The John R. Wooden Award will celebrate it’s 50th anniversary this season. Leading up to the award ceremony on April 10, 2026, The Sporting Tribune in partnership with the Wooden Award and the Los Angeles Athletic Club will highlight past winners of the Wooden Award and the Legends of Coaching Award.
Mark Few has been doing his job for a long time and in case you haven’t noticed, he’s really good at it. He has served on Gonzaga's coaching staff since 1989, and has led the Bulldogs from mid-major obscurity to consistent NCAA tournament contenders.
During his tenure as head coach, Few has led the Bulldogs to the NCAA Tournament every season (except 2019–20, when the team had secured an automatic bid but the tournament was canceled), a stretch that has garnered the Bulldogs recognition as a major basketball power despite playing in a mid-major league (the West Coast Conference).
A star point guard himself at Creswell High School in Creswell, Oregon, Few entered the coaching profession in 1983 as an unpaid part-time assistant at his prep alma mater.
Six year later he made his way to Spokane, Washington, joining the Gonzaga staff as a graduate assistant under then-coach Dan Fitzgerald. Few was familiar with the Bulldogs’ program as he was an acquaintance of Dan Monson, a Gonzaga assistant at the time, and later the head coach.
In April 1999, Monson, who had just finished his second year leading the program, promoted Few to associate head coach immediately following the season in which Gonzaga became the nation's basketball darlings, making a run through the NCAA tournament, defeating Minnesota, Stanford, and Florida, to advance to the Elite Eight.
In the West Regional finals Gonzaga lost to eventual national champions UConn. When Monson left later that summer to take the vacant head coaching job at Minnesota, Few, who had been designated as Monson's successor, was then promoted to head coach.
Few managed to sustain the Gonzaga’s success from his very first season, ensuring the Bulldogs did not relinquish what they had begun to build. He guided them to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen in his first two years, becoming only the second head coach in the nation to accomplish the feat since the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.
Few eventually set an all-time record for NCAA Division I men's coaches by collecting 81 wins in his first three years as a head coach. The record stood until 2010 when Brad Stevens of Butler surpassed it. In 2017 Few also became the third fastest coach to reach 500 wins in NCAA Division I history.
The program's success has continued over the years as the Zags have made the NCAA tournament in every one of Few's 21 completed seasons. The Bulldogs have also advanced to the WCC tournament title game in every season during Few's tenure and have won their way to every WCC Tournament championship game since 1998, and all but one since 1995.
"We don't look at the records or the rankings or the seedings,” he said of the rigors of a typical Gonzaga season. “We are who we are, and every game we went out and left it out there and let the best man win.”
In his 26 seasons as head coach, his teams have won at least a share of 22 West Coast Conference regular season titles and 20 WCC tournament titles, not to mention making 12 Sweet 16s, five Elite Eights, two Final Fours and two NCAA National Championship games.
“We have a saying at Gonzaga, 'Just keep sawing wood,' and that's what we kept doing,” he’s said of his team philosophy. “We just kept sticking to what we do.”
In December 2021 Few was announced as an assistant coach for the 2022-24 USA National Team. As assistant coach, he helped lead the USA Men's National Team through 2024, including training camps, exhibitions, the 2023 FIBA World Cup and at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.
Ultimately Few was named the recipient of the John R. Wooden Award Legends of Coaching Award. Recognized for his high standard of success and integrity, he received the prestigious honor on April 11, 2025, in Los Angeles, marking a major milestone in his coaching career.
And in case you didn’t know, Mark Few is an even better man than he is a head coach. I happen to know for a fact as my son Julian played for him during the 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons. He couldn’t have landed in a better spot.