Gonzaga wing Steele Venters will miss the 2024-25 season with a left Achilles injury, the school announced Tuesday.

Venters — who won Big Sky Player of the Year in 2022-23, when he averaged 15.3 points for Eastern Washington — also missed all of last season, after tearing his right ACL in the preseason. After rehabbing all year, the 6-foot-7 wing was expected to start and play an integral role for Gonzaga, which is No. 2 in The Athletic’s preseason top-25 rankings. Instead, the two-time Big Sky honoree now faces another steep recovery.

“We are heartbroken for Steele,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said in a statement. “He was working so hard to come back from his knee injury. We will continue to support Steele through his healing process and know he will come back better and stronger.”

Venters shot 40.3 percent in three seasons with the Eagles, which is a large part of the reason why Few recruited him from the transfer portal last summer. Alongside Graham Ike and Ryan Nembhard, Venters was a key addition for the Zags, someone meant to help the program move into the post-Drew Timme era.

Instead, Venters’ ACL tear — which came only days before the Zags’ season-opener — left Few scrambling to make the remaining pieces work; Gonzaga started the year 9-4, not entirely because of Venters’ absence, but at least partially.

That said, Few’s team rallied (like always) to make its ninth consecutive Sweet 16 appearance, where it lost to eventual national runner-up Purdue. Returning four of five starters from that team bred high expectations for the upcoming season in Spokane.

With Venters out, expect Pepperdine transfer Michael Ajayi — a 6-foot-7 wing who shot 47 percent from 3 last season, albeit on fewer attempts — to have a larger role, as well as Arkansas transfer Khalif Battle, who has averaged 13.3 points during his five-season, three-school career. (Last season with the Razorbacks, Battle averaged 14.8 points and made 35.3 percent of his 3s.)

Ike and Nembhard will still be Gonzaga’s focal points — and should be good enough for the Zags to remain national title contenders — but losing Venters is undoubtedly a hit both to the team’s depth and style of play.

Venters redshirted as a freshman in 2019-20 but received an additional medical redshirt last season, and is therefore listed on Gonzaga’s official roster as a redshirt junior. (Players are eligible to apply for multiple medical redshirts if they suffer injuries deemed to be season-ending, per NCAA rules.)

Assuming Venters is granted another medical redshirt, he should have at least one more year of standard eligibility — but it’s uncertain whether or not he’d be allowed to play his additional fifth COVID year. In similar instances, players have had their waiver requests denied by the NCAA to a variety of circumstances.