Former Gonzaga All-American Dan Dickau on why he thinks Chet Holmgren will win the NBA Rookie of the Year in 2023-24, his insight on 2024 and 2025 recruiting targets and more
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00:00 Hey, everybody. It's Christian Pedersen joined by Dan Dickow back for another episode of the
00:03 Gonzaga Nation podcast. Thank you very much for tuning in. You are catching us on a mailbag
00:07 edition. That's where we ask Dan Dickow fan submitted questions that you guys have sent to us
00:11 online on social media and everywhere in between. You can hit us up at Fan Nation Zags
00:16 anywhere you're online. You can follow us by searching and subscribing to the Gonzaga Nation
00:21 podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Dan, the first one that we got is coming to us from
00:25 Facebook. Somebody wanted to know what Zag alumni is going to have the best NBA season. I think I
00:31 know who it is and so I'm curious if we're on the same page on this one, but the floor is yours.
00:35 Wow. You know, we could go in so many directions because there's so many Gonzaga players
00:41 that I think are poised to have a good season. I think Corey Kispert,
00:44 you know, he's in a dysfunctional organization, the Wizards right now, but I think he's put
00:52 himself in a position where he can have another nice year and sign a nice extension. Kelly Olenek
01:01 continues to play well after already being in the NBA for a decade. Brandon Clark's got to get
01:09 healthy, but I think if he does, he's got a chance to have a year. But I think the guys that are
01:16 easiest to peg as having the best season coming up would be Demontis Abonis, who's been an all-star,
01:23 and Andrew Nembhardt, who I think showed last year as a rookie that he's going to have a really long,
01:29 productive NBA career. So I think those two, I think you can easily say, are going to have
01:34 kind of the most, the most, successful might not be the right word, but I think they're going to
01:43 have great years. But I think the one that's really going to surprise people, I think Chet Holmgren is
01:48 going to have a great year. You know, I thought he was poised to have a good rookie year, and then he
01:54 got hurt in the Seattle Pro-Am, missed all of last year, but all the clips you see over the summer,
01:59 whether it was at NBA Summer League or different things, shows that he has put in a ton of work,
02:05 and he's ready to go. And there's got to be part of him that's frustrated about the fact that
02:11 missed his rookie year, Paulo Banqueiro won Rookie of the Year, which he probably wanted to be
02:16 considered for that had he been playing. And then he's kind of the unknown right now because
02:23 Victor Wembenyama comes in as such a hyped rookie from France, and everybody's already kind of
02:29 pinceling in Wembenyama as a Rookie of the Year. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that
02:36 Chet Holmgren will be the Rookie of the Year. Good. We're on the same page there. I'm glad
02:42 that we both answered that. If we're checking our cross-referencing our answers, we're the
02:45 same there. I think Chet's going to blow up this year as well in a big way. Next question we got
02:49 comes to us from Instagram. Somebody wanted to know, now that we've talked a little bit about
02:54 the last of the Gonzaga recruiting for this year, rosters all filled up, got all the commits,
03:00 who's next? Who's still in the high school ranks that are some big names that people need to know
03:03 about now that we focus on the classes of '24, '25, '26? Well, most players that are seniors
03:10 are, if they haven't committed yet, they're in the process of taking official visits in the fall
03:18 and/or taking home visits. So there's two different parts of visits in the fall of your
03:25 senior year if you haven't committed yet. One is a home visit where the coaching staff will go to
03:31 your house, typically have anywhere from a 45-minute to an hour and a half presentation of
03:37 basically just, here's our program, even though you probably know each other pretty well at that
03:42 time. Here's our program. This is what we are all about. This is what we hope to provide for you.
03:47 This is what you think you could do in our program and have success in these ways. This is what you
03:53 will be kind of shared with in regards to the basketball program. This is what our academic
04:00 life is like. This is what the social life at the school is like. This is what life could look like
04:06 after basketball based on networking that is possible at our university. And so that's kind
04:12 of what that home visit is all about. Many times a high school coach or an AU coach would join in
04:18 on that as well. And then an official campus visit, if you get to that point with a school,
04:23 they're pretty serious. They fly the player and the parents to the university. You have 48 hours
04:30 on campus where you get to see the school. Maybe if it's that time of year, you see a practice.
04:37 You go maybe campus tour. You see where some of the buildings will be that you have classes.
04:44 Maybe you meet with an academic advisor. You meet with a professor in a possible field you want to
04:49 study. You hang out with the team, get to know them a little bit, see where the dorms or the
04:55 apartments are that you would live at. Just kind of get a feel for campus life in general. But
05:01 one thing that Gonzaga has done a lot in recent years is some of their high priority recruits,
05:06 they will have come on Craziness in the Kennel weekend. So that's October 7th. And Gonzaga,
05:13 the word is that one of their targets for class of 2024, the seniors, will be at Craziness in
05:20 the Kennel as a combo guard out of the LA area, Harvard Westlake. I believe his name is Trent
05:27 Perry. He should be there on Craziness in the Kennel. Cole Forsman, our great journalist,
05:34 kind of keeps more up to date in regards to recruit targets than I do. But
05:39 essentially, they want to give a player a full experience of what it's like on campus. But when
05:47 you get them on campus during an event like the Craziness in the Kennel, they can see just how
05:51 important Gonzaga basketball is to the school and the community. A lot of times they will also on a
05:57 campus visit, they'll make sure it's against a big opponent where the crowd's going crazy.
06:02 And they see just how cool and unique the Kennel is. So that's kind of the big parts of the
06:10 recruiting calendar for this fall for class of 2024 players. I don't know how to track this,
06:16 necessarily, but in the stat driven era that we now live in, I would love to know the actual
06:21 conversion rate that the Craziness in the Kennel is working on right now in terms of how many kids
06:27 come in undecided and come out Gonzaga commits. That's hard. That's hard to say. I have no idea.
06:34 That's a great question. Let's put Cole up to the task of figuring that one out.
06:40 I mean, if you had to just complete, I mean, we're talking on the fly here, no time to prep
06:47 or really think about this as, you know, say that it's 75%, 30%, 10%. I mean, it's an elite event.
06:55 It's one of the better ones in all of college basketball in terms of kicking off the season.
07:00 So it's got to be up in the higher end tier of like, if a kid is there for that night,
07:04 like you said, they see this matters different here. And so, I mean, can I get you on the spot
07:10 for thinking what kind of number it would be if we, and then we'll have Cole go verify that
07:13 somehow for us? Well, it's gotta be over 50%, you know, and I think in the recruiting world,
07:20 if you're closing at 50% of the targets that you really want in the target, in those targets,
07:28 you're putting out these bigger events that you really kind of focus on. That's pretty good. So,
07:35 yeah, that's a hard one. I don't know if 50 is, I don't know if I'm going out on a limb or not
07:40 with that number, but we'll see. We'll have Cole see if he can kind of track down.
07:44 I'm pretty sure 50 is the safest number you could have picked there. Like 99% would be going out on
07:50 a limb and 1% would be going on a limb. So I think you're doing okay, but yeah, you're absolutely
07:53 right. Clearing that kind of recruiting, you owe a big, hey, let's give a round of applause to the
07:59 student section, to the administration, to all the people. I mean, yes, the basketball players
08:02 make that event happen because they're the basketball players, but there's so many people
08:06 that maybe don't get an appreciation in the recruiting process when it comes to wowing
08:09 that final, like icing on the cake. So shout out to all the unappreciated people there.
08:13 - Yeah, absolutely.
08:15 - Last question we got for you, Dan, remember if you guys want to send in these questions
08:18 @FanNationZags on all your social media, you can also search and subscribe to Gonzaga Nation,
08:23 wherever you get your podcasts. We've got a bunch of episodes coming out. We've got also,
08:27 we've talked about Cole Forsman and other content that we do. And that leads to my next question,
08:32 is somebody wants to know, Dan, when are you guys going to finally start dropping some of these cool
08:37 player interview episodes you've talked about? I will add self-editorial. We've released some
08:43 with Stu Jackson, some with Greg Heister. There's some really good content coming out of this
08:46 awesome new studio, but I'm with the people. Dan, when are we going to see, when are we going to
08:50 see and hear from the players? - Pretty soon. So as many of you might know,
08:56 we've kind of announced a partnership with Zags Collective. And so the entirety is the full-length
09:03 interviews with players are going to live behind Zags Collective domain. But SI.com and what we're
09:11 doing on FanNation, we will have a ton of short teasers and short little excerpts from these
09:18 interviews to get people interested in being a part of wanting to join Zags Collective and get
09:24 the full-length interviews. Every single player on Gonzaga's roster except for June, as well as
09:34 the most recent commit, Pavel Stosich. And then the walk-on who just was announced as the player,
09:43 Joaquin. Everybody but those three have sat down for an interview. They have sat down for different
09:49 segments that we'll be releasing on the different platforms we talked about. But then not just that,
09:56 Brian Michelson, assistant coach, we've sat down and recorded a number of different episodes and
10:05 segments that are going to be being released in the very near future. We'll be recording
10:11 quite a few bit more. And these are going to be kind of focused, detailed on what exactly
10:17 is recruiting look like in the college basketball world? What does a practice plan look like and how
10:23 does it come together to prepare Gonzaga? What does travel look like? What does
10:27 the formation of a schedule look like? All these different topics. And then we're also going to be
10:36 having sit-down interviews, some in person with people like Greg Heister, former Zags,
10:43 some through Zoom in our new studio with other analysts across the nation, like
10:47 Jay Billis and I right now are finding the time, Seth Greenberg, Fran Ferschel, Doug Gottlieb,
10:53 Chris Walker. We've got a number of guys on tap that we're going to be recording with
10:56 in the next couple of weeks to start really creating and pumping out this content
11:00 because the season's right around the corner. Because once we get in the season,
11:03 - Season's here, Dan.
11:04 - It's talking all over.
11:05 - You're not talking about the season being down the road for the people.
11:07 - And don't forget though, the show with Adam Morrison and I will be starting back
11:13 up again in October. So kind of the flagship show that we've done the last two years,
11:19 Adam and I will be back. I believe our first day we're going to be recording is two weeks from
11:26 today. And so that means that we'll be starting to release shortly after Kennel, Craziness in
11:32 the Kennel.
11:32 - Awesome. There you go, folks. That's the whole content plan. That's a ton of stuff. You guys
11:38 don't understand how hard Dan is working at this. I can also say that the Greg Heister NIL video,
11:44 I got a crack out of that when you asked Greg, "If you were still in college,
11:50 what would, if you were a student athlete, what would your NIL deal be?" And he just laughed.
11:54 He goes, "No, no, no, no, no. I'd have to cut a check out to, no, no, no. Giving me money at 20
12:00 would have been awful." So yeah, Dan does an amazing job at getting some, a lot of what he
12:06 laid out there for you content wise might be boring if handled by the wrong person. But Dan has some
12:12 really cool people coming in studio and supporting Zagg Collective, supports the athletes. And it
12:16 just, it's a lot of good going around that you, the fans can help support. So we hope to have you
12:22 guys along for the entire journey of this basketball season. Thank you very much for tuning in. Talk to
12:25 you guys next time.