12 Comments

I think of Tedford at Cal - great years and then things went downhill (and then he had health problems and wandered in the woods for a while). And then he surprised everyone by how successful he was at Fresno.

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Coach G was very good at building parts of a program - a decent recruiter (although some big misses), very good at getting the program to be a part of and embrace the Greater Oakland neighborhood that Berkeley is part of (and really, both football and men's basketball don't do enough with).

Watching a lot of games was frustrating though - especially with All American Kristine Anignwe the last 4 years. I saw UC Riverside just take us out of our game with a 1-3-1 half court trap and an inability to do anything but run the same set that had led to turnovers or closely guarded jumpers. Just wanting us to try a different set or flip a player position or something.

Good for Coach G, who was one of my favorite people at Cal. I hope she got the bag.

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Great recruiter.

Poor player development.

Poor in-game coaching.

But a very nice person who always stopped by to say hi at our tailgates

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Wish it had been any other athletic program than that which my sweet-tempered late father called "those G.D. dirty Trojans." (Mind you, he was also a Stanf--- fan; please don't tell anybody.)

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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...

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Congratulations in advance to USC for finishing 6th in the conference for now and forever

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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".

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Wow, this blows my mind. I feel pretty confident in predicting that under Gottlieb U$C's mediocrity in women's basketball will positively flourish.

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USC also produced 4 of the top 30 women's players of all time with Cheryl, Cynthia Cooper, Lisa Leslie and Tina Thompson - so they very much are a sleeping giant.

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Such a long time ago, though. I wish some top California players would go there with the sense of purpose that 2005's Cal rookie class did.

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Do you mean "coaching in the WNBA"? Is that why Bill Laimbeer does it?

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You don't understand why a basketball coach would take an NBA job?

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