Can Mark Madsen build a stable roster?

Cal's new coach immediately returned the Bears to competence, but stability is required to take another step forward

Photo Credit: Rob Hwang

A second complete single season rebuild was probably an inevitability.

We knew before the season started that Cal would have to say goodbye to Fardaws Aimaq, Keonte Kennedy, and Jalen Cone because they only had one year of eligibility remaining. And as soon as Jaylon Tyson became a surefire NBA draft pick, we knew the chances that he would return for another season were slim.

(Please note that for the purposes of this article, we are assuming that Jaylon Tyson declares for the NBA draft.)

We knew that most of the rest of the roster wasn’t recruited by Mark Madsen, and that those players were perhaps less likely to stay at Cal long term, even if they were willing to give Madsen a chance for a year.

So when the season ended, I braced myself for the likely departures of some players. Monty Bowser leaving after a season with very limited playing time isn’t a shock. ND Okafor and Devin Askew leaving after tough injury seasons maybe isn’t a surprise.

But Grant Newell and Rodney Brown, who played in every game this season too? Those exits were a surprise. And taken collectively, losing five players via transfer off the roster when a huge amount of playing time was available to compete for is . . . disheartening.

As of right now, Jalen Celestine is the only returner who is clearly ready to be a regular rotation member at a power conference level. Maybe you think Gus Larson or Devin Curtis can make a jump with a season in the weight room. Maybe you think that Vladimir Pavlovic is a diamond in the rough after 42 court minutes before injuries ended his freshman campaign earlier this year. Regardless, it’s clear that a TON of 2024-25 minutes are yet to be accounted for.

Meanwhile, Cal only has one signed recruit out of high school. Three star combo guard Jeremiah Wilkinson is a solid recruit with an impressive high school resume and a solid offer sheet, and I’m glad he’s coming to Berkeley. But he’s just one player, and that means Cal has a somewhat terrifying EIGHT open scholarship slots.

If a different head coach were in charge, I’d already be predicting a disastrous 2024-25 season. Most coaches wouldn’t be able to handle this level of roster turnover, and these were the kinds of off-season developments that helped doom Wyking Jones and Mark Fox to the worst level of performance we’ve seen in the modern era of Cal basketball.

But we have already seen what Madsen has been able to do in the transfer portal; as it turns out, Cal ended up with exactly one player from the 2022-23 rotation end up being a part of the 2023-24 rotation - Grant Newell. Mark Madsen managed to take Cal from three wins to 13 and from 270th in Kenpom to 118th with only one rotation player returning, so who’s to say he can’t do it again?

But here’s the thing: there is a cap on how good Cal can ever be if they have to replace 80+% of the rotation every year. Consider: by one recruiting service’s metric last year, Cal was 9th in portal recruiting. Of the top 12 in those portal recruiting rankings, only four teams made the NCAA tournament. Those four teams earned seeds of 6, 7, 8, and 11, and only one of them (11 seed NC State) has won a game at the tournament.

A roster that has constant churn and relies heavily on transfer talent can only achieve so much. It’s a great way to go from bad to average, or perhaps from average to bubble team. But it’s not the best way to contend for conference titles or protected seeds.

To a certain extent, we saw the costs of transfer-heavy roster building for Cal this season. By the midway point of the year, Cal was roughly a league average Pac-12 team. That’s an incredible achievement after six years of darkness, but it took Cal half the season to get to that level and there were some painful bumps along the way. Bad resume losses to UOP, Montana State, and UTEP essentially ended any chance of making the NCAA tournament without winning the conference tournament just weeks into the season. Those performances weren’t representative of the team Cal became, but is to some extent a cost of doing business in the transfer portal, when a brand new group of players have to learn how to play together, and a coaching staff has to learn about the strengths and weaknesses, good and bad combination, what works and what doesn’t, on the fly during the season.

Now, it’s worth restating: None of this is a knock on Madsen, who had no choice but to rebuild Cal’s roster via the portal last off-season and probably couldn’t do much of anything to avoid having to rebuild it again THIS off-season. We are still being punished for the sins of Mike Williams, Wyking Jones, Jim Knowlton, and Mark Fox.

But Mark Madsen somehow has to find a way to do two things at once between now and next November:

1. Bring in eight new players such that Cal can play competitive ACC basketball

2. Do it in such a fashion that Cal doesn’t have to completely rebuild the roster AGAIN one year from now.

The best way of doing this would be to have more success recruiting high school players. By far my biggest concern about Madsen’s tenure so far is that he hasn’t made any major splashes in that recruiting arena.

And honestly, there’s a part of me that almost wishes Madsen would just grab a bunch of high three star/low 4 star high school recruits (I realize I’m making it sound like you can just pluck players by choice and plug them in) and let them take their lumps next year in the name of long term program building.

The second best way to do this would be to bring in transfers that have multiple years of eligibility remaining. There are absolutely players like that available . . . but it also means that they are more attractive targets and will get more attention and/or command a higher NIL investment.

Regardless, for me the secondary goal of long term roster stability is nearly as important as the first goal of competitive basketball in year one.

We’ll do our very best to help you follow the comings and going of the transfer portal for both men’s and women’s basketball over the coming weeks and months. Cal is already reported to have reached out to a number of players in the portal, and I have no doubt that we’ll be meeting new Bears shortly.

Can Madsen pull a rabbit out of his hat for the second off-season in a row?