I have been starring at a blank white screen for a long time on Monday night, struggling with what I want to write about Lindsay Gottlieb leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers after two seasons to become the head coach of USC womenās basketball.
Lindsay Gottlieb is an unfailingly kind, generous person who has gone out of her way to do things she didnāt have to do for the Cal community. She was a part of basketball memories Iāll cherish the rest of my life.
Sheās coaching at USC now.
Logically, I can understand in my brain that her departure from Cal was probably the best for all parties. Logically, I can understand that coaching at USC is a reasonably attractive job.
But sheās coaching at USC now.
Itās not long until youāre going to see footage of her saying fight on while holding up a V hand sign. I donāt say that to torture you, but instead to prepare you for the inevitable.
In spite of it all, I am morbidly curious to see whether or not Coach G can lift USC out of nearly three decades of remarkably consistent mediocrity.
In 1994, Cheryl Miller led USC to a 26-4 record, a Pac-10 title, and made the Elite 8. In the 27 years since, USC is 241-243 in conference play, with 20 seasons that ended with somewhere between 7 and 11 conference wins. In that time USC has made four NCAA tournaments and hasnāt gotten further than the second round.
27 years of being decent but unremarkable. 27 years of being good enough to pull the occasional upset but not good enough to matter nationally. 27 years of just kinda existing without ever really getting noticed by anybody.
USC WBB seems like a program that should be good but isnāt. Five different coaches since Cheryl Miller have tried, and all of them have failed.
Lindsay Gottlieb has something to prove as well. She collected a Pac-12 record of 56-16 over her first four seasons in Berkeley, then regressed to a record of 30-42 over her final four seasons in Berkeley. Frustratingly for Cal fans, the Bears have struggled badly in the two years after her departure, thanks in part to a shallow, inexperienced, and imbalanced roster left behind by transfers and recruiting misses.
The Pac-12 has become the best conference in WBB because over the last 8 years the Pac-12 kept adding great head coaches on top of the programs that were already strong. UCLA, Oregon, Oregon State, and Arizona all have improved markedly thanks to inspired head coaching choices. Itās not a coincidence that the rise of those programs coincided with Calās relative struggles in the second half of Lindsay Gottliebās eight years at Cal. Those coaches are all still in the conference. Winning at USC will be far from easy.
I donāt quite hold the same intense dislike for USC WBB as I do towards other USC sports, or USC as an institution. Itās hard to hate a program that has been so relentlessly bland and uninteresting for the bulk of my lifetime. If Coach Gottlieb starts beating ASU or Oregon or Stanford or UCLA, Iāll probably cackle and enjoy it, and Iāll be happy for a good person on a human level.
But Iām still a fan, and when they meet on the court I hope my Bears show no mercy.
Before Lindsay Gottlieb left Cal, I was optimistic that she could have improved upon her some of her coaching shortcomings, strategy-wise, from her youth and willingness to learn (she was already using opportunities to talk to the GSW staff then). We shall see what she had picked up from coaching in the NBA (obviously, the difference in skill level between male NBA players and women college basketball players mean that not all of the basketball strategies are transferable between the two levels).
Good for her to get this job, although I am already cringing when I saw her tweeting out "fight on".
I've long thought that Coach G was the beneficiary of a trend that Coach Boyle started (and even she was the beneficiary of Coach Horstmeyer's fabulous class of AGL/DH/AW). Coach G was never really able to see the benefits on the court of the players she recruited, and she left our cupboard pretty bare. I don't feel like her return to the Pac-12 has a negative impact on the ability of Cal to be successful on the court, unless Coach G's NBA-exposure attracts recruits away from the Bears...