On Thursday Josh Perkins became Gonzaga's all-time assist leader. He finished the night with 670 assists, two more than former Gonzaga guard Matt Santangelo ever had during his time at GU.
It begs the questions-- Where does Josh Perkins stand in the pantheon of Gonzaga point guards?
After all, one of the nicknames for the program is Guard U.
PASS THE BALL
Point guards are normally judged by two categories: Assists, and points. Since we're on the topic of assists, let's start there.
Perkins is obviously on top of the list for Gonzaga. Matt Santangelo is now number two, Blake Stepp is third with 240, and then it drops off after that.
Perkins is also 33 assists away from breaking Santangelo's single season record for assists. There are a guaranteed four games left in the season for Gonzaga, eleven if they make it to the NCAA championship game. Let's just be frank, barring in injury, he's going to break that record as well.
POINT GUARD
Josh currently sits in 17th place all-time in points with 1,447.
Say this team does make a national championship game. Josh is averaging 10.5 points per game right now. Multiply that by 11 games and he'd end the season with 1,563 points.
That would put him into 12th all time in points. To put this into perspective with other Gonzaga guards, Richie Frahm sits in 11th, Blake Stepp sits in 9th, Matt Bouldin is 8th, Matt Santangelo is 6th, and Kevin Pangos is 5th. So definitely a fair amount of point guards who have looked for their shot more than Perk.
Santangelo sits 2nd in assists and 6th in points. I think there's a fair case to be made that Santangelo is still probably the greatest point guard in Gonzaga history. You've got to add in the fact that Santangelo got those numbers without the big name recruits that Gonzaga now has.
There's one category though where Josh could really set himself apart, but we won't know about that until the end of the season.
WINNING MENTALITY
That category is wins. If Josh Perkins gets three wins in the NCAA tournament, then he will have the program record for NCAA tournament wins.
But there's a bigger number at stake.
If Josh gets to the Final Four, he'll tie Przemek Karnowski for the most wins in NCAA history. If Josh gets to the national championship, he'll own that record outright. If he wins the national championship he'll have 139 wins, two more the Przemek.
Obviously,the amount of wins Josh Perkins has is also correlated with the fact that he's had more high level talent around him than Santangelo did, but if Perkins gets that record and gets a national championship, I think he could be the best point guard in Gonzaga history.