Gonzaga put together arguably the toughest nonconference schedule in college basketball

But this year's nonconference schedule, which the program officially revealed on Wednesday morning, might be coach Few's best work yet.

Of the 12 known opponents on Gonzaga's schedule, seven of them are listed in CBS Insider Jon Rothstein's top 45. Bart Torvik's preseason rankings have those same seven teams — Oklahoma, Creighton, Alabama, Maryland, Kentucky, UCLA, and Oregon — in his top 41.

As if that wasn't enough, Gonzaga's final opponent in the Player's Era Festival is currently to be determined, based on how the Zags do against Alabama and Maryland. With many elite programs in the field, including Kansas, St. John's, Iowa State, and Auburn, there's a high likelihood Gonzaga will end up facing eight opponents in the top 45, a whopping 61.5% of the team's noncon games.

Gonzaga is also only playing one of those teams, Creighton, at the McCarthey Athletic Center. While it is true none of these games are true road games, they do face Kentucky in Nashville and Oregon in Portland, both of which KenPom will qualify as 'semi-road' games for the Zags.

Plus, Gonzaga's lone true road game is against a completely rebuilt Arizona State team that features talented transfers Moe Odum (7.5 assists per game at Pepperdine last year) and former Zag commit Marcus Adams Jr, who averaged 16 points while shooting 61.8% on twos and 39.5% from deep last year at CSUN.

Other programs that can stake a claim to having the 'best' non-conference slate in college basketball include Auburn, UConn, and Duke.

Auburn plays Houston, Oregon, Michigan, NC State, Arizona, and Purdue in the regular season and Memphis in an exhibition game. All six of those regular season games are against top-45 teams and only NC State is at home, while Arizona is a true road matchup. Like Gonzaga, Auburn also has a third opponent lined up at Player's Era that is to be determined.

UConn faces BYU, Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Florida, and Texas this year, along with Michigan State in an exhibition game. Kansas is a true road game, but every other one of these six games is either at home (Arizona, Texas) at Madison Square Garden (Illinois, Florida) or in Boston (BYU).

Duke might be Gonzaga's biggest challenger for best noncon of the year. The Blue Devils face Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, Florida, Michigan State, Texas Tech, and Michigan this year, as well as Tennessee in an exhibition. Of those seven games, only one (Florida) is at Cameron, while the Blue Devils play Michigan State on the road in East Lansing. Duke also plays a true road game against Army on Veteran's Day, and takes on Arkansas in Chicago on Thanksgiving.

Gonzaga will open the season officially on Nov. 3 at home against Texas Southern. Game time and TV information will be released at a later date.

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