You're omitting so much here.
Gonzaga was a mid-major about 15 years ago. Let's correlate them with Boise State in football. Great records, ranked, but not respected come the postseason.
You're completely ignoring that Gonzaga, through the freedom that is OOC basketball scheduling, annually played top teams and winning enough of the time that they earned respect come postseason. It'd be as if Boise State actually kept having 12-1 seasons for a decade while scheduling USC, Michigan, and Texas A&M OOC.
If you're not going to acknowledge that, I'll just stop.
So here's the thing, you're taking your rubric, a hero's journey of meritocracy, and applying it to Gonzaga. But here's the think, it doesn't really fit.
The first year they broke through, back in 1999, they took on Nos. 8, 15, 22, 24, plus a Memphis team that was a few years removed a coach that went to six tournaments in 11 years in some wasteland conferences (Washington State was in there, but also bad). Few's first team played Nos. 1, 9, 11, plus four other Pac-12 teams and a Big 12 team.
15 years ago was what? 2006? By then, they'd had three regular seasons that ended in the Top-10 and 1-2 that started there.
That's not as if they scheduled impossibly. They scheduled reasonably for their station, given the way the sport operates. In the end, it actually got harder to schedule. Fewer wanted to pay a team to kick their ass. Gonzaga couldn't pay most good teams to leave a valuable home game for a potential loss. They did home and homes with Memphis, just to stay afloat.
Now, Gonzaga always had the advantage that CBB offers, access. Access to a postseason where no one can say the other team isn’t trying. If this was college football, they’d be in the NIT every year and people would say “If you win another one in a row, we might just let you in.” Boise will never have that. They’ll just have a run of either second-tier bowls or first-tier ones where people explain the other team just didn’t care.
And in truth, the main way Gonzaga got over the doubt was they just actually broke through and played for a title. The just went out and did their thing. Folks moved the goal posts, and many probably still are. Now, Boise can do it for 1,000 years, and they’re never getting into a four-team playoff. That’s how it is. They’ll complain the system is against them (it is) and they’ll complain they deserve it at some point (pretty unlikely).
But to bring it back, there was no time Gonzaga took on the equivalent of USC, A&M and Michigan. They took on the equivalent of Florida State and BYU if one of those teams had its stuff together. And Boise took on just those two last full season, granted, neither had its stuff together. This idea Gonzaga sought the respect of the skeptics just ain’t the case. They tried to build toward and inclusive postseason and fielded good teams until things came together in that random tournament.