As of right now, Gonzaga has one viable option at point guard, and he hasn’t even cleared eligibility yet. Nathan De Sousa is a 23-year-old Frenchman who spent last season starting in the backcourt at Cholet Basket, in France’s Pro A-League. He committed a few weeks ago as depth behind Mario Saint-Supery (henceforth referred to as “El Traidorcito”), who blindsided staff when he took a four-year offer from Valencia in Spain on a Friday and left the next day like a thief in the night. De Sousa suddenly stopped being depth and has now become the entire position for the Zags. And he’s not even technically eligible yet.
That’s why every Zag fan is now waiting with bated breath and refreshing their X feeds every 45 minutes (at least I am), waiting on news regarding a guy named Donovan Dent. Dent was the Mountain West Conference Player of the Year at New Mexico and the top-ranked guard in last spring’s portal. Gonzaga recruited him heavily last year, but he ultimately picked UCLA. He spent this past season running coach Mick Cronin’s “offense,” and dropped 12 points and 10 assists on the Zags in Seattle last December. He also announced in May that he was officially retiring from basketball to run youth camps in Albuquerque. A good dude. He’s played 139 college games, which is four seasons, all the NCAA gives you.
Except now it gives some people five. In June, the NCAA scrapped the old framework and adopted a new one: five years of eligibility, five seasons to use them, clock starting the day you enroll. The catch is that the NCAA declined to apply any of it backward; if your eligibility ran out in 2025-26, tough. Which leaves Dent’s class in a very specific hole. The guys a few years ahead of him got a free COVID year, while the guys a year behind him get five-to-play-five just because. Dent’s group, the high school class of 2022, gets four seasons in four years, no redshirt, no additional year. Like a handful of other guys, Dent spent his whole career playing against opponents with the bonus COVID season, and now they age out twelve months before the new rule would have handed them their own additional season of eligibility. That’s the argument, and an Ohio judge bought it, granting an injunction to a group of players in exactly Dent’s spot. Dent went out and hired the attorney who won it. Now we wait and see.
Meanwhile, the Zags still don’t have a point guard. However, the board didn’t go totally empty. Gonzaga isn’t totally without options. None of them is Dent. None of them is De Sousa, either, for that matter. Regardless, the Zags will need someone in their backcourt. And they’ll need them quick.
Here are a few other names worth keeping on your radar.
Tijan Saine Jr., Weber State
Saine Jr. has somehow been available since March, and nobody’s taken him. Saine Jr. is a 5-10, 175-pound guard from Everett who started as a Division II walk-on at Western Washington (go Vikings!), redshirted, won GNAC Freshman of the Year, then went 17.3/4.0/2.8 on 39.6 percent from three as a sophomore before transferring up to Weber State. His Division I debut: all 32 starts, 17.5 points, 4.3 assists, 45.4/34.7/89.6, First-Team All-Big Sky, and Newcomer of the Year. He led the conference in scoring during Big Sky play at 20.8, hit double figures in his last 22 straight, and his 89.6 percent from the line was third-best in program history and 18th nationally. The number that matters is 4.3 — fifth in the league in assists, third in assist-to-turnover ratio. That’s a point guard, not a small guy who scores.
His size is a problem. But watch the film before you write him off: Saine Jr. creates his own space, changes speeds, and gets to the rim against longer defenders who should be able to keep him out of the paint and can’t. Six free throw attempts a game, ten-plus in six different games. His agent told ESPN in May that Washington, Missouri, NC State, Mississippi State, San Jose State, and LSU were all in touch. Nobody’s pulled the trigger. Yet. Whoever finally does is getting a steal. However, he’s not Donovan Dent.
Myles Rice, Maryland
Rice doesn’t need a courtroom, which already separates him from half this list. He’s a redshirt junior with one year of eligibility left (the year he lost came from beating cancer before his college career started), and he’s been in the portal since April. He was also, once, the best freshman in the Pac-12 Conference: 14.8 points and 3.8 assists across 35 starts at Washington State, Freshman of the Year, First-Team All-Pac-12, in the same league that Gonzaga just joined. Everything since is why he’s free. Indiana: 10.1 in 27.5 minutes, 25 starts, then out of the lineup and back in the portal. Maryland: a career-low 5.6 points per game on 36.6 percent shooting with 1.3 assists across 17 games, most of the season lost to an ankle injury, and a finish in coach Buzz Williams’s doghouse. Third portal entry in three years. The Terrapins moved on to DJ Wagner and Bishop Boswell.
Two years of decline is two years of decline, and there’s no spinning it. But the career line still reads 84 games, 64 starts, 11.2 points, 2.9 assists, 42.2 percent from the floor, and 82.6 percent from the stripe, and he opened his Maryland career with 19 and seven against Georgetown before the ankle took the year. He shot 92.7 percent from the line in the games he did play. Somewhere under the last two seasons is a First-Team All-Pac-12 point guard who did it 90 miles from the Kennel. He’s still unsigned, and the Zags could snatch him up without needing to wait on the courts. He, however, is not Donovan Dent.
Wei Lin, Oregon
Lin is on this list because he’s available, and that’s most of the case. He’s a 6-4, 190-pound guard from Xiamen, Fujian, who came to Eugene, Oregon, after three seasons with the Nanjing Monkey Kings — a CBA All-Star before he ever played a college game. He arrived late in the offseason, then opened the year at point guard when Jackson Shelstad broke his hand, which is a lot to ask of a guy learning a new league, a new offense, and a new level of physicality at once. He played 30 games with nine starts and averaged 6.6 points and 1.7 assists in 17.6 minutes on 34.4 percent from the floor and 29.5 percent from three. Career high of 23 at Rutgers on 8-of-14 with six threes and five assists. Double figures six times, all in Big Ten play. He scored in 29 of 30 games. Been in the portal since April 8.
He showed flashes of playmaking brilliance: lobs, behind-the-back feeds, tricky change-of-pace attacks to the rim, and his teammates raved about his basketball IQ. Furthermore, he’s only played one season of college basketball. But sub-30 percent from deep in a combo guard’s body is not what you sign when you’ve just lost your starting point guard, and potential first-round draft pick, and Gonzaga would be the third style of basketball he’s learned in two years. Important to note, Lin is also not Donovan Dent.
Jason Edwards, Providence
Edwards has scored everywhere he’s ever been, in every league, at every level, and it has never once mattered where. Five schools in five years: Miles College at Division II, Dodge City Community College, North Texas, Vanderbilt, and Providence. NJCAA first-team All-American at Dodge City, then 19.1 a game at North Texas, good for 650 points, fifth-most in program history, five 30-point games, a career-high 37 on Tulane, First-Team All-AAC. Then Vanderbilt, where he led the Commodores in scoring at 17.0, ranked eighth in the SEC, went for 20-plus ten times, including 30 on TCU, and made All-SEC Third Team. Then Providence: 16.5 points, 34.3 percent from outside, and three assists per game. Career line of 17.7 points and 35 percent from three. The man is a bucket in any uniform you hand him.
He’s also not a point guard. He’s 6-1 and 180, and his career high in assists is the 3.0 that he put up at Providence. The book on him coming out of the portal last year was that he’s offense-first, and the assist numbers say so. And his eligibility is its own tangle: the Division II and JUCO seasons muddy the eligibility timeline, and whether he’s got a year left depends on which theory a judge decides to ascribe to. He’d be the best pure scorer on this list and ultimately also the wrong answer to the actual question.
It’s important to remember, however, that he is not Donovan Dent.
The Verdict
We also haven’t even talked about Skylar Wicks yet, and that’s fitting, because nobody’s entirely sure whether there’s anything to talk about. Wicks committed to Gonzaga two weeks ago. Or he didn’t. He’s a 6-6 wing out of Saint Francis who averaged 17.8 and 6.7 while shooting 36.3 percent from three, the kind of veteran scoring the Zags need badly. He’s also 26 years old, on his sixth school in seven years, and started his college career in 2020, which puts him well outside the five-year window the NCAA just drew a hard line around. So he’s applied for a waiver, and until somebody rules, he is simultaneously a Zag and not a Zag. Schrödinger’s combo guard. He filled the 14th of 15 available roster spots, or he didn’t, depending on a decision that hasn’t been made by people nobody in Spokane has ever met.
This has been Gonzaga’s offseason in a nutshell. CoacgMark Few has spent his summer getting run through the wringer, the Wild West of the portal and the NIL era, where a returning starter can take a four-year offer from a pro team on another continent on a Friday and blow up your rotation before the weekend, where your best replacement option has to sue for the right to exist, and where the guys you already signed are pending. Few has assembled a backcourt he cannot confirm.
Two of the guys mentioned above could sign this week — no judge, no waiver, no appeal. Saine has been sitting there since March, Rice since April, and Gonzaga spent that entire stretch running offseason workouts with one scholarship point guard and then none. The other two need rulings, and not the same one: Edwards needs a clock argument, Wicks needs his waiver, and Dent needs the class of 2022 grandfathered in.
Three theories, three courtrooms, zero overlap. If Dent wins, it does nothing for Wicks. If Wicks wins, it does nothing for Dent. If De Sousa doesn’t clear, it doesn’t matter who won.
The most important thing to remember is that New York Knicks’ Jack Kayil still has to play in Germany next year.
Which brings it back to De Sousa, who was always the answer to a question nobody had asked yet. He’s a reliable ball-handler and crafty distributor who pushed his three-point percentage significantly north of 35 percent in a single season in France’s top league, and he committed weeks before “El Traidorcito” bailed. Now he’s as much of a starting point guard as the Zags have on hand beyond walk-on Alonzo Metz. And De Sousa doesn’t even have eligibility yet.
None of these four is Donovan Dent. None of them is Nathan De Sousa, for that matter. So once again, we wait on the courts to decide who gets to be on the court. The best point guard in the country isn’t allowed to sign with anyone yet, and if it works out, the Zags vault squarely into the Final Four conversation once again.
Mario Saint Supery and Jack Kayil may end up being the ultimate lesson in addition by subtraction for the 2026-27 Gonzaga Bulldogs.
