Braden Huff Dropped 37 Points Against Campbell and a Top 50 Snub Is Making Zags Fans Furious

Are you kidding me right now?! Seriously, you won't believe the absolute disrespect our guy Braden Huff is getting, and if you bleed blue and white like I do, you're gonna be absolutely fuming. The folks over at The Field of 68 just dropped their list of the top 50 returning players in college basketball, and somehow, by some unholy miracle, Huff's name is nowhere on it. ZERO. NADA. How can a player with his numbers get completely ignored? It's mind-boggling, and honestly, it’s a slap in the face to everything Mark Few and the Zags have built.

The Snub That Changes Everything For Gonzaga's Season

Listen, Coach Few has always been about keeping our best talent here in Spokane, and he pulled it off big time this offseason. Yeah, we lost five players to the transfer portal, but we locked down three potential All-Conference stars: Braden Huff, Davis Fogle, and Mario Saint-Supery are all back for the 2026-27 season. And while Fogle and Saint-Supery are ready to break out, Huff is the undisputed main event. He could easily be pushing for 20 points per game and All-American honors in the Pac-12 this year, no joke. So, when this "top 50" list dropped, you'd think he’d be a shoe-in, right? WRONG. These so-called experts at The Field of 68 decided that Huff isn't even in the top 50 guys returning to their same team. They included some decent talent, sure, like Florida’s trio of Alex Condon, Thomas Haugh, and Rueben Chinyelu, but to say Huff isn’t in the top 50, or even the top 25, is just plain ignorant. Are we really supposed to believe that guys like Ilias Kamardine, who put up 11.3 points at Ole Miss, or Derrion Reid, with 11.7 points at Oklahoma, or Amare Bynum, who averaged 9.7 points at Ohio State, are better than Braden Huff? Seriously? This is why we can't have nice things.

Huff's Impact Was Massive, And It's About to Get Bigger

Let's get real about what Braden Huff actually *did* last year. He stepped into a full-time starting role alongside All-American Graham Ike and was ridiculously efficient. The man averaged a career-high 17.8 points and 5.6 rebounds per game. His shooting splits? A crazy 69.7% on two-pointers and 33.3% from three. He hit double figures in 17 of the 18 games he played. Remember that monster 37-point, eight-rebound game on 16-18 shooting against Campbell? Or the 28 points on 11-14 shooting in that overtime win against SeattleU? That's not just good, that's elite. Yeah, he got hit with a knee injury before the Washington State game that cost him the rest of the season, and we felt his absence hard. Ike had to carry a massive load, which helped him get Third Team All-American and WCC Player of the Year, but imagine what we could have done with a healthy Huff. He was nearly back when the season wrapped up in March, and now he's primed to be the Zags' go-to guy next season, running the frontcourt with transfer center Massamba Diop. The Zags are coming back with a chip on their shoulder, and you know Huff is going to carry the biggest one. Get ready for a season where Braden Huff proves every single one of these "experts" wrong. We'll be watching every game, and so should you. This team is going to be electric.

This article was created with AI assistance and reviewed by Seattle On Tap editorial staff. Always verify information with official team sources.