The reverberating effect of the Wyking debacle cannot be understated. After two seasons of amateur-hour coaching, a promising player could be forgiven bailing out of the program after the best-we-could-do-at-the-time hire of Fox. He's competent, but not exciting. So a few of our top players are gone. That's a big hit to the program, nothing to build on. Recruits looking at the program, and comparing to other choices they have, see no supporting cast plus a total rebuild, so they go elsewhere. Being light on talent, Cal struggles in the early Fox years. 18 and 20 loss seasons aren't a big draw to talented high school recruits, so they go elsewhere. Less talented, less recruited kids see an opportunity to play against the best, and that's who Cal can get. Digging out of this hole will take probably 6 years, short of hiring a Pitino or a Krzyzewski looking for a new challenge. It was a miracle we landed Monty and even he was only getting 3*s to commit. And in his 5th year he was 3-12 vs the top 25. Fox might just be the man for the job. He knows the type of player he needs to recruit to be successful, and looks like we're getting at least one next year. I saw improved team play from last year, even if the w-l doesn't agree. We were in games this year that would have been blowouts last season. Cal is a 3* school. We will have to rely on good coaching + time to be successful. In other words, the Wyking hire screwed us for years to come.
As dire as it seems, It's fixable and could be done more quickly than six years imo. But it would require a quick Fox exit and an astute hire (not holding my breath on either). Despite the trainwreck of the past four years, the brand, school and region have a lot to offer. Players have shown they will come here, but we can't continue to give them every reason not to.
Yeah, but we're competing in a conference where it looks like 4/12 teams are actually top 16 teams. And we're in a full rebuild. Any progress we make is going to be overshadowed by playing against some of the best teams in the nation.
Someone's gotta be last, and we're coming off Wyking.
It's been two seasons already, we've looked worse than we did Fox's first season AND recruiting looks pretty bad too.
The reverberating effect of the Wyking debacle cannot be understated. After two seasons of amateur-hour coaching, a promising player could be forgiven bailing out of the program after the best-we-could-do-at-the-time hire of Fox. He's competent, but not exciting. So a few of our top players are gone. That's a big hit to the program, nothing to build on. Recruits looking at the program, and comparing to other choices they have, see no supporting cast plus a total rebuild, so they go elsewhere. Being light on talent, Cal struggles in the early Fox years. 18 and 20 loss seasons aren't a big draw to talented high school recruits, so they go elsewhere. Less talented, less recruited kids see an opportunity to play against the best, and that's who Cal can get. Digging out of this hole will take probably 6 years, short of hiring a Pitino or a Krzyzewski looking for a new challenge. It was a miracle we landed Monty and even he was only getting 3*s to commit. And in his 5th year he was 3-12 vs the top 25. Fox might just be the man for the job. He knows the type of player he needs to recruit to be successful, and looks like we're getting at least one next year. I saw improved team play from last year, even if the w-l doesn't agree. We were in games this year that would have been blowouts last season. Cal is a 3* school. We will have to rely on good coaching + time to be successful. In other words, the Wyking hire screwed us for years to come.
As dire as it seems, It's fixable and could be done more quickly than six years imo. But it would require a quick Fox exit and an astute hire (not holding my breath on either). Despite the trainwreck of the past four years, the brand, school and region have a lot to offer. Players have shown they will come here, but we can't continue to give them every reason not to.
Yeah, but we're competing in a conference where it looks like 4/12 teams are actually top 16 teams. And we're in a full rebuild. Any progress we make is going to be overshadowed by playing against some of the best teams in the nation.