More than 6,000 people filled the McCarthey Athletic Center on Saturday afternoon to watch a 20-minute intrasquad scrimmage featuring a roster that has barely existed for four months. For a Gonzaga team that spent most of the summer waiting on eligibility rulings, the afternoon went about as well as it could have gone. The two teams combined to shoot 18 of 32 from three, committed just eight turnovers between them, and Davis Fogle scored 30 points all on his own, breaking the Kraziness scoring record
of 19 that Braden Huff set in 2023.
The dunk contest also returned this year in place of the three-point contest, and although Xaivian Lee and Juwan Ekanga put up a valiant effort, it was once again Fogle who stole the show by leaping over center Massamba Diop for a ridiculous slam in the contest’s penultimate round. Braden Huff played in front of a full Kennel crowd for the first time in 268 days, since the dislocated kneecap that ended his season in January, and finished with 11 points and seven rebounds. Meanwhile, Houston transfer Isiah Harwell scored 17 in a little more than 17 minutes and made four of five from three.
None of this settles anything, obviously. Gonzaga shot 33.3% from three last season and never made more than 14 in a game, and one October afternoon against teammates is not necessarily strong evidence that three point woes won’t plague again, but 18 is definitely a hard number to ignore. Purdue is less than a month out and a bunch of eligibility questions are still open for the Zags. But Kraziness once again delivered the things fans have been waiting for since last March: a real look at this year’s Gonzaga Bulldogs.
Here are five things worth taking from Saturday.
1. Davis Fogle Might Be Even Better Than We Anticipated
We are all living in the Fogleverse now. Thirty points in a 20-minute scrimmage has got to be the single most impressive Kraziness performance in the event’s long history. And Fogle got those points from everywhere on the floor. He shot it off the catch, got downhill when he wanted to, scored in the midrange, and showed up to make a statement that his three point shot was not something Zag fans needed to worry about in the 2026-27 season. The guy who showed up on Saturday afternoon was not a promising breakout candidate; that was an NBA lottery pick.
Coach Zach Norvell was asked on the broadcast who on the team had absorbed the toughness and the courage void left by the departure of Graham Ike. Norvell did not hesitate in naming Fogle.
Gonzaga’s offseason conversation has been about the frontcourt, about Huff’s knee and Diop’s size and whether Almansa gets cleared. Saturday was evidence, however, that the most important player on this roster may be the dude who played his way into the rotation last year and who clearly spent the summer rebuilding his jumper. If Fogle is this good, the questions about everyone else just got a lot less urgent.
2. Massamba Diop Has a Long Way to Go
Diop’s afternoon was the one piece of Saturday that should give people pause. After arriving as one of the most coveted transfers in this year’s portal, the 7-1 center spent most of his offensive possessions either out of position or failing to carve out the low-post space needed to get his own shot or to open the angle for Huff to find his. At one point he dribbled the ball off his own foot about ten feet from the rim for a turnover that had nothing to do with pressure. Parker Jefferson bodied him off his spot in the key throughout the scrimmage. It was an ugly stretch of basketball for the ASU transfer.
The rebounding was the bigger problem for Diop. Izan Almansa grabbed seven boards in 14 minutes, four of them on the offensive end, the most of anybody in the scrimmage. Diop played 17 minutes and finished with four. For a 7-foot-1 center with a 7-foot-4 wingspan, being out-worked on the glass by a 6-foot-10 forward playing fewer minutes is the exact outcome Gonzaga cannot afford given what the frontcourt already lacks there. Few said afterward that the team needs more on the glass from its bigger players and pointed out that Fogle and Harwell were among the best rebounders on the roster at this stage, which is a diplomatic way of saying the same thing.
Still, context does matter. Diop averaged 13.6 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.1 blocks as a freshman at Arizona State, where he started all 33 games and blocked 69 shots, third nationally among freshmen. He is being asked to do different things now. The rebounding load and the back-to-the-basket work are not what Arizona State needed from him, and the first public afternoon of a new role in a new system with first-game nerves is not the sample anyone should be making decisions on. His length still showed up, including a block of Jefferson on the opening possession, and Few said he has the tools to hunker down as an elite rim protector while he grows into the rest of it (like, you know, rebounding… and scoring…).
Nobody develops big men like Gonzaga. Diop will get there. Saturday just made it clear how much of that development may still need to happen before November 2.
3. Izan Almansa Did Everything Else
Almansa played 14 minutes for Navy and finished with seven points, seven rebounds, an assist and zero turnovers while drawing three fouls and committing one. Four of those rebounds came on the offensive end, out of five total offensive boards for his entire team. Nobody else in the scrimmage had more than three.
The broadcast compared him to Anton Watson and Jalen Warley, which is high praise for a player who has not yet been cleared to put on the uniform and play for real. Gonzaga has won a lot of games with a guy like that on the floor, the one who will never lead the team in scoring but does everything right everywhere else. Almansa spent his 14 minutes doing exactly that and staked his claim as the team’s best rebounder along the way.
That matters more after watching Diop grab four rebounds in 17 minutes, just one of them offensive. The best available answer to the clearest weakness on this roster is, unfortunately, a player who may not be allowed to play, and Saturday only made the need for Almansa that much more obvious.
4. Isiah Harwell Looked Like the Player Houston Was Supposed to Get
Harwell scored 17 points in 17 minutes for Navy on 6-of-8 shooting and 4-of-5 from three, adding three rebounds and a block. He was the only Navy player in double figures and the most efficient scorer in the building after Fogle. The 6-foot-6 wing was the 13th-rated recruit in the 2025 class by On3, a McDonald’s All-American who scored a team-high 16 in that game and took MVP honors at the Hoophall Classic, and he picked Houston over Gonzaga, Texas and California.
Harwell said the difference this year was having an actual offseason instead of spending it in the training room, and that he spent the summer shooting with Stephen Gentry and Brian Michaelson. Few mentioned Saturday that it was nice to see him step up and make some shots. He will not shoot 4-of-5 from three every night. The number that matters is that he was healthy enough to spend an entire offseason on the floor, and the version of him that showed up for 17 minutes is the one Gonzaga chased for three years out of Pocatello.
Put him next to Fogle and Xaivian Lee, who finished with nine points, four assists and no turnovers in 20 minutes, and the backcourt is not where this team’s problems are.
5. Xaivian Lee Looked Like a Gonzaga Point Guard
Lee played all 20 minutes for White and finished with nine points on 3-of-7 shooting, 3-of-6 from three, four assists, four rebounds, a block and zero turnovers. He led his team in assists. Those four assists came against two total turnovers for the entire White squad, and none of them were his.
Gonzaga is not running full sets in early October, which makes what Lee did more notable rather than less. He pushed the ball, found people in the spots where they could actually shoot it, and did not force anything when the first option was not there. The three-point shooting came in the moments when the scrimmage got tight, and he made three of them without needing a play called for him.
The criticisms at Florida were about efficiency and shot selection. He shot 42 percent from the field and 29.2 percent from three in his one season in Gainesville, down from the 36.6 percent he shot from distance in his final year at Princeton, and he opened that season 5-for-17 against Arizona, 2-for-13 against Florida State and 0-for-6 against Merrimack.
None of that showed up Saturday. He had the ball in his hands for 20 straight minutes, gave it away zero times, took six threes and made half of them, and held up on the defensive end. Florida got the version of Lee playing out of position and shooting through a cold stretch that lasted most of the season. Gonzaga appears to have gotten the one who was a two-time first-team All-Ivy selection and who ran an offense for three years at Princeton.
6. The Rest of the New Faces
French import Nathan De Sousa handed out five(!!!) assists in 17 minutes, the most of anyone in the scrimmage, and scored seven points on 3-of-7 shooting. The French guard was cleared by the NCAA less than two weeks before Saturday and signed on September 24. For a player who has been on campus a matter of days, five assists against one turnover is about as good a first impression as a backup point guard can make.
Luca Foster had a rough afternoon. The freshman played 16 minutes and did not score, going 0-for-3 from the field with all three attempts coming from three. That is one scrimmage for an 18-year-old who has never played a college game, and the only thing worth taking from it is that he spent a lot of time being defended by Juwan Ekanga.
Juwan Ekanga was the surprise. He played all 20 minutes for White, scored four points on 2-of-4 shooting, and added three assists, two offensive rebounds, a steal and zero fouls. He is 6-foot-6 with a 6-foot-10 wingspan and has all the makings of an elite perimeter defender with good hands and quick feet. The comparison that comes to mind is Joel Ayayi, who also arrived from France, also came up through JL Bourg, and also built a Gonzaga career on being long, athletic and useful in every phase without demanding touches. The scoring will show up eventually. What Ekanga showed Saturday, though, was the part that gets freshmen on the floor at Gonzaga.
Then there is Diop, once again, who picked up four fouls in 17 minutes. Four fouls in 17 minutes will not cut it against Purdue. Combine it with the four rebounds and the possessions he spent completely out of position off the ball, and the center spot is the one place on this roster where the gap between what Gonzaga needs and what it saw Saturday is widest.
Final Thoughts
Everything above should be taken with a mountain of salt. There is a month until Gonzaga opens the season officially and then a whole season of play after that. Fogle will not keep scoring at a 30-points-per-20-minutes clip. Harwell will not shoot 80% from outside every night. Diop will not foul out every game (though it is difficult to imagine a season where he never does).
But this did not resemble a group that has been practicing together for a few weeks. The ball moved, guys found each other in the right spots, nobody stood around waiting for a play to be called, and the whole afternoon had a rhythm that usually takes a December non-conference slate to develop. Rosters built this fast tend to look like five people taking turns, and this one did not.
Fogle was spectacular, yes. But he was not the only dude out there who made a good impression on Saturday.
