I'm not confident in all that it will ever turn around. And that's not a knock on Madsen at all. It's the landscape we live in. The academic administration & the Regents will never let Cal emulate the path of fUCLA.
Until college sports returns to true college sports, I don't think it is happening. That Cal could be competitive in any Power 3-4-5 conference. What is the alternative? I don't think ANY of us who've been following the program for over four decades will like the answers. 🤷♂️
This is my concern. Unfortunately, given what we’ve seen from an X’s and O’s standpoint so far, I don’t see a path to P5 competitiveness, let alone NCAA Tournament/NIT contention, for Madsen anytime soon at Cal, at least not under the current NIL/portal arrangement. MBB, certainly to a larger degree than Cal football, is all about $$$ donations right now, and the catastrophically awful Jim Knowlton alienated a lot of high-level donors with his Mark Fox-crusade disaster. Football enjoys a level of donorship that makes them competitive (ie see the latest football donation drive with RR, etc). MBB is nowhere close to competitive.
Now, we’ve all seen Hoosiers ;-), and watched Loyola Chicago make a Final 4 run behind an efficient roster that executes at a high level on both sides of the ball with a roster light on pro talent…but we haven’t seen anything close to that level of team-oriented basketball from Madsen’s Cal teams, and it’s tough to instill any type of scheme or identity when you’re constantly rebuilding 3/4’s or more of the roster. It’s more a factor of individuals creating O out of relatively basic sets (ie Tyson, Andrej, Wilkinson) and a troubling lack of defense entirely.
Not to mention the fact that Madsen’s pro-style approach on both ends means you need better individual players, which are tough to rely on when you’re trying to match up kids from the WAC, Southern and Coastal conferences with legit D1, ACC/SEC/B1G/B12 athletes.
I remember thinking Mike Williams and Jim Knowlton set MBB back a decade…we’re 8-years deep, and unfortunately with the portal/NIL insanity, that estimate may have have been too conservative of a guess. Given this unregulated and frankly unsustainable economic revenue sports climate, we do not appear all that much closer to contending for a Tournament bid
than we were when Cuonzo left for Mizzou…like, awhile ago. Tough spot.
There's only so much evaluation that can be done on Madsen's coaching ability. In the current condition of NCAA basketball limited talent will only get you so far.
Even in this year's final rounds of the big tournament, you could see that in most cases the team with the most talent would prevail. The coaching effect on the results has become minimal as compared to the situation 30 years ago. If Coach K was still coaching today, his success would be much more dependent on talent recruitment than on "coaching." It's the way things have evolved.
That’s true, 100%. My concerns go to the aspect of fundamentals, honestly on both sides of the ball. I think it is more than fair to have some legitimate questions about Mark Madsen’s ability to win in Berkeley given the state of affairs in college basketball and the pro-style system he runs, both offensively and defensively. In general, I guess ALL revenue sports HCs are going to in some way be limited by how talented their roster is. Just not sure it’s as simple as saying the most talent wins, unless we’re only talking cutting down nets - just seems to invalidate the impact a coaching staff has on a program, though admittedly when you’re re-loading 7-8 guys every year it is tough to install any sort of complex scheme.
Sure, you need NBA talent and depth to make the Final 4, win a championship, etc. You absolutely do NOT need NBA talent to play even average, competent defense, something Madsen’s teams have failed to do in Berkeley. Statistically the Bears have been awful the past 2 years - you can’t win games against good teams if you can’t defend at the point of attack, you fail to box out, you’re late on your rotations, you miss assignments, you don’t switch screens, you can’t defend without fouling…that is scheme, that is preparation in practice, that is toughness, that is effort. Hopefully Coach Wilkins from UVA helps in this area.
We’ll see how good a coach he is this year but right now this roster is going to struggle to even qualify for the ACC Tournament…in year 3, that’s an issue. Hopefully our guards defend better because that is where it starts. Dai Dai, Dorsey, Pippen, Ruff.
it's a different team now. If mad dog is a good coach which i still have hi hopes for, he needs to look at his roster and talent level. his iso heavy offense won't work with current roster. forgive me but I don't see any recruits that have elite level talent that can create and also make others better on the floor. not the type of recruits we have now no way. mad dog has to deploy his talent level within a system that can develop their strengths to the max. perhaps a motion heavy offense creating spacing open up pass lanes and have scoring opportunities create mismatches. that's what warriors do with steph and their roster
His offenses at Utah Valley were better but required a good passing big which is what the warriors do ( think Draymond/Bogut). I do agree some more ball and player movement would be ideal and more aggressive presses that he did on year 1
Coach Madsen has at least two obstacles facing him as Cal men's basketball leader: 1} he's leading a program that has not had recent success, hence is not viewed as a contender in the NCAA by prospects; 2} successful players in his program will continue to look for an upgrade to a winning and contending program as our best players did at the end of this past season; 3} Cal likely cannot compete in paying high NIL payouts to lure prospects. It's going to be difficult to get fans to identify with our program at this rate. It's a sad set of circumstances, for a good coach to face. Without a breakout season, we will likely be here again next year.
In coaching, some people are good at player relationships and development, while others are great tacticians. I think it's clear that Madsen is great at the former (based players feedback); the tactical part is an open question.
I consider the question more unanswered - the NIL/portal insanity has legitimately robbed him of any chance at continuity. It’s admittedly more challenging to teach 8+ guys a new system each year. So I would say it’s more of an incomplete grade. This is where PawlOski, I and others have lamented the lack of a roster identity…that one thing you can hang your hat on that they’re gonna bring every night.
Offensively, though MM’s teams have often looked disjointed in their half-court sets, they’ve nonetheless been good enough to get a win…generally in the top-1/3rd of the nation, which is fine. It’s the defense that has me flummoxed…sure, with Cone and Blacksher the past 2 seasons, they’ve really struggled at the point of attack and that puts the whole operation on its heels. But I really wish they were just more fundamentally sound on that side of the ball - you don’t need to be an NBA talent to play tough, hard nosed D with effort and hustle…box out, switch screens, help, defend without silly fouls…
I think you're completely right about Cal being a small fish in a big pond. I don't think we'll be competitive for even a conference title unless we raise FU levels of cash. We can have GOOD teams but it's hard to have and maintain GREAT teams.
Major league teams have revenue sharing, salary caps, and luxury taxes to deal with this situation. NCAA right now has nothing.
I think Madsen's obsession with iso offenses is largely due to his inability -- to no fault of his own -- to recruit a complete roster at once. The way this is solved is with money. Even with the House Settlement capping how much schools can allocate to basketball, the reality is that we will need to solve this with money and investments into the program outside of just the roster.
This coming year is intriguing to me in that there is not default guy, but a nice collection of pieces that appear to fit together reasonably well. If I squint, I can see Ames, Ruff, Petraitis, Ilic and Dort being a more than competent starting 5, with Yeaney, Campbell and Camden off the bench
I tend to agree, given what we’ve seen from him at the P5 level so far. However, hoping the nice year in Newark DE for the Hens gave him a little extra confidence.
Honestly, I could see Dai Dai just as easily being the dominant ball handler.
Word on the socials is a lot is expected of JP but I agree that this is a development year because he was just so overmatched it’s tough to see things suddenly clicking…tho it did for his brother so who knows. Maybe the freedom in MM’s unstructured system will suit him, and he can defend, which they need. But there’s so many question marks for the entire roster, which is unfortunate in such a crucial year for the program and Madsen’s Cal tenure.
Barring significant improvement, Campbell should not be in the rotation. Analytics-wise he was one of the worst P5 players in the country. I’m hopeful he’s better, but we still disagree on his value.
Ask successful Coach Montgomery for his assistance in recruiting potential recruits and retaining them on the Cal team longer. Still, the problem lies in NIL, where wealthy and successful BB teams succeed in recruiting high-potential players. NIL screws up NCAA collegiate players and teams. There were too many transfer portal players to the point where the collegiate team lost ten players once. Some collegiate teams, including the Calbears, lost eight to ten players two years in a row. Sigh! It takes a whole basketball season for a player to reach a potential, and then he leaves for another team. What’s a waste!
Montgomery never had a passion or much of an interest in recruiting. He was a great player developer, but he'd hate coaching today. No amount of advice he could give would keep guys from coming or going today.
He doesn’t have an easy task essentially building a new team in the ACC from the first day he started. It was a dumpster fire.
That said, I think we all have initial, low expectations. A season above .500 and an NIT bid would be a success. Then we could attract some talent as a team on the rise.
First he has to clear that hurdle and Coach / develop the heck out of his current players.
So far he hasn’t done that and we haven’t seen his teams get markedly better during the year.
We’ll probably give him this year and the next one to achieve success.
Agree. For all of Mad Dog's enthusiasm, he hasn't show he can get a Cal team to perform better than the sum of its parts. If we could get even a small uptick in W/L that could create a small amount of momentum. If we go backwards or stagnate for too long, then you have a Wilcox situation where players will no longer give us the benefit of the doubt. This is a big year for Madsen IMO, and his road only got tougher.
This is really it. Reloading every year in the portal is just going to mean treading water, if Madsen can't coach up the roster to play above its talent level. If they can do that, then maybe the program can build momentum to more players staying, more donations flowing, etc. But you actually need to win first.
It's subjective, but when I watch Cal basketball I see a system that seems to rely on individual talent and not a connected team creating something greater than the sum of its parts.
P, he’d probably get the benefit of the doubt given how much of a disaster the Cal Athletic Department has become, and MBB in particular, under the incompetent tutelage of Jim Knowlton. If he’d taken the BYU job, with that LDS war chest, it would have been interesting….
However legitimate questions exist about his coaching chops, especially on the defensive end. Though there’s a number of reasons, at the end of the day, neither of his Cal teams have defended anywhere close to a passable level.
It's a very tough job rn and I'm not sure there are HCs that could do a whole lot better. Madsen's optimism is particularly valuable now as a result. But if you stagnate long enough, there's atrophy. And as we have learned things can actually get even worse.
I mean, absent no more impact additions from the portal, we need a lot of things to break right this year in terms of health and player development just to get in striking range of that 13-15 win range MM has paired up.
Realistically, we basically need all of the following:
1. Justin Pippen or Carr giving us quality PG play;
2. Lee Dort and Sammy Yeanay both taking a step forward and anchoring the post;
3. Our collection of mid-major transfers (Camden, Ilic, Dorsey) being able to hang at the ACC level, while Rytis and Campbell both improve in year 2 ;
4. Ames and Ruff being able to make up for the Wilkinson loss at the 2; and;
5. Probably MOST important, and where hopefully new UVA coach Isaiah Wilkins helps the program, the defense improves noticeably, in a big way, which is absolutely necessary for this team to have any chance at improving at all in the win column.
If those things more or less happen, which is a big IF, we could actually be alright because we should shoot the ball better than last year. I'd just feel a little better if we were to add one more somewhat proven guy that can create his own shot and we could build the offense around somewhat.
It’s a bit of a chicken or the egg. Winning or the realistic hope of winning would help with player retention. But how do you win or create that hope without first having player retention? I do know that we were hurt a bit by the house settlement not being quite yet finalized, which meant programs had a lot of extra NIL to poach with. Also, getting on with building a practice facility wouldn’t hurt.
I'm not confident in all that it will ever turn around. And that's not a knock on Madsen at all. It's the landscape we live in. The academic administration & the Regents will never let Cal emulate the path of fUCLA.
Until college sports returns to true college sports, I don't think it is happening. That Cal could be competitive in any Power 3-4-5 conference. What is the alternative? I don't think ANY of us who've been following the program for over four decades will like the answers. 🤷♂️
Thanks Nick. Well said.
This is my concern. Unfortunately, given what we’ve seen from an X’s and O’s standpoint so far, I don’t see a path to P5 competitiveness, let alone NCAA Tournament/NIT contention, for Madsen anytime soon at Cal, at least not under the current NIL/portal arrangement. MBB, certainly to a larger degree than Cal football, is all about $$$ donations right now, and the catastrophically awful Jim Knowlton alienated a lot of high-level donors with his Mark Fox-crusade disaster. Football enjoys a level of donorship that makes them competitive (ie see the latest football donation drive with RR, etc). MBB is nowhere close to competitive.
Now, we’ve all seen Hoosiers ;-), and watched Loyola Chicago make a Final 4 run behind an efficient roster that executes at a high level on both sides of the ball with a roster light on pro talent…but we haven’t seen anything close to that level of team-oriented basketball from Madsen’s Cal teams, and it’s tough to instill any type of scheme or identity when you’re constantly rebuilding 3/4’s or more of the roster. It’s more a factor of individuals creating O out of relatively basic sets (ie Tyson, Andrej, Wilkinson) and a troubling lack of defense entirely.
Not to mention the fact that Madsen’s pro-style approach on both ends means you need better individual players, which are tough to rely on when you’re trying to match up kids from the WAC, Southern and Coastal conferences with legit D1, ACC/SEC/B1G/B12 athletes.
I remember thinking Mike Williams and Jim Knowlton set MBB back a decade…we’re 8-years deep, and unfortunately with the portal/NIL insanity, that estimate may have have been too conservative of a guess. Given this unregulated and frankly unsustainable economic revenue sports climate, we do not appear all that much closer to contending for a Tournament bid
than we were when Cuonzo left for Mizzou…like, awhile ago. Tough spot.
These “I love you but I have made the difficult decision to get paid more at your rival school” departure posts are so amusing
There's only so much evaluation that can be done on Madsen's coaching ability. In the current condition of NCAA basketball limited talent will only get you so far.
Even in this year's final rounds of the big tournament, you could see that in most cases the team with the most talent would prevail. The coaching effect on the results has become minimal as compared to the situation 30 years ago. If Coach K was still coaching today, his success would be much more dependent on talent recruitment than on "coaching." It's the way things have evolved.
That’s true, 100%. My concerns go to the aspect of fundamentals, honestly on both sides of the ball. I think it is more than fair to have some legitimate questions about Mark Madsen’s ability to win in Berkeley given the state of affairs in college basketball and the pro-style system he runs, both offensively and defensively. In general, I guess ALL revenue sports HCs are going to in some way be limited by how talented their roster is. Just not sure it’s as simple as saying the most talent wins, unless we’re only talking cutting down nets - just seems to invalidate the impact a coaching staff has on a program, though admittedly when you’re re-loading 7-8 guys every year it is tough to install any sort of complex scheme.
Sure, you need NBA talent and depth to make the Final 4, win a championship, etc. You absolutely do NOT need NBA talent to play even average, competent defense, something Madsen’s teams have failed to do in Berkeley. Statistically the Bears have been awful the past 2 years - you can’t win games against good teams if you can’t defend at the point of attack, you fail to box out, you’re late on your rotations, you miss assignments, you don’t switch screens, you can’t defend without fouling…that is scheme, that is preparation in practice, that is toughness, that is effort. Hopefully Coach Wilkins from UVA helps in this area.
We’ll see how good a coach he is this year but right now this roster is going to struggle to even qualify for the ACC Tournament…in year 3, that’s an issue. Hopefully our guards defend better because that is where it starts. Dai Dai, Dorsey, Pippen, Ruff.
Nice handle BTW…I too have a RedlessWardrobe….
Go Bears.
it's a different team now. If mad dog is a good coach which i still have hi hopes for, he needs to look at his roster and talent level. his iso heavy offense won't work with current roster. forgive me but I don't see any recruits that have elite level talent that can create and also make others better on the floor. not the type of recruits we have now no way. mad dog has to deploy his talent level within a system that can develop their strengths to the max. perhaps a motion heavy offense creating spacing open up pass lanes and have scoring opportunities create mismatches. that's what warriors do with steph and their roster
His offenses at Utah Valley were better but required a good passing big which is what the warriors do ( think Draymond/Bogut). I do agree some more ball and player movement would be ideal and more aggressive presses that he did on year 1
Ilic may help with that if he can compete at this level.
Coach Madsen has at least two obstacles facing him as Cal men's basketball leader: 1} he's leading a program that has not had recent success, hence is not viewed as a contender in the NCAA by prospects; 2} successful players in his program will continue to look for an upgrade to a winning and contending program as our best players did at the end of this past season; 3} Cal likely cannot compete in paying high NIL payouts to lure prospects. It's going to be difficult to get fans to identify with our program at this rate. It's a sad set of circumstances, for a good coach to face. Without a breakout season, we will likely be here again next year.
The only thing that’s debatable is how good a coach he actually is, at least at the Power Conference level.
In coaching, some people are good at player relationships and development, while others are great tacticians. I think it's clear that Madsen is great at the former (based players feedback); the tactical part is an open question.
Agreed my friend.
I consider the question more unanswered - the NIL/portal insanity has legitimately robbed him of any chance at continuity. It’s admittedly more challenging to teach 8+ guys a new system each year. So I would say it’s more of an incomplete grade. This is where PawlOski, I and others have lamented the lack of a roster identity…that one thing you can hang your hat on that they’re gonna bring every night.
Offensively, though MM’s teams have often looked disjointed in their half-court sets, they’ve nonetheless been good enough to get a win…generally in the top-1/3rd of the nation, which is fine. It’s the defense that has me flummoxed…sure, with Cone and Blacksher the past 2 seasons, they’ve really struggled at the point of attack and that puts the whole operation on its heels. But I really wish they were just more fundamentally sound on that side of the ball - you don’t need to be an NBA talent to play tough, hard nosed D with effort and hustle…box out, switch screens, help, defend without silly fouls…
A: copy Kyle Smith
I think you're completely right about Cal being a small fish in a big pond. I don't think we'll be competitive for even a conference title unless we raise FU levels of cash. We can have GOOD teams but it's hard to have and maintain GREAT teams.
Major league teams have revenue sharing, salary caps, and luxury taxes to deal with this situation. NCAA right now has nothing.
If we could ever fix football, it should help bring more resources for other programs in need like MBB and WBB.
I think Madsen's obsession with iso offenses is largely due to his inability -- to no fault of his own -- to recruit a complete roster at once. The way this is solved is with money. Even with the House Settlement capping how much schools can allocate to basketball, the reality is that we will need to solve this with money and investments into the program outside of just the roster.
This coming year is intriguing to me in that there is not default guy, but a nice collection of pieces that appear to fit together reasonably well. If I squint, I can see Ames, Ruff, Petraitis, Ilic and Dort being a more than competent starting 5, with Yeaney, Campbell and Camden off the bench
Camden starts for us and is the go-to guy right now.
Maybe. I'm nervous about the uptick on competition and if he is the same player as pre-injury.
To me, the most upside is somewhere between Yeaney, Ilic, Ruff and Dort development(he still has 2 years). I may add Camden to that list.
I tend to agree, given what we’ve seen from him at the P5 level so far. However, hoping the nice year in Newark DE for the Hens gave him a little extra confidence.
Honestly, I could see Dai Dai just as easily being the dominant ball handler.
Word on the socials is a lot is expected of JP but I agree that this is a development year because he was just so overmatched it’s tough to see things suddenly clicking…tho it did for his brother so who knows. Maybe the freedom in MM’s unstructured system will suit him, and he can defend, which they need. But there’s so many question marks for the entire roster, which is unfortunate in such a crucial year for the program and Madsen’s Cal tenure.
We also have Pippen.
He's a developmental player for at least 1 year.
Agreed.
Barring significant improvement, Campbell should not be in the rotation. Analytics-wise he was one of the worst P5 players in the country. I’m hopeful he’s better, but we still disagree on his value.
;-)
I like him off the bench. Give him 12 to 15 minutes a game.
As Agent Johnson ‘no, the other one’ said from the chopper above the Nakatomi Building in Die Hard: “I can live with that!”
Ask successful Coach Montgomery for his assistance in recruiting potential recruits and retaining them on the Cal team longer. Still, the problem lies in NIL, where wealthy and successful BB teams succeed in recruiting high-potential players. NIL screws up NCAA collegiate players and teams. There were too many transfer portal players to the point where the collegiate team lost ten players once. Some collegiate teams, including the Calbears, lost eight to ten players two years in a row. Sigh! It takes a whole basketball season for a player to reach a potential, and then he leaves for another team. What’s a waste!
Montgomery never had a passion or much of an interest in recruiting. He was a great player developer, but he'd hate coaching today. No amount of advice he could give would keep guys from coming or going today.
He doesn’t have an easy task essentially building a new team in the ACC from the first day he started. It was a dumpster fire.
That said, I think we all have initial, low expectations. A season above .500 and an NIT bid would be a success. Then we could attract some talent as a team on the rise.
First he has to clear that hurdle and Coach / develop the heck out of his current players.
So far he hasn’t done that and we haven’t seen his teams get markedly better during the year.
We’ll probably give him this year and the next one to achieve success.
Still rooting for the guy.
Agree. For all of Mad Dog's enthusiasm, he hasn't show he can get a Cal team to perform better than the sum of its parts. If we could get even a small uptick in W/L that could create a small amount of momentum. If we go backwards or stagnate for too long, then you have a Wilcox situation where players will no longer give us the benefit of the doubt. This is a big year for Madsen IMO, and his road only got tougher.
This is really it. Reloading every year in the portal is just going to mean treading water, if Madsen can't coach up the roster to play above its talent level. If they can do that, then maybe the program can build momentum to more players staying, more donations flowing, etc. But you actually need to win first.
What's to say he isn't getting them to play above their talent level? And its still sub-.500. But could have been .300.
It's subjective, but when I watch Cal basketball I see a system that seems to rely on individual talent and not a connected team creating something greater than the sum of its parts.
At what point does Madsen himself decide to leave for greener pastures?
He'll need to have some success here first. It may also soon fair to ask whether he's the right guy for this job.
P, he’d probably get the benefit of the doubt given how much of a disaster the Cal Athletic Department has become, and MBB in particular, under the incompetent tutelage of Jim Knowlton. If he’d taken the BYU job, with that LDS war chest, it would have been interesting….
However legitimate questions exist about his coaching chops, especially on the defensive end. Though there’s a number of reasons, at the end of the day, neither of his Cal teams have defended anywhere close to a passable level.
It's a very tough job rn and I'm not sure there are HCs that could do a whole lot better. Madsen's optimism is particularly valuable now as a result. But if you stagnate long enough, there's atrophy. And as we have learned things can actually get even worse.
Absolutely.
I mean, absent no more impact additions from the portal, we need a lot of things to break right this year in terms of health and player development just to get in striking range of that 13-15 win range MM has paired up.
Realistically, we basically need all of the following:
1. Justin Pippen or Carr giving us quality PG play;
2. Lee Dort and Sammy Yeanay both taking a step forward and anchoring the post;
3. Our collection of mid-major transfers (Camden, Ilic, Dorsey) being able to hang at the ACC level, while Rytis and Campbell both improve in year 2 ;
4. Ames and Ruff being able to make up for the Wilkinson loss at the 2; and;
5. Probably MOST important, and where hopefully new UVA coach Isaiah Wilkins helps the program, the defense improves noticeably, in a big way, which is absolutely necessary for this team to have any chance at improving at all in the win column.
If those things more or less happen, which is a big IF, we could actually be alright because we should shoot the ball better than last year. I'd just feel a little better if we were to add one more somewhat proven guy that can create his own shot and we could build the offense around somewhat.
It’s a bit of a chicken or the egg. Winning or the realistic hope of winning would help with player retention. But how do you win or create that hope without first having player retention? I do know that we were hurt a bit by the house settlement not being quite yet finalized, which meant programs had a lot of extra NIL to poach with. Also, getting on with building a practice facility wouldn’t hurt.
Easy: change the current me-me-me YouTube culture, take money out of college sports, and make words such as “commitment” mean something again.