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The only transfers they can take right now (without current roster guys leaving) are Grad Transfers using their Covid year. If I'm doing my math right.

Current Roster Departures: Shep (Covid Exemption), Makale (Covid Exemption), Grant (Covid Exemption).

There is currently 11 scholarship guys on the roster for next year (Andre not included), with a 2 man freshman class. That puts us at the 13 scholarship limit.

If Andre returns he would use his Covid Exemption year. So unless guys transfer out or there is a bonafide grad transfer out there, the roster won't see any massive upgrade in talent.

The worst part is that we'll only have a single true point guard on the roster, that was recruited by Wyking.

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The "easier" thing about the basketball program compare to football is that a new coach can turn the program around almost instantly IF he can bring in some top recruits. Of course, things can also turn quickly the other way, especially factoring in how the impact recruits are likely "one-and-done".

I hope the rumor of an extension will turn out to be untrue. I'll take another year of Mark Fox and hope that anything short of a NCAA bid (and not just a NIT bid) means that he's gone next spring. With what we know about who is coming next year and who is around, unless Fox pull some magic out of the transfer portal, he will really need to be a maximizer of talent for Cal to have a great season next year, not just slightly better than this year's still low bar.

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I did not see this coming!

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The whining about Coach Fox is ridiculous. He inherited an absolute dumpster fire from Wyking, whose teams were undisciplined and regressed, players transferred etc. – and he had the advantage of some talent on the roster he inherited from Cuonzo.

When Fox arrived the cupboard was bare in terms of talent, work ethic and fundamentals, but I noticed steady improvement during his first season. That momentum hit a brick wall in the 2019-2020 season due to Covid – including the outbreak that severely reduced preseason practice, which originally took place on a tennis court where they couldn’t even use a ball – and bled into the 2020-2021 season. Despite this, I’ve seen Fox build a solid foundation, with his team mostly executing well on defense, especially given the talent gap. I’ve seen solid or better improvement in players like Kelly, Thiemann, Kuany and Celestine. That improvement was also delayed and stunted due to Covid.

Two other players (Thorpe and Bowser) didn’t see the court this season due to injury. So we didn’t even get to see their second-year jump. Thorpe’s injury was especially impactful because it meant that Fox couldn’t afford to play two bigs. Plus, Shepherd, Foreman and Alajiki were nursing injuries all season, and Brown is going to have knee surgery in the off-season. Some have complained that Alajiki should have gotten more minutes, but I saw him pull up lame several times, including once during pregame (which resulted in him spending the game on the bench with an icepack on his knee), and most recently during the Arizona trip.

Is Fox the guy to take us to the promised land? I don’t know, but given the hand he’s been dealt so far, to expect his teams to be performing like he’s the second coming of Pete Newell is ridiculous.

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Thanks Nick.

Bruce Weber just resigned in Manhattan, KS...keep your eye on him, as he is guaranteed to be a candidate of Knowlton's search firm after he jettisons Fox in March of '23. ;-)

#thecyclecontinues

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I anticipated a dumpster fire season with the loss of Bradley. They were, at rare times, much better than I expected and played hard at all times. I'm still not accepting that this is anything like a ceiling for our program when we not long ago had Pac12 champions. I don't follow recruiting much, until it's done, but if the class coming in is not top half of conference, there is absolutely no reason to expect anything better next year. Worse, even, likely. Are there no big donors in Knowlton's ears saying things?

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