Cal Men's Basketball: Losing Streak Continues, Bears Fall to Butler 58-82
The Golden Bears now have the worst record in men's basketball at 0-11
The California Golden Bears might as well be called the bad news bears.
California (0-11, 0-2 Pac-12) maintained its worst-in-the-country record Saturday, dropping a 58-82 decision at home against the Butler Bulldogs (8-3, 0-0 Big East). The loss in which the home team never once led is the blue-and-gold’s 11th straight.
But to be fair, the Louisville Cardinals have also kept a winless streak alive, with two fewer games played this season than the Golden Bears.
California shot for a measly 35% against Butler and made only one out of its last seven field goal attempts in the game. Despite the scoring difficulties, two Golden Bears scored in the double digits: first-year Grant Newell and junior Devin Askew, the team's leading scorer, both put up 17 points against the Bulldogs.
“We are all disappointed with the results so far this season,” California Athletic Director Jim Knowlton told the San Francisco Chronicle last week after the Golden Bears succumbed to the USC Trojans to start Pac-12 Conference league play, its eighth defeat.
The sports boss continued: “I can assure you that nobody is more frustrated than Coach Fox and myself.”
Contributing to the Golden Bears’ dismal record, the team has struggled with injuries this season.
In its last outing, against the Big Sky’s Eastern Washington Eagles Wednesday, California had only eight active scholarship players and never once led their opponents.
Jalen Celestine, DeJuan Clayton and Jarred Hyder have been notably absent. Celestine, a key contributor last year as a sophomore, has yet to play this season, as is the case for graduate guard Clayton. Worse still for California, Hyder is expected to miss the rest of this season after undergoing surgery earlier this week.
California’s next game is next Sunday, Dec. 18, against the Santa Clara Broncos, and there may be more bad news coming for Cal fans. The Golden Bears are not favored to win the match against the West Coast Conference foe.
Fox and Knowlton should pull a Shaw and "voluntarily" retire. Neither of them will cuz this is the last job either of them will ever be paid this type of money. At best, Fox will be working in a concession both in the Chase Center while Knowlton will be checking tickets at the door.
Two worthless jabronis fleecing Cal.
I've written to Knowlton several times over the past 3 years sharing my above statements. If I respect anyone any less than Knowlton, I can't think of whom it could be.
No way we will be able to recruit better players until there is a change in coaching. I suspect another coach can also do more with the current roster too. Aside from a few pick and rolls, yesterday we mostly just passed on the perimeter and shot 3s. The amount of lost ticket revenue this year is staggering. Although it traces back to Wyking, Fox has proven not to be the right guy to fix the program. Fox was put in a difficult spot, but has had time to put his Mark on the program. The current situation is record book historic in the worst way in all of college basketball major conferences. How can we ever recruit into this program now? If Knowltons goal is to do away with competitive athletics at cal, he is succeeding. There is no other explanation for such incompetence.