Entirely besides the point of this post, but it pleases me that Shantay Legans is succeeding as a basketball head coach. I really enjoyed watching him play, and his transfer to Fresno State may have been one of the first worrying signs of Ben Braun's tenure.
I think his transfer had more to do with Shantay than Braun. Braun had a really good retention rate and I never really got a hint of turmoil or general unhappiness from players during his time at Cal, though I'm sure there was some. Shantay was really in the catbird seat at Cal, but he also seemed to have ambitions maybe beyond his real potential.
If we have a repeat of years 1 and 2, there is no chance for year 4. As cynical as I am of Knowlton and the administration, I do think some prominent donors will step up and force their hands. There’s also an elephant in the room: are you really keeping a white coach for four years, when you canned a black coach in half that time, who had identical results?
Yeah and Wyking recruited better and his team actually showed marked improvement at the end of his second year. Everybody talks bad sh*t about Wyking but us fans have never heard anything more than a couple of kids getting pushed off the team and a vague tell all by Brandon Chauca. Who has the real dirt? Time to spit.
You must be surprised then that such an awesome coach hasn’t been mentioned in the Arizona coaching search. In reality, I don’t know what marked improvement (other than a regress-to-the-mean win over UW) there was in the second season. He blamed his players for the team’s failures, never came up with a scheme to compliment the players he had, and lost several games a Fox-led team never would have. He was in over his head on a Holmoe-esque level. p.s. I personally have no problem with pushing lesser talents off the team to make room for better players. That’s life. Coaching is a hard gig, and Ws and Ls determine your fate.
I agree that the team plays hard, seems more organized and there is less behind-the-scenes drama evident under Fox, but we also have had a lot of roster attrition under his leadership, culminating in Bradley's departure. I don't know if that combined with a near total lack of success on the recruiting trail speaks to much, if any gains in buy-in. If things stay where they are in year 3 and he's offered a 4th year, to me at least it will feel as though he got the benefit of the doubt where his predecessor did not.
Very good point. This year put a lot more pressure on Fox. It coulda gone the other way - a surprisingly, nearly-promising year 1, but then another cellar-dwelling season of ineptitude and little player development w/ limited upside. Hell, watching the Tourney it was so clear that the chasm between Cal and NCAA contention might as well be the Grand Canyon... maybe Gates is still available next year... hahaha
After 25 years of Cal sports, this program and its trajectory have me as close to a negabear as I've ever been. The program is in freefall and the Fox hire was just a parachute with fewer holes in it. 11 teams in the Pac12 have some sort of upside - Cal, obviously, is the 12th. It seems as if Knowlton has made strides to save the athletic department money, but wouldn't it be cheaper to cancel MBB instead of watching it frugally circle the drain?
Mark Fox (and the next Cal coach, and the next one...) won't be able to keep players here with the new transfer rule. I don't think Bradley leaves if he has to sit out a year. Wyking Jones was a dumpster fire - I was in Maui for that debacle in 2017.
You're not wrong about the transfer rule (or Wyking), but Matt's also probably not leaving if the program's forecast is rosy for next year. The transfer rule creates roster chaos for all programs. It doesn't have to just be a reductive if we can actually pull in quality transfers. But until we can bring the program up to water level (primarily through recruiting), it's likely only going to continue to hurt us more than help us.
I think we're going to see Cal turn into a stepping stone for some of the higher-ceiling football and basketball players now that the one-year transfer rule is gone. The elite programs are going to have free rein to pull top performers from the mid-range school (oh to be mid-range!) to fill their needs. I think it is going to get ugly for a whole bunch of schools in the Pac-12, some of which think they are elite but will find out they are not. We should get some kids as transfers because of the lure of academic gravitas and the opportunity to play, but they probably won't be the top-tier athletes. Do you really think Matt leaves if he has to sit out a year?
No, I agree he probably wouldn't be gone. But if there was a chance he could be the big dog on a bubble team, he probably stays. But we are not that. Not close. For sure elite programs will have the edge as always, but players leave for different reasons. For some, it's the promise of playing time. Marcus Lee would be a good example. For some it's the promise of playing with a better program (Jordan Matthews, Matt Bradley). In any case, this is just me trying to come up with a rationalization that our hole can't get any deeper. But alas, maybe it can. And as much as I don't like the chaos the transfer portal creates and what it might mean for us specifically, it's totally the right thing for players.
Unless Hyder takes a huge leap forward, we're still in desperate need of a pass-first, great ball handling point guard. Brown has all the skills, but needs hypnosis or something to convince him how good he is. Foreman is competent, and if he can become a reliable shooter, we'll be ok if one of the former occurs. Otherwise, we have to grab a point guard out of the portal.
Tough to see any of these kids taking much of a leap forward. We have an entire roster of players that are basically role players at best. A Porter Moser could maybe win with this roster by ratcheting up the D and running a more efficient O...Fox can't tho.
I had high hopes for Hyder - thought he could come in and contribute. He was very disappointing - he's a PG that turns the ball over too much, is absolutely LOST on the defensive end with his rotations and fundamentals, and he can't shoot the ball. The guy is not a P12 starting PG.
Brown needs more confidence in his jump shot and taking it to the rim. Too many missed layups. He has developed a 3 point shot though, which is a great sign.
Brown confounds me. He can get anywhere he wants to on the court and has become a better than average 3-pt shooter, yet barely shoots. He won’t be able to hide next year tho. We’re about to see what his upside is.
Well, in the aggregate we played almost as well, if not better when he was absent. as it seems the other players picked up their level of play. Next year will be very telling and I expect it will be Fox' last year unless we reach .500.
As. much as I remain a person who cares little about players that don't come, or leaver early, usually in football, I have to say this one hurts. I expected the departures with Wyking. But Bradley seemed a true Bear. I get why he would leave to be on a higher profile and currently winning team, but bummer. This is not Fox's first rodeo, and I'm sure he and his team will do their best, and I'm going to judge him and his team by W-L next year. Period. Either we climb into a middling program, or Knowlton needs to make a change after 3 years.
Agreed - I’m usually pretty down on folks leaving Cal but this one I’m actually ok with. It’s been expected. Bradley stuck around when others bailed after the Wyking mess, and he deserves a chance to Dance.
I struggle with this. Part of me says he’s not quick enough to match up on either side w/ NBA 2-guards, and the shooting is just streaky enough to give you pause. Then you see he’s 6’4”, 225 and he’s muscling guys on the block and I think there are worse late 2nd rounders than Matty....hell, look at the stiffs the W’s have on their bench. Bradley could prob fill Paschall’s role...
In the end, I think he’d have a great shot if he were 6’6”/6’7”.... but pulling for him.
It would have to be the exact right situation - as it is with all guys with nba level, but not quite talent. I just think he's got all the same skills that Harden does - just obviously not at James' level. He can control pace, he can shoot, and that lefty stepback. He's strong as hell and can get to the rim against good defenders. On the other hand - he needs to be a complimentary player at the next level, not the main show - since he isn't James Harden -so can he survive when he doesn't have the ball in his hands? I don't know.
I don't think he has much of a shot. He doesn't have an in-demand skill to compensate for his relative lack of NBA size, quickness and athleticism. He's a good shooter, but not a deadly one yet.
This whole ordeal with Bradley reminds me of the free Mulli movement back in the late 90s. Not that there was a campaign to free Bradley, but just the premise that he would be better off by leaving.
Might this explain why Fox did not start him in the Pac-12 tournament? Mere speculation, but I always had a bad feeling it was related to this.
Slightly but not fully. Matt has always cared a lot - maybe too much? And rumors have been that he and the coaches have been tense the entire season, so not just the Pac-12 tourney, but the entire season.
Entirely besides the point of this post, but it pleases me that Shantay Legans is succeeding as a basketball head coach. I really enjoyed watching him play, and his transfer to Fresno State may have been one of the first worrying signs of Ben Braun's tenure.
I think his transfer had more to do with Shantay than Braun. Braun had a really good retention rate and I never really got a hint of turmoil or general unhappiness from players during his time at Cal, though I'm sure there was some. Shantay was really in the catbird seat at Cal, but he also seemed to have ambitions maybe beyond his real potential.
Shantay's relationship with Ray Lopes also was a deciding factor...if he doesn't get the Fresno State job, Shantay likely stays for his senior year.
How about life without Mark Fox?
It will be delightful...about 75 or so more predominantly unwatchable ballgames and we should be there....
If we have a repeat of years 1 and 2, there is no chance for year 4. As cynical as I am of Knowlton and the administration, I do think some prominent donors will step up and force their hands. There’s also an elephant in the room: are you really keeping a white coach for four years, when you canned a black coach in half that time, who had identical results?
Yeah and Wyking recruited better and his team actually showed marked improvement at the end of his second year. Everybody talks bad sh*t about Wyking but us fans have never heard anything more than a couple of kids getting pushed off the team and a vague tell all by Brandon Chauca. Who has the real dirt? Time to spit.
Take a listen to the Golden Bearcast episode Rob (and Nick!) with Ryan Gorcey: https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-california-golden-bearcast/episode/a-look-back-on-the-last-decade-of-cal-mens-basketball-82635654
Where there's smoke, there's fire.
You must be surprised then that such an awesome coach hasn’t been mentioned in the Arizona coaching search. In reality, I don’t know what marked improvement (other than a regress-to-the-mean win over UW) there was in the second season. He blamed his players for the team’s failures, never came up with a scheme to compliment the players he had, and lost several games a Fox-led team never would have. He was in over his head on a Holmoe-esque level. p.s. I personally have no problem with pushing lesser talents off the team to make room for better players. That’s life. Coaching is a hard gig, and Ws and Ls determine your fate.
Results were far from identical. W-L, sure, but quality of play and buy-in? Light years apart.
I agree that the team plays hard, seems more organized and there is less behind-the-scenes drama evident under Fox, but we also have had a lot of roster attrition under his leadership, culminating in Bradley's departure. I don't know if that combined with a near total lack of success on the recruiting trail speaks to much, if any gains in buy-in. If things stay where they are in year 3 and he's offered a 4th year, to me at least it will feel as though he got the benefit of the doubt where his predecessor did not.
I had no doubts about the direction of the program under his predecessor. At least we have a floor now.
Very good point. This year put a lot more pressure on Fox. It coulda gone the other way - a surprisingly, nearly-promising year 1, but then another cellar-dwelling season of ineptitude and little player development w/ limited upside. Hell, watching the Tourney it was so clear that the chasm between Cal and NCAA contention might as well be the Grand Canyon... maybe Gates is still available next year... hahaha
Extra funny because Grand Canyon made the tourney this year :)
We’d struggle to score 60 v the ‘Lopes
I was perversely pleased that Gates' Clevo St team lost in underwhelming fashion in round one. Gotta keep the price down.
After 25 years of Cal sports, this program and its trajectory have me as close to a negabear as I've ever been. The program is in freefall and the Fox hire was just a parachute with fewer holes in it. 11 teams in the Pac12 have some sort of upside - Cal, obviously, is the 12th. It seems as if Knowlton has made strides to save the athletic department money, but wouldn't it be cheaper to cancel MBB instead of watching it frugally circle the drain?
Mark Fox (and the next Cal coach, and the next one...) won't be able to keep players here with the new transfer rule. I don't think Bradley leaves if he has to sit out a year. Wyking Jones was a dumpster fire - I was in Maui for that debacle in 2017.
You're not wrong about the transfer rule (or Wyking), but Matt's also probably not leaving if the program's forecast is rosy for next year. The transfer rule creates roster chaos for all programs. It doesn't have to just be a reductive if we can actually pull in quality transfers. But until we can bring the program up to water level (primarily through recruiting), it's likely only going to continue to hurt us more than help us.
I think we're going to see Cal turn into a stepping stone for some of the higher-ceiling football and basketball players now that the one-year transfer rule is gone. The elite programs are going to have free rein to pull top performers from the mid-range school (oh to be mid-range!) to fill their needs. I think it is going to get ugly for a whole bunch of schools in the Pac-12, some of which think they are elite but will find out they are not. We should get some kids as transfers because of the lure of academic gravitas and the opportunity to play, but they probably won't be the top-tier athletes. Do you really think Matt leaves if he has to sit out a year?
No, I agree he probably wouldn't be gone. But if there was a chance he could be the big dog on a bubble team, he probably stays. But we are not that. Not close. For sure elite programs will have the edge as always, but players leave for different reasons. For some, it's the promise of playing time. Marcus Lee would be a good example. For some it's the promise of playing with a better program (Jordan Matthews, Matt Bradley). In any case, this is just me trying to come up with a rationalization that our hole can't get any deeper. But alas, maybe it can. And as much as I don't like the chaos the transfer portal creates and what it might mean for us specifically, it's totally the right thing for players.
Bradley to SDSU
There was a time not too long ago, when leaving Cal for "a more elite" program like SDSU would have seemed completely alien, but alas here we are.
At least I can keep rooting for him
Darn. But I hope he has a good season or two there.
Unless Hyder takes a huge leap forward, we're still in desperate need of a pass-first, great ball handling point guard. Brown has all the skills, but needs hypnosis or something to convince him how good he is. Foreman is competent, and if he can become a reliable shooter, we'll be ok if one of the former occurs. Otherwise, we have to grab a point guard out of the portal.
Tough to see any of these kids taking much of a leap forward. We have an entire roster of players that are basically role players at best. A Porter Moser could maybe win with this roster by ratcheting up the D and running a more efficient O...Fox can't tho.
I had high hopes for Hyder - thought he could come in and contribute. He was very disappointing - he's a PG that turns the ball over too much, is absolutely LOST on the defensive end with his rotations and fundamentals, and he can't shoot the ball. The guy is not a P12 starting PG.
Brown needs more confidence in his jump shot and taking it to the rim. Too many missed layups. He has developed a 3 point shot though, which is a great sign.
Brown confounds me. He can get anywhere he wants to on the court and has become a better than average 3-pt shooter, yet barely shoots. He won’t be able to hide next year tho. We’re about to see what his upside is.
Well, in the aggregate we played almost as well, if not better when he was absent. as it seems the other players picked up their level of play. Next year will be very telling and I expect it will be Fox' last year unless we reach .500.
As. much as I remain a person who cares little about players that don't come, or leaver early, usually in football, I have to say this one hurts. I expected the departures with Wyking. But Bradley seemed a true Bear. I get why he would leave to be on a higher profile and currently winning team, but bummer. This is not Fox's first rodeo, and I'm sure he and his team will do their best, and I'm going to judge him and his team by W-L next year. Period. Either we climb into a middling program, or Knowlton needs to make a change after 3 years.
Agreed - I’m usually pretty down on folks leaving Cal but this one I’m actually ok with. It’s been expected. Bradley stuck around when others bailed after the Wyking mess, and he deserves a chance to Dance.
I'll be rooting for him where ever he goes - even post SDSU because I think he has a good chance to play in the Association.
I struggle with this. Part of me says he’s not quick enough to match up on either side w/ NBA 2-guards, and the shooting is just streaky enough to give you pause. Then you see he’s 6’4”, 225 and he’s muscling guys on the block and I think there are worse late 2nd rounders than Matty....hell, look at the stiffs the W’s have on their bench. Bradley could prob fill Paschall’s role...
In the end, I think he’d have a great shot if he were 6’6”/6’7”.... but pulling for him.
It would have to be the exact right situation - as it is with all guys with nba level, but not quite talent. I just think he's got all the same skills that Harden does - just obviously not at James' level. He can control pace, he can shoot, and that lefty stepback. He's strong as hell and can get to the rim against good defenders. On the other hand - he needs to be a complimentary player at the next level, not the main show - since he isn't James Harden -so can he survive when he doesn't have the ball in his hands? I don't know.
I don't think he has much of a shot. He doesn't have an in-demand skill to compensate for his relative lack of NBA size, quickness and athleticism. He's a good shooter, but not a deadly one yet.
This whole ordeal with Bradley reminds me of the free Mulli movement back in the late 90s. Not that there was a campaign to free Bradley, but just the premise that he would be better off by leaving.
Might this explain why Fox did not start him in the Pac-12 tournament? Mere speculation, but I always had a bad feeling it was related to this.
Slightly but not fully. Matt has always cared a lot - maybe too much? And rumors have been that he and the coaches have been tense the entire season, so not just the Pac-12 tourney, but the entire season.