I see it just a touch differently. This isn't just Fox and Knowlton, it's also Chancellor Christ and the campus admin's indifference towards intercollegiate athletics at the FBS level. I suspect there is a large slice of Cal alums who share this perspective.
What I'm hinting at is that Carol Christ and others who share her mindset would be perfectly happy if Cal were a Division II or Division III institution, except for the albatross of Memorial Stadium debt. Those with a like mind quietly hold sway by simply doing nothing.
Christ, et al really do not care about big time intercollegiate athletics. If those who are the most emotionally invested could understand this, then they either (1) change the Cal community culture and attitude towards FBS athletics or (2) learn to accept that Division II or III is where we'll end up.
I am as staunch a Knowlton critic as anyone. However, Knowlton speaking with former Cal hoops alums about the situation is at least a move in the right direction. Their silence as Cal has descended into disaster has been deafening, no?
Only question I would raise is why this late? If they’ve been being alienated then why change it now? That’s the part that I’d be upset with. Just feels like you’re going to them because you let this program sit in the pits for 5 years.
You don't call such a confab when you have a head coach that you're supposedly still standing behind. Arguably he should have done it before he hired Mark fucking Fox, but I think in his mind we had gone with an untested head coach in Wyking, so this time around he was going to hire a "veteran" coach, no matter how mediocre.
Better late than never I guess. Given the way the school operates, I suspect we’re stuck with Knowlton. Better he learn now than never. But you’re right of course.
Chris Beard is pretty much a non-starter here for the non-basketball reasons...Ole Miss is reportedly making a real run at him, and the SEC is probably a good fit, given their obviously lax moral standards.
Turns out Cal is in a unique spot - with Stanford retaining Haase, and UW doing the same with Hopkins, Cal is arguably the best available job on the West Coast...interesting. If Knowlton gets the proper input from various former players and donors, Cal hopefully nails this hire...they could really use it.
My wish list for the next HC: under 46 years of age; charisma, to be at least a solid recruiter; capable of running an efficient offense; has never been fired as a Head Coach at any school...no retreads - no Tim Miles, no Ben Howland. Cuonzo 2.0, long shot, would be intriguing tho...
We'll see how many we get...more than anything, the program needs a jolt of energy...a shot of adrenaline, to get people interested again, and quickly.
Pasternack, Stan Johnson, Ryan Odom, Danny Sprinkle, and seemingly 50-75 others fit the bill...my question: does Knowlton and Cal have a splashy hire in them, like Florida with Golden last year, like Sandy Barbour with Cuonzo...
The basketball program can absolutely be saved. More than resources, we need both a willingness to get us there and some competence that will allow us to make the most of the resources we do have--and not just make excuses. There is a great appetite for Cal basketball in the Bay Area, but people have more to their lives than to stick around for a program that has no expectations beyond maintaining it's own mere existence. You have to do more than just drop 5 students in Cal uniforms on a court.
With the Warriors' beginning of the end, there might even be an opening for the most exciting basketball team in the Bay very shortly. Not to mention the Big10 looking closely at us as an option. This is a critcal hire at a critical time.
Another disaster hire now and it might be prudent to hire an architect to figure out how to turn Haas and Memorial into dorms.
A simple change in scheme can work wonders, too, KC. I mean, we've seen it.
I am somewhat torn - part of me wants to see a ton of these kids move on: 1. for their sake and to achieve success on the court; and 2. because after watching them for a couple of seasons, most of them really struggle to shoot the ball and despite working hard, at the end of the day, they just may not be very skilled.
On the other hand, part of me wants to see a competent head coach arrive and work with a majority of these players...we'd see what changes he would make schematically, something Mark Fox was unwilling to do.
He's a ball dominant guard, and not a great one at that. Hopefully the new coach will have an offense where the ball doesn't stay in his hands a long time. Like Boban says, "He's dribbling. dribbling. dribbling. He's dribbling."
Oh yeah, with a good coach this team would have more wins (not a lot, but enough where we'd consider this season snakebitten instead of embarrassing).
Fox couldn't recruit (or retain talent) well, couldn't run an offense, couldn't adapt and, most importantly couldn't coach defense (his alleged strength). His incompetence was so astoundingly thorough that a coach with a modicum of competence in any dimension of the game would demonstrate improvement.
Great article and just put me into a deep depression.
I do honestly think, with the right Coach, the basketball program can snap back a lot faster than say football. I’m thinking approaching .500 in the first year or two.
The issue, as you highlighted, is that the hiring process is clearly broken.
Basketball is way easier to flip as a program. You only have 5 people playing at once, and you don't have the initial strength development necessary out of high school for them to be immediately impactful. One good recruiting class and you can immediately be at least mediocre.
Agreed…1 good player even…Omari Moore, who Tim Miles inherited, is basically single-handedly responsible for SJSU’s resurgence this season, which has earned his retread HC a ton of buzz as a miracle worker…talk about complete horseschitt. Amazing what having an NBA player leading your roster will do for a middling coach.
If Knowlton hires Miles, he should be brought up on charges.
Despite this team winning 3 games this season - this should be a ten or so win team (per Fox's other teams) so a new coach should be able to get us to 15 with some talent infusion and some philosophical changes. I'm not saying it'll be easy but getting to .500 in college basketball is a much lower hurdle than in football.
What a great article and analysis. Painful but necessary. Thank you so much. This sort of catharsis helps us heal. It is cathartic because like many here I was following closely with Wyking and remember the Blah reaction to Fox. As I've said before, it is so much like your good buddy continuing to date some loser girl and you just know he is awesome and she is a nightmare for him. It is so crystal clear from the outside, but he just can't see it until the whole nasty drama plays out and there you are giving him a hug and telling him it's OK, and he'll be alright when you knew full well and told him as much years ago.
There is nothing wrong with Cal basketball that Cal can't solve. There is nothing wrong with Cal basketball a good AD and Chancellor couldn't solve.
I'm super interested in whether our amazing alums like Kidd, Shareef, Johnson, Brown and the many others who went on to NBA and professional careers have the ears of any major donors and offer advice? Or because some of them are themselves capable of being major donors, they offer advice directly to Knowlton who should be requesting it? It's not like Cal doesn't have a royalty of our basketball program.
I don't know how you know this but taking you at your word, that's great to hear. We have the alumni base that many would envy, and they know so very much about the game and the players in coaching. IF Knowlton is smart, he has beginners mind with them and takes great notes. Even forms an ad hoc informal committee and runs ideas past them.
You speak for many of us. Thanks for hanging in there and (still) caring.
Let’s hope some unsung young John Wooden type can see potential to write a fairy tale at Haas. And that Carol and Jim can get outta the way and let him recruit some outstanding local hs uber talents who would like to join the party.
I just never, ever understood the logic of the Fox hire. If you're a school that is not able or willing to break the bank for John Calipari or something (and Cal is not), then you need to follow one of two strategies:
1. An assistant who had success at a major program.
2. A head coach who had success at a smaller program.
Not a head coach who was mediocre at a major program! Where's the upside to that? This whole thing went predictably badly.
If Knowlton goes with yet another retread that's had middling success at another P5 that ended in termination, he should immediately be sent to the island.
Weird to see Reef's words and realize that we won't be getting his wisdom this time.
Agree, Knowlton completely botched the Fox hire and extension in very predictable ways. The problem with mediocre "known quantities" is that you know their ceiling but not their floor.
I'm sure Knowlton was worried about another inexperienced hire after Wyking but Fox did project terribly. The extension was mind boggling. Maybe Knowlton will do something different since he's not entirely a "known quantity" but... I'm not impressed.
I specifically remember reading back then, and COMPLETELY agreeing with, this statement: "Is a coach who couldn’t get over the hump at Georgia likely to reinvent himself in Berkeley now that his reputation as an average power conference coach has calcified?" Tim Miles, anyone?
He blamed injuries (other teams don’t have injuries), he blamed the pandemic (other teams didn’t have to deal with Covid), he blamed facilities (neither Braun nor Monty nor Martin had to deal with that). He can make all the excuses he wants, but ultimately you are what your record says you are, and in 13 years as a power conference coach, he’s been to two NCAA tournaments.
The speed with which EVERY SINGLE broadcasting team belabored the injury bug on every single telecast was embarrassing, as was putting the number of games lost up on the Jumbotron v UT-A.
Instead of making excuses, Mark, why don't you make some schematic changes and try and fix something that clearly was not working.
If he ever gets hired as a HC again at the college level, the hiring AD should be terminated on sight.
Even Faraudo and Letourneau's articles yesterday started off by nodding some to the typical laundry list of Knowlton/Fox bullet points before righting themselves. WSU had more key injuries than we did and even less resources than Cal does, and yet they 1) didn't complain about it; 2) had a winning record. Enough already!
Sports media folks usually need to do a dance in sync with published talking points and maintain generally positive relationships with team management. I am sure every single journalist was not surprised that Fox was fired, but, to keep it cordial, they had to give lip service to the virtual pleas for mercy made and hold back their harsher assessments. That’s my guess, anyway. I mean the proof is in the pudding with his new infamous record. I would only hold back a sharp tongue for the mercy of not whippin’ a dead dog.
Reef got 1 point wrong; that there was no ceiling with Fox. There was very much a low ceiling, but the real problem was there was no floor.
In order to climb to any reasonable level, Cal is going to have to realize that they are Washington St in that they are going to have to find quality on the margins, and in places no one else has looked. Trying to go head to head with, well, anybody else in the Pac, or the regional powers like the LA schools, or Gonzaga, or for that matter the better half of the Mr West won't work. The models would seem to be St Mary's (possibly, if you can find someone with both creativity with recruiting, whether internationally or fringe cases stateside AND also aggressive and creative x's and o's), or more likely Sacramento St and San Francisco, which have all had considerably more success.
A LARGE lean into analytics is also imperative, to not only find incremental efficiencies, but to identify strategy and tactics that will NOT work over the long haul to be avoided at all cost. In a highly competitive conference and region, Cal's margin of error can be measured in microns, and its even thinner in hoops, where a even a couple of roster misses, or tactical error, will be disastrous.
Cal had a 10 year run of success in which they went head to head with Arizona and UCLA and came out just fine. Obviously, the last 6 years since then has done incalculable damage to the program, and there is no guarantee that Cal will recover, but there were probably people in the 80s who suggested that things like Jason Kidd or the 2010 Pac-10 champs or Jaylen Brown could never happen in Berkeley . . . and then those things happened.
Yes, but things have changed transformationally since then. I'm merely noting a program that has regressed for a decade while the game was moving forward is not one hire away from turning it around. It will take a fundamental change in thinking and the way the program is run and supported. It's not at all assured that will happen.
Dude is an Oregon State fan, so I suppose he's gotta get his licks in wherever he can. If posting asinine, condescending takes about Cal helps him feel better about himself and his team, good for him I guess.
I was trying to find that video of Fox when he was introduced to the team, which seems to have vanished. It was such an off-putting performance, and doubly concerning that the athletic department's comms team thought it worthy of publishing publicly. Felt for the guys. You could see they all just wanted to get out of the room, and a few of them left the program in the days after. Pretty much ever moment since has been a repeat of the that tone-deafness--from both Fox and the athletic department.
That’s why when some of these good natured folks thank Fox for his time at Cal I totally chuckle. Dude made nearly $7M from the University for being a rigid, stubborn, lazy dick.
"Failing to set any expectations" might be a more accurate title. I've yet to hear Knowlton utter a single word in his 5 or six years about any performance based expectations for any of the sports. There has just been no accountability in the athletic department, accept to the bottomline. Knowlton is basically a glorified accountant.
Don't mean to throw salt in the wound, but watching Mizzou-Tennessee in the SEC Quarterfinal right now...it's so G-damn painful to see Dennis Gates patrolling the sideline when everyone and their f-ing mother KNEW he was the play 6 years ago, let alone 4.
Back to back buffoons in the AD chair cost this basketball program a decade.
The apparent apathy of the administration towards success in the revenue sports, especially basketball is highly concerning. While not a new thing, the problem appears to be getting worse. We need a turnaround expert who can engage with the fan base and recruit a few more 4 stars. Only a handful of skilled players are needed to be a successful BB team, so there is perhaps a light at the end of the tunnel, but this hire has to be a home run.
Again, Fox is a symptom of the larger problem which is an AD way over his skis.
I see it just a touch differently. This isn't just Fox and Knowlton, it's also Chancellor Christ and the campus admin's indifference towards intercollegiate athletics at the FBS level. I suspect there is a large slice of Cal alums who share this perspective.
What I'm hinting at is that Carol Christ and others who share her mindset would be perfectly happy if Cal were a Division II or Division III institution, except for the albatross of Memorial Stadium debt. Those with a like mind quietly hold sway by simply doing nothing.
Christ, et al really do not care about big time intercollegiate athletics. If those who are the most emotionally invested could understand this, then they either (1) change the Cal community culture and attitude towards FBS athletics or (2) learn to accept that Division II or III is where we'll end up.
Exactly.
I am as staunch a Knowlton critic as anyone. However, Knowlton speaking with former Cal hoops alums about the situation is at least a move in the right direction. Their silence as Cal has descended into disaster has been deafening, no?
Only question I would raise is why this late? If they’ve been being alienated then why change it now? That’s the part that I’d be upset with. Just feels like you’re going to them because you let this program sit in the pits for 5 years.
Because it's performative. I don't see any honest intent here except for keeping the critics under control.
Yes, I am deeply cynical when it comes to Cal's campus admin and FBS athletics. Deeply. Cynical.
You don't call such a confab when you have a head coach that you're supposedly still standing behind. Arguably he should have done it before he hired Mark fucking Fox, but I think in his mind we had gone with an untested head coach in Wyking, so this time around he was going to hire a "veteran" coach, no matter how mediocre.
Hence, the consultant. Any retread would do. Give yourself some distance by outsourcing the selection process.
Well that failed.
Better late than never I guess. Given the way the school operates, I suspect we’re stuck with Knowlton. Better he learn now than never. But you’re right of course.
Good point.
You'd like to think he would have immediately reached out to former players as soon as he was hired.
Chris Beard is pretty much a non-starter here for the non-basketball reasons...Ole Miss is reportedly making a real run at him, and the SEC is probably a good fit, given their obviously lax moral standards.
Turns out Cal is in a unique spot - with Stanford retaining Haase, and UW doing the same with Hopkins, Cal is arguably the best available job on the West Coast...interesting. If Knowlton gets the proper input from various former players and donors, Cal hopefully nails this hire...they could really use it.
My wish list for the next HC: under 46 years of age; charisma, to be at least a solid recruiter; capable of running an efficient offense; has never been fired as a Head Coach at any school...no retreads - no Tim Miles, no Ben Howland. Cuonzo 2.0, long shot, would be intriguing tho...
We'll see how many we get...more than anything, the program needs a jolt of energy...a shot of adrenaline, to get people interested again, and quickly.
Pasternack, Stan Johnson, Ryan Odom, Danny Sprinkle, and seemingly 50-75 others fit the bill...my question: does Knowlton and Cal have a splashy hire in them, like Florida with Golden last year, like Sandy Barbour with Cuonzo...
Has he been? That's what I've been hoping for.
Per Terence below, who I’d trust with everyone BUT my college-aged daughter, were I to have one. ;-)
Just kidding, T.
The basketball program can absolutely be saved. More than resources, we need both a willingness to get us there and some competence that will allow us to make the most of the resources we do have--and not just make excuses. There is a great appetite for Cal basketball in the Bay Area, but people have more to their lives than to stick around for a program that has no expectations beyond maintaining it's own mere existence. You have to do more than just drop 5 students in Cal uniforms on a court.
With the Warriors' beginning of the end, there might even be an opening for the most exciting basketball team in the Bay very shortly. Not to mention the Big10 looking closely at us as an option. This is a critcal hire at a critical time.
Another disaster hire now and it might be prudent to hire an architect to figure out how to turn Haas and Memorial into dorms.
A basketball team's fortune can turn on a couple transfers. But we need good players transferring in instead of out.
A simple change in scheme can work wonders, too, KC. I mean, we've seen it.
I am somewhat torn - part of me wants to see a ton of these kids move on: 1. for their sake and to achieve success on the court; and 2. because after watching them for a couple of seasons, most of them really struggle to shoot the ball and despite working hard, at the end of the day, they just may not be very skilled.
On the other hand, part of me wants to see a competent head coach arrive and work with a majority of these players...we'd see what changes he would make schematically, something Mark Fox was unwilling to do.
A defensive orientated coach couldn't get these guys to even play defense or get boards. So, some of this lands on the player's talent or lack of.
Absolutely.
It will be interesting to see what players follow Joel Brown and transfer...as they say, "we can go 3-29 with or without you." ;-)
Devin Askew isn't going anywhere, though, and I'm not sure how I feel about that....
He's a ball dominant guard, and not a great one at that. Hopefully the new coach will have an offense where the ball doesn't stay in his hands a long time. Like Boban says, "He's dribbling. dribbling. dribbling. He's dribbling."
Oh yeah, with a good coach this team would have more wins (not a lot, but enough where we'd consider this season snakebitten instead of embarrassing).
Fox couldn't recruit (or retain talent) well, couldn't run an offense, couldn't adapt and, most importantly couldn't coach defense (his alleged strength). His incompetence was so astoundingly thorough that a coach with a modicum of competence in any dimension of the game would demonstrate improvement.
Great article and just put me into a deep depression.
I do honestly think, with the right Coach, the basketball program can snap back a lot faster than say football. I’m thinking approaching .500 in the first year or two.
The issue, as you highlighted, is that the hiring process is clearly broken.
Let’s see if it’s different this time.
Basketball is way easier to flip as a program. You only have 5 people playing at once, and you don't have the initial strength development necessary out of high school for them to be immediately impactful. One good recruiting class and you can immediately be at least mediocre.
Agreed…1 good player even…Omari Moore, who Tim Miles inherited, is basically single-handedly responsible for SJSU’s resurgence this season, which has earned his retread HC a ton of buzz as a miracle worker…talk about complete horseschitt. Amazing what having an NBA player leading your roster will do for a middling coach.
If Knowlton hires Miles, he should be brought up on charges.
Despite this team winning 3 games this season - this should be a ten or so win team (per Fox's other teams) so a new coach should be able to get us to 15 with some talent infusion and some philosophical changes. I'm not saying it'll be easy but getting to .500 in college basketball is a much lower hurdle than in football.
Much lower.
What a great article and analysis. Painful but necessary. Thank you so much. This sort of catharsis helps us heal. It is cathartic because like many here I was following closely with Wyking and remember the Blah reaction to Fox. As I've said before, it is so much like your good buddy continuing to date some loser girl and you just know he is awesome and she is a nightmare for him. It is so crystal clear from the outside, but he just can't see it until the whole nasty drama plays out and there you are giving him a hug and telling him it's OK, and he'll be alright when you knew full well and told him as much years ago.
There is nothing wrong with Cal basketball that Cal can't solve. There is nothing wrong with Cal basketball a good AD and Chancellor couldn't solve.
I'm super interested in whether our amazing alums like Kidd, Shareef, Johnson, Brown and the many others who went on to NBA and professional careers have the ears of any major donors and offer advice? Or because some of them are themselves capable of being major donors, they offer advice directly to Knowlton who should be requesting it? It's not like Cal doesn't have a royalty of our basketball program.
Knowlton has been talking with Abdur-Rahim, Marks and Kidd for advice for this one. What the content of that advice is is unknown though.
I don't know how you know this but taking you at your word, that's great to hear. We have the alumni base that many would envy, and they know so very much about the game and the players in coaching. IF Knowlton is smart, he has beginners mind with them and takes great notes. Even forms an ad hoc informal committee and runs ideas past them.
I'm relieved to hear this. He should pull Jerome, Lamond and Theo in close too.
That alone right there is good news.
I've been bugging Rod Benson to get more involved.
Good morning Nick!
You speak for many of us. Thanks for hanging in there and (still) caring.
Let’s hope some unsung young John Wooden type can see potential to write a fairy tale at Haas. And that Carol and Jim can get outta the way and let him recruit some outstanding local hs uber talents who would like to join the party.
Go Bears! [Beat...somebody, anybody]!!
I just never, ever understood the logic of the Fox hire. If you're a school that is not able or willing to break the bank for John Calipari or something (and Cal is not), then you need to follow one of two strategies:
1. An assistant who had success at a major program.
2. A head coach who had success at a smaller program.
Not a head coach who was mediocre at a major program! Where's the upside to that? This whole thing went predictably badly.
Exactly. THIS.
If Knowlton goes with yet another retread that's had middling success at another P5 that ended in termination, he should immediately be sent to the island.
Tied to an anchor, right?
See how quickly the Colonel can reach the bottom...
Weird to see Reef's words and realize that we won't be getting his wisdom this time.
Agree, Knowlton completely botched the Fox hire and extension in very predictable ways. The problem with mediocre "known quantities" is that you know their ceiling but not their floor.
I'm sure Knowlton was worried about another inexperienced hire after Wyking but Fox did project terribly. The extension was mind boggling. Maybe Knowlton will do something different since he's not entirely a "known quantity" but... I'm not impressed.
Awesome article, Nick...
I specifically remember reading back then, and COMPLETELY agreeing with, this statement: "Is a coach who couldn’t get over the hump at Georgia likely to reinvent himself in Berkeley now that his reputation as an average power conference coach has calcified?" Tim Miles, anyone?
He blamed injuries (other teams don’t have injuries), he blamed the pandemic (other teams didn’t have to deal with Covid), he blamed facilities (neither Braun nor Monty nor Martin had to deal with that). He can make all the excuses he wants, but ultimately you are what your record says you are, and in 13 years as a power conference coach, he’s been to two NCAA tournaments.
The speed with which EVERY SINGLE broadcasting team belabored the injury bug on every single telecast was embarrassing, as was putting the number of games lost up on the Jumbotron v UT-A.
Instead of making excuses, Mark, why don't you make some schematic changes and try and fix something that clearly was not working.
If he ever gets hired as a HC again at the college level, the hiring AD should be terminated on sight.
Even Faraudo and Letourneau's articles yesterday started off by nodding some to the typical laundry list of Knowlton/Fox bullet points before righting themselves. WSU had more key injuries than we did and even less resources than Cal does, and yet they 1) didn't complain about it; 2) had a winning record. Enough already!
Sports media folks usually need to do a dance in sync with published talking points and maintain generally positive relationships with team management. I am sure every single journalist was not surprised that Fox was fired, but, to keep it cordial, they had to give lip service to the virtual pleas for mercy made and hold back their harsher assessments. That’s my guess, anyway. I mean the proof is in the pudding with his new infamous record. I would only hold back a sharp tongue for the mercy of not whippin’ a dead dog.
https://twitter.com/PodvsEveryone/status/1633610487027089409
Nevada is not a power conference schoool.
Neither is Cal.
Respectfully, what the **** are you talking about?
Mediocre would be an improvement over not competent, which is what Cal got.
Jim Knowlton hands out extensions like Oprah hands out cars.
Reef got 1 point wrong; that there was no ceiling with Fox. There was very much a low ceiling, but the real problem was there was no floor.
In order to climb to any reasonable level, Cal is going to have to realize that they are Washington St in that they are going to have to find quality on the margins, and in places no one else has looked. Trying to go head to head with, well, anybody else in the Pac, or the regional powers like the LA schools, or Gonzaga, or for that matter the better half of the Mr West won't work. The models would seem to be St Mary's (possibly, if you can find someone with both creativity with recruiting, whether internationally or fringe cases stateside AND also aggressive and creative x's and o's), or more likely Sacramento St and San Francisco, which have all had considerably more success.
A LARGE lean into analytics is also imperative, to not only find incremental efficiencies, but to identify strategy and tactics that will NOT work over the long haul to be avoided at all cost. In a highly competitive conference and region, Cal's margin of error can be measured in microns, and its even thinner in hoops, where a even a couple of roster misses, or tactical error, will be disastrous.
Cal had a 10 year run of success in which they went head to head with Arizona and UCLA and came out just fine. Obviously, the last 6 years since then has done incalculable damage to the program, and there is no guarantee that Cal will recover, but there were probably people in the 80s who suggested that things like Jason Kidd or the 2010 Pac-10 champs or Jaylen Brown could never happen in Berkeley . . . and then those things happened.
Yes, but things have changed transformationally since then. I'm merely noting a program that has regressed for a decade while the game was moving forward is not one hire away from turning it around. It will take a fundamental change in thinking and the way the program is run and supported. It's not at all assured that will happen.
lol
Bad take Andy strikes again.
Dude is an Oregon State fan, so I suppose he's gotta get his licks in wherever he can. If posting asinine, condescending takes about Cal helps him feel better about himself and his team, good for him I guess.
Well, I, for one, am grateful we got Byrne from Oregon State.
Makes me think. I remember when USF was the basketball power of Northern California. I wonder what happened?
Let’s not shoot for a mediocre replacement.
https://twitter.com/CalMBBall/status/1634344517452144642?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1634344517452144642%7Ctwgr%5E1cbaefb652ba80dc081ce4bfe857bd8e9b075ef1%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbearinsider.com%2Fs%2F3516%2Fcal-makes-change-in-mens-basketball-leadership---fox-gone
I just hope this time we spend more than 5 days before hiring a new coach...
I was trying to find that video of Fox when he was introduced to the team, which seems to have vanished. It was such an off-putting performance, and doubly concerning that the athletic department's comms team thought it worthy of publishing publicly. Felt for the guys. You could see they all just wanted to get out of the room, and a few of them left the program in the days after. Pretty much ever moment since has been a repeat of the that tone-deafness--from both Fox and the athletic department.
That’s why when some of these good natured folks thank Fox for his time at Cal I totally chuckle. Dude made nearly $7M from the University for being a rigid, stubborn, lazy dick.
Good riddance.
"Failing to set any expectations" might be a more accurate title. I've yet to hear Knowlton utter a single word in his 5 or six years about any performance based expectations for any of the sports. There has just been no accountability in the athletic department, accept to the bottomline. Knowlton is basically a glorified accountant.
Don't mean to throw salt in the wound, but watching Mizzou-Tennessee in the SEC Quarterfinal right now...it's so G-damn painful to see Dennis Gates patrolling the sideline when everyone and their f-ing mother KNEW he was the play 6 years ago, let alone 4.
Back to back buffoons in the AD chair cost this basketball program a decade.
The apparent apathy of the administration towards success in the revenue sports, especially basketball is highly concerning. While not a new thing, the problem appears to be getting worse. We need a turnaround expert who can engage with the fan base and recruit a few more 4 stars. Only a handful of skilled players are needed to be a successful BB team, so there is perhaps a light at the end of the tunnel, but this hire has to be a home run.