They were also limited to the round of 32 a consecutive 5 years before that. If we’re strictly sticking to the past 5 years, then 1-7 vs AP top 10 is ugly. 13-10 vs AP top 25, 10 of those 13 wins were against #21-25.
5 straight S16 appearances is decent, but they’ve done nothing past that. Yeah, they reached the E8 in 2015. They scored playing a #11 seed. In ‘17 they got a #11 and a #7 seed in the E8 / F4 games.
I get that you can make plenty of examples of teams advancing by facing weak seeds past the S16 so how about this... When’s the last time Gonzaga made a STATEMENT in the tournament? As in, actually beat a top 10 team?
They were runner up in 2017 and narrowly lost to UNC. I don't know the exact stats but they are clearly up there with Duke, UK, UNC, etc in terms of churning out NBA talent in the past 10 years or so. As for beating a "top 10" team, its not their job to make sure a top 10 team runs into them before the Final Four.