Dec 12, 2022Liked by Nick Kranz, Avinash Kunnath, BentPawn
Your column today was very touching to a very senior Cal fan (who had the privilege of seeing championship basketball at the Cow Palace). Yes, that old. I reached out after last season to Cal's AD with a strong suggestion to hire a new coach "to start the rebuilding process sooner than later", only to be told this would not happen. I feared the result we are seeing today. Regret the players are not getting the college experience they had hoped. Thanks for expressing your feelings.
Not to get all Al Sharpton here. I am a very middle aged white dude from Walnut Creek after all, but there has always been a certain elephant in the room IMO to how quick we are to criticize some coaches and rationalize others despite the actual evidence.
I'm not sure I see that. Wyking Jones crashed the program and Mark Fox set the gas tank on fire. It's more Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition of basketball ineptitude.
Honestly, it’s gotten so bad that I have more fun watching to see if we can claim the title of worst team in the history of the game than anything else. Does that make me a terrible person? Maybe. But I’m honestly more interested with this than I was last year. At least we are on the cusp of making history.
No, I don't follow our team anymore because the fact that we're keeping Fox is the university telling me they don't value the product we put on the court one iota. If the university doesn't value it, then why should I?
That said, I follow our record. If we're going to suck, we may as well suck so hard Cal has no choice but to make the decision to fire Fox. And that means losing every game from here on out.
That's not true. Look at how quickly Cuonzo stacked our roster. If we have a good coach that knows how to recruit players, the rebuild in basketball is insanely fast. You only need 2-3 core stars/players to really compete and then P5 quality depth around them.
Cal has had horrendous coaching for years despite above average talent. We've had many players who ended up in the NBA or on a two-way G league contract and did nothing with them. We had Allen Crabbe and Tyrone Wallace on the court at the same time, and then Tyrone and Jabari Bird. We had Tyrone Wallace, Jabari Bird, Jaylen Brown and Ivan Rabb on the same roster and lost in the first round. The teams that won the tournament in the years that we had those players did not have that many future NBA/G-league players. Montgomery and Martin didn't really do anything with their talent. Jones had no business being a head coach (a press conference where he blamed the players was particularly memorable). My sunshine pumping is limited to Cal Football because enjoying an afternoon in Strawberry Canyon makes up for a lot. Haas Pavilion just reminds me of finals.
At the risk of being a jerk online, I have trouble respecting the opinion of anybody who throws Cuonzo Martin into the same category as Wyking Jones and Mark Fox.
I'm not sure I put them in the same category. I said Montgomery and Martin didn't really do anything with their talent (at least as far as the NCAA tournament is concerned). I also said Jones had no business being a head coach.
I suppose that's an oversimplification of your point. Frankly, I just straight disagree that Monty and Cuonzo were bad coaches by any definition, so calling them all horrendous as if they somehow are comparable confuses me.
Montgomery and Martin failed to have their team ready for the games that mattered, which in my book are tournament games. Co-winning the Pac 10 regular season doesn't mean anything if you don't win the Pac 10 tournament. I guess I'm not trying to say they're horrendous, but I'm saying that they didn't rise to the occasion when it mattered. And it does matter, with that talent we should have had a few deep runs in March. How would that have affected recruiting and donor sentiment?
And yes, Jones was a different category of bad. But I'll say at least Fox doesn't blame his players for losing games in press conferences.
"50% of coaches" ignores seeding and argues that a lower ranked team losing to a higher ranked team is the expected result. But a 4 seed with 2 uninjured future NBA talents loosing to a 13 seed by 11 is a pretty horrendous result.
It's not Cuonzo's fault that half his starters got injured the week going into round 1 of March Madness. A lot of context is missing from your harsh grades.
Montgomery was a great coach who didn't care about recruiting, which made him just an above average coach.
That team that lost in the first round also had to deal with a broken hand, a bad back and a fired assistant coach in the week before the game - and also was undefeated at home and got the highest NCAA seed in modern Cal history.
The coach is still to blame when that hand was broken in practice. While a bad back is mitigating, there were still two uninjured NBA quality players on that team and the buck stops with the head coach, not an assistant.
Monty's team won the regular season title, lost in the Pac 10 tournament finals and then lost in the second round.
Given that Wallace had already fractured his hand that season and recovered, presumably by limiting the intensity of the pre tournament practices. I had understood that NBA teams, for instance, have lighter intensity practices during the grind of the regular season to prevent injuries sustained during practice and to aid in recovery and preparation for the games, but perhaps I misunderstood what lower intensity meant.
I'm so dispirited and tuned away from Cal basketball, fully experiencing the pain of loss, that I also struggle to say anything. Your article hits a nerve with me, so well done. Yes, we are at a point of historical atrocity. Worse, even, than mediocrity. Nothing more to be said than waiting around for the inevitable. Next?
Jordan Pope from Brentwood and now an outstanding freshman at Oregon State never got call from Cal even though hecwas interested in being a Bear. Neither did his teammates at Prolific Prep in
The big question is whether firing Fox mid-season will generate some improvement. It won't overcome poor roster construction but can overcome outright bad coaching (if there's enough developed latent talent present to unleash).
"The big question is whether firing Fox mid-season will generate some improvement"
Is this a big question? Anyways - this is a lost season. Coach K and the ghost of John Wooden couldn't get these Bears to the CBIT, a mid season firing starts the process on an open coaching search now, as well as letting players start to consider their options going forward if they want to leave because they feel loyalty to Fox or if they want to stick with playing at Cal. Letting him continue to coach without firm resolution just delays inevitable decision making.
We need the ghost of John Wooden along with the ghost of Sam Gilbert. Remember, Wooden's Pyramid of Success was predicated on Gilbert's Pyramid Scheme.
I think it's more about message sending to candidates at this point. Good coaches want to be part of programs that have standards. Programs that have low bars have low success. Not sure we can shake that perception in the near term, but letting Fox go is a step in the right direction.
Your analysis is on point, but the reason to attend games is to support the student athletes. Mark Fox is a good person, and far more basketball savvy than our previous two coaches. But an empty larder, coupled with ineffective recruiting heas likely ended Fox's tenure. Dennis Gates who was a favored candidate among some when Fox was hired is now succeeding at Missouri now that Conzo was fired. Who will be Cal's next option?
The objective on-court achievements of Cuonzo Martin FAR outstrip anything Mark Fox has accomplished at Georgia or Cal, so if you're going to argue that Fox is better than Cuonzo you really have to provide some evidence rather than just asserting it as a thing we should assume is true.
Setting aside the fact that recruiting is the single most critical aspect of college coaching and we're just waiving it away in this analysis, you're giving me a non-answer that makes me suspect that you have no way of proving something you said without thinking.
Cuonzo Martin built perhaps the best Cal defense in the post-Pete-Newell era. Mark Fox, a self-proclaimed *defensively minded coach,* hasn't come within light years of what Martin accomplished, in a way that talent cannot possibly explain. Which says nothing about more than a decade of evidence that Mark Fox is one of the singularly worst offensive coaches still employed at the power conference level, which presumably would be NOT be something you'd expect from somebody who has "basketball savvy."
Perhaps a review of Conzo's performance at Missouri with strong talent can reveal his ability, and why with what he left, a former Cal player has them currently 9-1. I would not compare Conzo to Pete Newell. Newell was a remarkable coach for his era of Men's basketball, without a shot clock or the three point basket. He never had the kind of talent Conzo had, and yet he coached Cal over John Wooden eight straight times, ending with an 8-7 over the Wizard of Westwood. He gave Wooden the concept of the press which the Bruins adapted very effectively after 1960. We have different perspectives, based on our experience and view of the game. I don't consider this a contest of perspectives, so I will finish my exchanges here.
Dec 12, 2022·edited Dec 12, 2022Liked by Christopher Helling
Not sure about the basketball savvy part. I don't know how you could make that case with what we have seen this year. We have enough talent to have beaten some of these teams. He has more professionalism than Wyking, but that should not be confused with savviness. Fox has forced an outmoded style of basketball down his players throats that doesn't suit their strengths. He doesn't make good adjustments and his sub patterns are obsessive compulsive and ruin any chance at continuity. Gates was a massive miss. I don't want to make him out as Coach K, but for Cal that is the type of candidate you HAVE to get. We can't afford established coaches, so if you have a former Cal player who has shown he can turn around a program and is a stellar recruiter, you simply have to find a way to bring them into the fold. There are no obvious candidates, which is terrifying given the lack of aptitude our AD has show for these types of decisions.
One can argue that Lars has not developed to the degree one might expect, but others are making the types of mistakes inexperienced players make. The rotation is critical to developing an already thin bench (8 players available last game). Newel's performance offensively is a credit to that development. Our team is not talented, but they are playing hard and to the level of their skill development. I completely disagree with your analysis of the athletic director. As someone who has worked on campus for over 40 years, I understand the complexity of the choices the campus faces in making these decisions.
I worked on campus for several years as well serving a massive multi-million dollar project. I understand the challenges and inertia. There is more pressure to make smart decisions, because if you miss you may very well find yourself in a situation like the one we are now. Despite the challenges, Knowlton deserves to hold the bag here. Attendance and interest are at all-time lows for reasons that can't be explained away by societal factors. This atrophy is going to have even larger ramifications down the road, as we are simply not cultivating future donors who will carry it on once the current ones die out. Donors like myself, who have contributed for decades, are questioning whether we are better served to share those resources elsewhere. The students of today have few positive memories that will bring them back to attend games with their families or contribute. I don't think even the most cynical among of the Fox hire could have expected what we're experiencing. But many of us who have followed this program and are tuned into the larger collegiate basketball and athletics landscape could see that we were pursuing a slow road to nowhere. Frankly, Knowlton of all people, should have seen that too.
We have different perspectives. The landscape of collegiate athletics is becoming an even more barren and disconnected to colleges and universities. Navigating that landscape while still remaining competitive in the present circumstances has left both Cal and Stanford in similar circumstances with regard to Men's basketball and football. We will see if they can manage to survive given those conditions. Certainly Virginia, North Carolina, Wake Forest and Duke have found ways to do so. But they are outliers. I do not count Michigan, Texas, and Ucla in the same category. At the same time, I do not know how they handle admissions. But if we give them the benefit of the doubt, then perhaps Cal and Stanford will find ways to compete.
In the years since Fox was hired, Gates has actually turned around two programs! Massive miss! We should have moved on from Fox last year when we had our last best chance to court Gates. I wrote Knowlton last year pleading as much.
Yes, I didn't say otherwise. See the thread below. I said you had to bring him into the fold. We should have made a play for him after last year. Not finding a way to bring him to Berkeley is/was a massive miss.
Not true. He was picked up by Clevo State not long after. He was a name as a future HC in coaching circles for years because of his recruiting acumen, and was even a name kicked around as a Cal candidate far back as the Cuonzo hire, although I don't think he was strongly considered by us at that point. Its clear that Knowlton and Co prioritized previous head coaching experience after the Wyking debacle, which is understandable, although regrettable. Gates was a swing worth taking.
This take is quite at odds with your insistence we should have hired Troy Taylor for football despite him not having any track record as a head coach. Just found that interesting.
"Good person"??? Huh?? Do you know him personally or something? He doesn't come across like a good person in any definition. He is a bully coupled with petulant child antics on the sideline. His pressers are horrific by any measure. He can't recruit and his record(s) prove he is a terrible coach.
It’s a sad state of affairs. Fox was a good coach many years ago. The bottom line comes down to recruiting players that can play. He has done such a poor job at finding talent, this is what happens. This is on the coach and his evaluators. They must reach out and sale the school and the program, which shouldn’t be hard! St Mary’s down the road never has a problem. As for Cal, I can see right away, this team doesn’t have the talent level to compete, I am very good at judging talent and it’s very obvious. That is 100% on the entire coaching staff, so this is the product that you get. The same thing is happening to the football team, to a lesser extent.
No real comments other than that we are facing the inevitable.
I do think a different coach could get some wins with this group.
How does Cal rebuild starting next season? I really have no idea other than a dynamic young coach looking to make his mark who can recruit a couple of plus guards who can play right away. The good thing about basketball is that you only need 5 core players.
Yeah - I think so too. This roster is bad . . . but it's not THIS bad. Nick is right, we have a large roster of long, bouncy, athletic guys. The actual skill development isn't super strong up and down the roster - only two guys who can handle the ball (maybe now 3 with the addition of Wrenn Robinson), maybe only a handful of even average shooters (Askew, Bowser. . .maybe Alijiki, who has decent numbers but I don't love his mechanics).
So what could you do with athletes who can't shoot? Turn up ball pressure, get easy buckets on the break and try to disrupt passing lanes? Trying to run a ball control, slow-down offense with this team - you get bad shooting numbers, low offensive efficiency AND high turnover numbers, and end up losing to teams that you should beat handily. This should be a 8-12 win team and we're going to end up with like 3 wins.
But the team absolutely IS deep. It is long, athletic and deep. Other than the past 1-2 games with Askew and Okafor out, this bench is not thin. It goes a legit 9 deep, even without Clayton, Celestine and Hyder.
Joel, KK, Askew, Lars, Alajiki, Anwanyu, Roberson, Bowser, Newell. Toss in ND and now the JUCO Wrenn Robinson, and there are plenty of bodies.
I think it's really a lack of options. What else can you do? Give up 3s and play pack-line and make teams miserable inside the line, a la Virginia? Virginia has an efficient but grind it out offense. There's no great solution here - but at least if we could get this team running, there might be some layups or something.
I could agree with that. Play to their strength and length; this at least might showcase what they can do. Last 10 minutes is going to be a rough time though. Actually might slow the game down (in a different way).
There’s too many versions of what went down with mussleman. And the only conclusion I can come to is if there are that many versions of what happened then clearly it wasn’t the right hire.
Your column today was very touching to a very senior Cal fan (who had the privilege of seeing championship basketball at the Cow Palace). Yes, that old. I reached out after last season to Cal's AD with a strong suggestion to hire a new coach "to start the rebuilding process sooner than later", only to be told this would not happen. I feared the result we are seeing today. Regret the players are not getting the college experience they had hoped. Thanks for expressing your feelings.
Not to get all Al Sharpton here. I am a very middle aged white dude from Walnut Creek after all, but there has always been a certain elephant in the room IMO to how quick we are to criticize some coaches and rationalize others despite the actual evidence.
I'm not sure I see that. Wyking Jones crashed the program and Mark Fox set the gas tank on fire. It's more Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition of basketball ineptitude.
My comment wasn't confined to Wyking, but it's hard to deny that the current guy has sure been given a long leash compared to the other.
I think he's saying coaches of certain races have been given longer leashes. If we treated Fox like we treated Jones, he'd already be gone.
OK, I skipped the "next section". Fans should show up for the first game after Fox has been fired, which should be within the next 3 games.
Honestly, it’s gotten so bad that I have more fun watching to see if we can claim the title of worst team in the history of the game than anything else. Does that make me a terrible person? Maybe. But I’m honestly more interested with this than I was last year. At least we are on the cusp of making history.
Imperfect Season baby!
No, I don't follow our team anymore because the fact that we're keeping Fox is the university telling me they don't value the product we put on the court one iota. If the university doesn't value it, then why should I?
That said, I follow our record. If we're going to suck, we may as well suck so hard Cal has no choice but to make the decision to fire Fox. And that means losing every game from here on out.
Sadly, tanking in the NCAA reduces your chance at lottery picks instead of increasing them.
That's not true. Look at how quickly Cuonzo stacked our roster. If we have a good coach that knows how to recruit players, the rebuild in basketball is insanely fast. You only need 2-3 core stars/players to really compete and then P5 quality depth around them.
Cal has had horrendous coaching for years despite above average talent. We've had many players who ended up in the NBA or on a two-way G league contract and did nothing with them. We had Allen Crabbe and Tyrone Wallace on the court at the same time, and then Tyrone and Jabari Bird. We had Tyrone Wallace, Jabari Bird, Jaylen Brown and Ivan Rabb on the same roster and lost in the first round. The teams that won the tournament in the years that we had those players did not have that many future NBA/G-league players. Montgomery and Martin didn't really do anything with their talent. Jones had no business being a head coach (a press conference where he blamed the players was particularly memorable). My sunshine pumping is limited to Cal Football because enjoying an afternoon in Strawberry Canyon makes up for a lot. Haas Pavilion just reminds me of finals.
At the risk of being a jerk online, I have trouble respecting the opinion of anybody who throws Cuonzo Martin into the same category as Wyking Jones and Mark Fox.
I'm not sure I put them in the same category. I said Montgomery and Martin didn't really do anything with their talent (at least as far as the NCAA tournament is concerned). I also said Jones had no business being a head coach.
I suppose that's an oversimplification of your point. Frankly, I just straight disagree that Monty and Cuonzo were bad coaches by any definition, so calling them all horrendous as if they somehow are comparable confuses me.
Montgomery and Martin failed to have their team ready for the games that mattered, which in my book are tournament games. Co-winning the Pac 10 regular season doesn't mean anything if you don't win the Pac 10 tournament. I guess I'm not trying to say they're horrendous, but I'm saying that they didn't rise to the occasion when it mattered. And it does matter, with that talent we should have had a few deep runs in March. How would that have affected recruiting and donor sentiment?
And yes, Jones was a different category of bad. But I'll say at least Fox doesn't blame his players for losing games in press conferences.
I do tend to find that 50% of coaches are horrendous because they are unable to have their teams ready to win tournament games.
"50% of coaches" ignores seeding and argues that a lower ranked team losing to a higher ranked team is the expected result. But a 4 seed with 2 uninjured future NBA talents loosing to a 13 seed by 11 is a pretty horrendous result.
It's not Cuonzo's fault that half his starters got injured the week going into round 1 of March Madness. A lot of context is missing from your harsh grades.
Montgomery was a great coach who didn't care about recruiting, which made him just an above average coach.
That team that lost in the first round also had to deal with a broken hand, a bad back and a fired assistant coach in the week before the game - and also was undefeated at home and got the highest NCAA seed in modern Cal history.
Monty's team won the Pac-10 title.
This.
The coach is still to blame when that hand was broken in practice. While a bad back is mitigating, there were still two uninjured NBA quality players on that team and the buck stops with the head coach, not an assistant.
Monty's team won the regular season title, lost in the Pac 10 tournament finals and then lost in the second round.
"The coach is still to blame when that hand was broken in practice."
Now this is just absurd.
Players shouldn't be getting injured in practice, especially right before the tournament.
How does a coach protect players from injuries in practice?
Given that Wallace had already fractured his hand that season and recovered, presumably by limiting the intensity of the pre tournament practices. I had understood that NBA teams, for instance, have lighter intensity practices during the grind of the regular season to prevent injuries sustained during practice and to aid in recovery and preparation for the games, but perhaps I misunderstood what lower intensity meant.
Yeah, no.
It's ironic to show the Haas floor pre-2017 in the photo above the body of the article...
The current Cal basketball floor has yet to see a winning season.
I'm so dispirited and tuned away from Cal basketball, fully experiencing the pain of loss, that I also struggle to say anything. Your article hits a nerve with me, so well done. Yes, we are at a point of historical atrocity. Worse, even, than mediocrity. Nothing more to be said than waiting around for the inevitable. Next?
Too bad there's no Wilcox HC twin in P12 BB where we might sneak out a win.
chuckle, chuckle....sigh...
What is basketball? Don’t know her.
Jordan Pope from Brentwood and now an outstanding freshman at Oregon State never got call from Cal even though hecwas interested in being a Bear. Neither did his teammates at Prolific Prep in
Fantastic work, Nick, as always.
Someone should arrange “Fight for California” as a slow funeral dirge that we can start playing at these games until we get a new coach
The big question is whether firing Fox mid-season will generate some improvement. It won't overcome poor roster construction but can overcome outright bad coaching (if there's enough developed latent talent present to unleash).
"The big question is whether firing Fox mid-season will generate some improvement"
Is this a big question? Anyways - this is a lost season. Coach K and the ghost of John Wooden couldn't get these Bears to the CBIT, a mid season firing starts the process on an open coaching search now, as well as letting players start to consider their options going forward if they want to leave because they feel loyalty to Fox or if they want to stick with playing at Cal. Letting him continue to coach without firm resolution just delays inevitable decision making.
We need the ghost of John Wooden along with the ghost of Sam Gilbert. Remember, Wooden's Pyramid of Success was predicated on Gilbert's Pyramid Scheme.
I think it's more about message sending to candidates at this point. Good coaches want to be part of programs that have standards. Programs that have low bars have low success. Not sure we can shake that perception in the near term, but letting Fox go is a step in the right direction.
Sooner the better. This is why Knowlton looks absolutely incompetent to the outside world.
Your analysis is on point, but the reason to attend games is to support the student athletes. Mark Fox is a good person, and far more basketball savvy than our previous two coaches. But an empty larder, coupled with ineffective recruiting heas likely ended Fox's tenure. Dennis Gates who was a favored candidate among some when Fox was hired is now succeeding at Missouri now that Conzo was fired. Who will be Cal's next option?
The objective on-court achievements of Cuonzo Martin FAR outstrip anything Mark Fox has accomplished at Georgia or Cal, so if you're going to argue that Fox is better than Cuonzo you really have to provide some evidence rather than just asserting it as a thing we should assume is true.
I think those who know basketball know what Conzo had in terms of talent woefully underperformed.
Setting aside the fact that recruiting is the single most critical aspect of college coaching and we're just waiving it away in this analysis, you're giving me a non-answer that makes me suspect that you have no way of proving something you said without thinking.
Cuonzo Martin built perhaps the best Cal defense in the post-Pete-Newell era. Mark Fox, a self-proclaimed *defensively minded coach,* hasn't come within light years of what Martin accomplished, in a way that talent cannot possibly explain. Which says nothing about more than a decade of evidence that Mark Fox is one of the singularly worst offensive coaches still employed at the power conference level, which presumably would be NOT be something you'd expect from somebody who has "basketball savvy."
Perhaps a review of Conzo's performance at Missouri with strong talent can reveal his ability, and why with what he left, a former Cal player has them currently 9-1. I would not compare Conzo to Pete Newell. Newell was a remarkable coach for his era of Men's basketball, without a shot clock or the three point basket. He never had the kind of talent Conzo had, and yet he coached Cal over John Wooden eight straight times, ending with an 8-7 over the Wizard of Westwood. He gave Wooden the concept of the press which the Bruins adapted very effectively after 1960. We have different perspectives, based on our experience and view of the game. I don't consider this a contest of perspectives, so I will finish my exchanges here.
Not sure about the basketball savvy part. I don't know how you could make that case with what we have seen this year. We have enough talent to have beaten some of these teams. He has more professionalism than Wyking, but that should not be confused with savviness. Fox has forced an outmoded style of basketball down his players throats that doesn't suit their strengths. He doesn't make good adjustments and his sub patterns are obsessive compulsive and ruin any chance at continuity. Gates was a massive miss. I don't want to make him out as Coach K, but for Cal that is the type of candidate you HAVE to get. We can't afford established coaches, so if you have a former Cal player who has shown he can turn around a program and is a stellar recruiter, you simply have to find a way to bring them into the fold. There are no obvious candidates, which is terrifying given the lack of aptitude our AD has show for these types of decisions.
One can argue that Lars has not developed to the degree one might expect, but others are making the types of mistakes inexperienced players make. The rotation is critical to developing an already thin bench (8 players available last game). Newel's performance offensively is a credit to that development. Our team is not talented, but they are playing hard and to the level of their skill development. I completely disagree with your analysis of the athletic director. As someone who has worked on campus for over 40 years, I understand the complexity of the choices the campus faces in making these decisions.
I worked on campus for several years as well serving a massive multi-million dollar project. I understand the challenges and inertia. There is more pressure to make smart decisions, because if you miss you may very well find yourself in a situation like the one we are now. Despite the challenges, Knowlton deserves to hold the bag here. Attendance and interest are at all-time lows for reasons that can't be explained away by societal factors. This atrophy is going to have even larger ramifications down the road, as we are simply not cultivating future donors who will carry it on once the current ones die out. Donors like myself, who have contributed for decades, are questioning whether we are better served to share those resources elsewhere. The students of today have few positive memories that will bring them back to attend games with their families or contribute. I don't think even the most cynical among of the Fox hire could have expected what we're experiencing. But many of us who have followed this program and are tuned into the larger collegiate basketball and athletics landscape could see that we were pursuing a slow road to nowhere. Frankly, Knowlton of all people, should have seen that too.
BTW, I was Rhetoric major. :)
We have different perspectives. The landscape of collegiate athletics is becoming an even more barren and disconnected to colleges and universities. Navigating that landscape while still remaining competitive in the present circumstances has left both Cal and Stanford in similar circumstances with regard to Men's basketball and football. We will see if they can manage to survive given those conditions. Certainly Virginia, North Carolina, Wake Forest and Duke have found ways to do so. But they are outliers. I do not count Michigan, Texas, and Ucla in the same category. At the same time, I do not know how they handle admissions. But if we give them the benefit of the doubt, then perhaps Cal and Stanford will find ways to compete.
Curious why you think UCLA should be evaluated differently?
I would like to understand their admission criteria for basketball and football, as well as their graduation rates. They may well be fine.
In the years since Fox was hired, Gates has actually turned around two programs! Massive miss! We should have moved on from Fox last year when we had our last best chance to court Gates. I wrote Knowlton last year pleading as much.
Yes, I didn't say otherwise. See the thread below. I said you had to bring him into the fold. We should have made a play for him after last year. Not finding a way to bring him to Berkeley is/was a massive miss.
Cal basketball alums and some donors wanted him.
Not true. He was picked up by Clevo State not long after. He was a name as a future HC in coaching circles for years because of his recruiting acumen, and was even a name kicked around as a Cal candidate far back as the Cuonzo hire, although I don't think he was strongly considered by us at that point. Its clear that Knowlton and Co prioritized previous head coaching experience after the Wyking debacle, which is understandable, although regrettable. Gates was a swing worth taking.
This take is quite at odds with your insistence we should have hired Troy Taylor for football despite him not having any track record as a head coach. Just found that interesting.
"Mark Fox is a good person, and far more basketball savvy than our previous two coaches."
Objection. Statement assumes facts not in evidence.
As someone who once coached basketball, I would disagtee.
"Good person"??? Huh?? Do you know him personally or something? He doesn't come across like a good person in any definition. He is a bully coupled with petulant child antics on the sideline. His pressers are horrific by any measure. He can't recruit and his record(s) prove he is a terrible coach.
I guess you must know him....
Do you know McKeever as well?
It’s a sad state of affairs. Fox was a good coach many years ago. The bottom line comes down to recruiting players that can play. He has done such a poor job at finding talent, this is what happens. This is on the coach and his evaluators. They must reach out and sale the school and the program, which shouldn’t be hard! St Mary’s down the road never has a problem. As for Cal, I can see right away, this team doesn’t have the talent level to compete, I am very good at judging talent and it’s very obvious. That is 100% on the entire coaching staff, so this is the product that you get. The same thing is happening to the football team, to a lesser extent.
No real comments other than that we are facing the inevitable.
I do think a different coach could get some wins with this group.
How does Cal rebuild starting next season? I really have no idea other than a dynamic young coach looking to make his mark who can recruit a couple of plus guards who can play right away. The good thing about basketball is that you only need 5 core players.
Yeah - I think so too. This roster is bad . . . but it's not THIS bad. Nick is right, we have a large roster of long, bouncy, athletic guys. The actual skill development isn't super strong up and down the roster - only two guys who can handle the ball (maybe now 3 with the addition of Wrenn Robinson), maybe only a handful of even average shooters (Askew, Bowser. . .maybe Alijiki, who has decent numbers but I don't love his mechanics).
So what could you do with athletes who can't shoot? Turn up ball pressure, get easy buckets on the break and try to disrupt passing lanes? Trying to run a ball control, slow-down offense with this team - you get bad shooting numbers, low offensive efficiency AND high turnover numbers, and end up losing to teams that you should beat handily. This should be a 8-12 win team and we're going to end up with like 3 wins.
Shaka Smart would finish .500 with this team.
Dude kinda hard to play pressure defense with a thin bench that lacks ball handlers, but the slow death option ain't working either, so....
But the team absolutely IS deep. It is long, athletic and deep. Other than the past 1-2 games with Askew and Okafor out, this bench is not thin. It goes a legit 9 deep, even without Clayton, Celestine and Hyder.
Joel, KK, Askew, Lars, Alajiki, Anwanyu, Roberson, Bowser, Newell. Toss in ND and now the JUCO Wrenn Robinson, and there are plenty of bodies.
I think it's really a lack of options. What else can you do? Give up 3s and play pack-line and make teams miserable inside the line, a la Virginia? Virginia has an efficient but grind it out offense. There's no great solution here - but at least if we could get this team running, there might be some layups or something.
I've never seen a team miss more layups than Cal this year...
I could agree with that. Play to their strength and length; this at least might showcase what they can do. Last 10 minutes is going to be a rough time though. Actually might slow the game down (in a different way).
We will still lose, but at least maybe i'll be more entertaining? I got bupkis.
Musselman was in the running for the job when Wyking was hired. Mike Williams apparently gave him the creeps and he took himself out of the running.
There’s too many versions of what went down with mussleman. And the only conclusion I can come to is if there are that many versions of what happened then clearly it wasn’t the right hire.