means Ike does not need to force his way to 20 points a night. If he gets there, it will be because the offense keeps flowing his direction and because he has so far proven to be the one player who can take a game over on his own.
Final Thoughts
Two years ago, Graham Ike came to Spokane as a gamble, a player with undeniable talent and a history of injuries that clouded the picture of what he could become. Since then he has erased the doubt. He has given Gonzaga a centerpiece whose scoring touch, rebounding strength, and sheer competitive intensity have exceeded every expectation. His second half against Houston was not only a career peak but one of the finest individual 20-minute stretches in Gonzaga history, the kind of performance that etches a player into the collective memory of fans everywhere.
Now he returns for his final year of eligibility as the tone-setter for a program with a lot of question marks to address. Ike does not play through physicality, he imposes it. He is the one who knocks, the player whose intensity defines every possession on either side of the floor. This season gives him the chance to close his Gonzaga career as an All-American and the foundation of a roster with the tools to chase something bigger. For a program that has seen stars come and go, Ike stands apart as a transfer who became a cornerstone, and his final act gives fans a whole lot to look forward to.
