Your comment was incomplete, but if your reference to "P5" is to top tier basketball, I think the performance of Princeton and San Diego State suggest that schools with academic credentials can perform, albeit not as easily as those without either standards or financial impediments. I don't know a great deal about the prospective hire of Mark Madsen. I know he played for Mike Montgomery and attended a reputable academic institution. Hopefully, he can recruit the types of players that can be successful at Cal as Justin Wilcox has attempted to do with the football program. But I stand by my previous comments. Cal is not an athletic factory, nor should it be.
I wanted to first say hello to Nad Permahl and thank you for all your contributions to Cal Athletics. I've read most of the suggestions made for the hiring of the next Bears basketball coach and many are good ones. First, someone who can build a healthy culture environment for today's student athlete, and not have a me versus them type atmosphere. You could clearly see that the players were not happy or playing freely,in the my way or the highway environment they were just freed from. I won't mention names but are acquainted with Cal former players that entered the transfer portal or just left the program, or it was suggested that they leave. They were close to the players who remained in school here. Coaches who berate their players publicly, embarrassing them in front of family members, friends and in some cases, a national television audience just get tuned out Coaches who do so, do not run good practices, where you do the yelling and berating and the player then experiences a disconnect, and you lose that player, even if they remain in the program,constantly looking over their shoulder, wondering what they've done wrong. I also saw where Pac12 player of the Year, Jerome Randle was interested in coaching the Bears. Do it. The winning culture from a player who did it at a very high level here, ran ballclubs as a coach on the floor and understands the business aspects of the game, with NIL's and portals playing a very prominent role in today's game. Don MacLean is another interesting name, who is steeped in a long association with the Pac12 as a student athlete and many other capacities. I previously mentioned, Shantay Leggins, Dennis Gates and a short list of other candidates with Cal ties,who reflect and embrace our diverse and intellectual Berkeley community.
I'm sorry, anything that compromises Cal's academic integrity is off the table for me. Athletics is an extra-curricular activity, not the university. The hypocrisy of colleges recruiting athletes that cannot be peers of the other stdents who come for an education, makes college athletics a cynical scam.
Cal Fans: It would be nice to have a coach who doesn't make excuses. "We had too many injuries this year". One thing that I like about Wilcox is his next man up approach. He didn't let injuries serve as an excuse for his less than stellar year and he knows as well as anyone that injuries are an inevitable part of sports. The most important thing is that he doesn't make excuses because of them. Contrast that with Fox and Knowlton who embarrassed themselves every time they used injuries as an excuse for our atrocious year.
Well done, Nick. FWIW, I counted that six (6) of your traits were "off-the-court." Which, doesn't seem off, given that much of MF's and WJ's problems likely began there. As to offense scheming and tempo, well... that's the on-court stuff, and lots of people here will argue with you on those. The off-court items, though... one might even reflect back to Campenelli, Bozeman, even Ben Braun: these folks all had (at least) one flag flying higher than another of the six total. But, the flags were *on* the flagpole... again, well done.
That requirement will pose a significant challenge to recruiting, one of the conundrums for academic institutions seeking to compete at the highest level. Not every school can be UCLA.
It’s a hurdle but not a bar. The overly stringent, self-imposed academic requirements at Cal, while asinine, also make for a convenient excuse for Knowlton and certain segments of the fanbase.
Vanderbilt is a good comp: the Commodores made a coaching change in 2019 as well, have stringent admission requirements, yet are hardly basketball blue bloods like UCLA, Duke and maybe Michigan (great program, probably just short of blue blood status). But unlike the overmatched Jim Knowlton, their AD did not completely whiff on his ‘19 hire in spectacular fashion…Jerry Stackhouse came on board the same time as Fox and re-built the Vandy program, getting them to the bubble this year and with a bright future.
For all the academics excuse talk, Cal is behind the 8-ball because their AD utterly failed with his hire. It’s really simple.
Recruiting, recruiting, recruiting, with bonus points for understanding the additional challenges of coaching at Cal. I don't care if the coach has turned around another program, or, frankly, if he's ever coached at all. If he's tough, scrappy, able to adapt schemes to fit his personnel and can recruit well, he can always hire one or more assistants with HC experience.
I notice you did not mention graduation rates? That is something that is important to the faculty and to a lesser degree to alumni, since it is a reflection of our academic brand. Coach Fox achieved the highest mark in that area by contrast to our two previous coaches.
Cal’s athletic department has made it clear that they will put contract incentives into every coach’s contract such that I have no doubt that any Cal sport will ever struggle with graduation rates any time soon. In short, it’s a solved problem.
I think having strong academic standards is part of it, but graduation rates is not always the best indicator of success, particularly in this new environment where player movement is more prevalent than ever. You're gonna have to consider new metrics going forward I think.
Most of the big jobs were filled by the end of the first weekend of the Tournament last season.
We’ll probably have a good idea of Cal’s chances by this time next week…ideally they would have made a hire - considering he was 3-29, if Cal waited to start the search until Fox was fired, there’s a better than average chance we’re going to be disappointed and underwhelmed.
No news, and it’s likely business as usual in terms of Cal’s awful hiring process and record the past 2 cycles.
Uh...I told him the same thing. This was his response:
Jim,
There's no way that a Cal basketball coach should be allowed to get to 0-12 without being fired. I don't care about the injuries or any other circumstances. This hurts the Cal basketball brand and makes Cal athletics look pitiful. People have stopped coming. Game by game, we're codifying that Cal basketball is irrelevant. And the macro idea that Cal athletics is irrelevant. Other than not wanting to do a payout, I have no idea what the cost-benefit of having Mark Fox coach another game is.
If I were you, I'd cut bait and start interviewing. And high on my list would be Todd Simon from Southern Utah. He has a top scoring offense, and Cal needs to bring some excitement to Haas. He has a great track record; even if we sucked as he rebuilt the program, there would be some hope. Now? There's none.
----------------
Hi Lawrence,
Thank you for your note.
No one is happy with the current record, least of all Mark or I. No one is making excuses . . . period. There are challenges but everyone has them.
Thank you for your recommendation. There is way more to any situation and there is definitely no coach in the country that is worth their salt that would abandon their team mid-season to come to Cal (and if they would, they are not the kind of coach we want).
Thank you for your continued support and I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and an even better 2023!
Knowlton not understanding the concept of the 'interim' tag seems a bit sus. No one would expect a full-on hire mid-season, but allowing an assistant the chance to salvage some respectability instead of tanking to an entirely lost season? Just makes me curse the AD even more. What an asshat!
Knowlton can’t be serious, can he? Is he really that clueless? It is amazing, and honestly somewhat baffling, how many people are so obviously confused by the “interim coach” process…in almost all cases, you’re elevating a current assistant, NOT running a coaching search mid-season, FFS…it’s really simple - you fire Fox to send a message and start the process, and elevate Marty Wilson (a guy with 7 seasons as a Head Coach on his resume) to interim HC, a position he actually also held back in ‘96 in Malibu.
If Knowlton is unfamiliar with this concept, I fear he’s an even bigger f-ing buffoon than I suspected and Cal is likely in deep trouble unless the donors take control.
Cal hoops has tried the 'develop talent' style of existence (with a few happy aberrations) for the entire modern era with limited success.
Time to abandon that philosophy. It's a different world now.
With NIL & the portal, you can't count on even half of your HS recruits being around for their senior year. To paraphrase real estate agents, or Steve Ballmer, it's recruiting, recruiting, recruiting.
We need talent now. Our next coach has to have endless energy & enthusiasm for the recruiting process, create relationships with all of the bay area high schools, work nationwide plus the international hotbeds (have a dedicated international recruiter on staff). Double the recruiting budget as a condition of hire. Needs to have a big, persuasive personality to woo administrators to gain admission for the athletes he wants.
Agree we should not worry about age, and should not consider coaches with prior failures or sustained mediocracy, tempo would be nice (mostly as a recruiting inducement) but not a requirement, minor violations are ok.
Things that don't matter: prior turnaround projects (Cal is different enough that there's no assurance of it translating), prior limited resource experience - any competent coach would know what's they're getting into at Cal & would have a plan for success with what they're given (see recruiting budget above).
Embraces the UC Berkeley paradigm and Fiat Lux, a great teacher who gets the best from what they have, plays a type of game that stands up to scrutiny for being intelligent, and is charismatic enough to generate enthusiasm among donors and students. Win more games than you lose. Poke into March Madness every couple years.
Your comment was incomplete, but if your reference to "P5" is to top tier basketball, I think the performance of Princeton and San Diego State suggest that schools with academic credentials can perform, albeit not as easily as those without either standards or financial impediments. I don't know a great deal about the prospective hire of Mark Madsen. I know he played for Mike Montgomery and attended a reputable academic institution. Hopefully, he can recruit the types of players that can be successful at Cal as Justin Wilcox has attempted to do with the football program. But I stand by my previous comments. Cal is not an athletic factory, nor should it be.
I wanted to first say hello to Nad Permahl and thank you for all your contributions to Cal Athletics. I've read most of the suggestions made for the hiring of the next Bears basketball coach and many are good ones. First, someone who can build a healthy culture environment for today's student athlete, and not have a me versus them type atmosphere. You could clearly see that the players were not happy or playing freely,in the my way or the highway environment they were just freed from. I won't mention names but are acquainted with Cal former players that entered the transfer portal or just left the program, or it was suggested that they leave. They were close to the players who remained in school here. Coaches who berate their players publicly, embarrassing them in front of family members, friends and in some cases, a national television audience just get tuned out Coaches who do so, do not run good practices, where you do the yelling and berating and the player then experiences a disconnect, and you lose that player, even if they remain in the program,constantly looking over their shoulder, wondering what they've done wrong. I also saw where Pac12 player of the Year, Jerome Randle was interested in coaching the Bears. Do it. The winning culture from a player who did it at a very high level here, ran ballclubs as a coach on the floor and understands the business aspects of the game, with NIL's and portals playing a very prominent role in today's game. Don MacLean is another interesting name, who is steeped in a long association with the Pac12 as a student athlete and many other capacities. I previously mentioned, Shantay Leggins, Dennis Gates and a short list of other candidates with Cal ties,who reflect and embrace our diverse and intellectual Berkeley community.
I like what I hear regarding potential candidates for our vacant coaching position.
....How about hiring someone for the staff that is somewhat familiar with the Bay Area?
Someone who has first hand knowledge of the High Schools here and in Calif. which would be an asset for recruiting.
...That would be Theo Robertson.
Played at De Lasalle.. lifelong East Bay resident and oh yeah, star at Cal also.
Cal should hire an Asian coach.
Please submit possibilities.
How about an assistant like Gus Argenal at Arkansas?
So an up-and-coming assistant at a current successful program that plays a fun brand of basketball…
I'm sorry, anything that compromises Cal's academic integrity is off the table for me. Athletics is an extra-curricular activity, not the university. The hypocrisy of colleges recruiting athletes that cannot be peers of the other stdents who come for an education, makes college athletics a cynical scam.
Im sorry, this mindset is not set in P5 reality. This only works in the league
Cal Fans: It would be nice to have a coach who doesn't make excuses. "We had too many injuries this year". One thing that I like about Wilcox is his next man up approach. He didn't let injuries serve as an excuse for his less than stellar year and he knows as well as anyone that injuries are an inevitable part of sports. The most important thing is that he doesn't make excuses because of them. Contrast that with Fox and Knowlton who embarrassed themselves every time they used injuries as an excuse for our atrocious year.
I prefer just honesty. Taking the sword when there are other problems gets trite.
Good point. Penn State made good use of the transfer portal. I hope that Purdue's success was achieved without compromise.
Well done, Nick. FWIW, I counted that six (6) of your traits were "off-the-court." Which, doesn't seem off, given that much of MF's and WJ's problems likely began there. As to offense scheming and tempo, well... that's the on-court stuff, and lots of people here will argue with you on those. The off-court items, though... one might even reflect back to Campenelli, Bozeman, even Ben Braun: these folks all had (at least) one flag flying higher than another of the six total. But, the flags were *on* the flagpole... again, well done.
That requirement will pose a significant challenge to recruiting, one of the conundrums for academic institutions seeking to compete at the highest level. Not every school can be UCLA.
It’s a hurdle but not a bar. The overly stringent, self-imposed academic requirements at Cal, while asinine, also make for a convenient excuse for Knowlton and certain segments of the fanbase.
Vanderbilt is a good comp: the Commodores made a coaching change in 2019 as well, have stringent admission requirements, yet are hardly basketball blue bloods like UCLA, Duke and maybe Michigan (great program, probably just short of blue blood status). But unlike the overmatched Jim Knowlton, their AD did not completely whiff on his ‘19 hire in spectacular fashion…Jerry Stackhouse came on board the same time as Fox and re-built the Vandy program, getting them to the bubble this year and with a bright future.
For all the academics excuse talk, Cal is behind the 8-ball because their AD utterly failed with his hire. It’s really simple.
Totally agree that it was a failed hire.
Recruiting, recruiting, recruiting, with bonus points for understanding the additional challenges of coaching at Cal. I don't care if the coach has turned around another program, or, frankly, if he's ever coached at all. If he's tough, scrappy, able to adapt schemes to fit his personnel and can recruit well, he can always hire one or more assistants with HC experience.
I notice you did not mention graduation rates? That is something that is important to the faculty and to a lesser degree to alumni, since it is a reflection of our academic brand. Coach Fox achieved the highest mark in that area by contrast to our two previous coaches.
Cal’s athletic department has made it clear that they will put contract incentives into every coach’s contract such that I have no doubt that any Cal sport will ever struggle with graduation rates any time soon. In short, it’s a solved problem.
I think having strong academic standards is part of it, but graduation rates is not always the best indicator of success, particularly in this new environment where player movement is more prevalent than ever. You're gonna have to consider new metrics going forward I think.
The portal is open. Knowlton needs to move fast.
Most of the big jobs were filled by the end of the first weekend of the Tournament last season.
We’ll probably have a good idea of Cal’s chances by this time next week…ideally they would have made a hire - considering he was 3-29, if Cal waited to start the search until Fox was fired, there’s a better than average chance we’re going to be disappointed and underwhelmed.
No news, and it’s likely business as usual in terms of Cal’s awful hiring process and record the past 2 cycles.
Good reason to have fired Fox middle of the season.
Uh...I told him the same thing. This was his response:
Jim,
There's no way that a Cal basketball coach should be allowed to get to 0-12 without being fired. I don't care about the injuries or any other circumstances. This hurts the Cal basketball brand and makes Cal athletics look pitiful. People have stopped coming. Game by game, we're codifying that Cal basketball is irrelevant. And the macro idea that Cal athletics is irrelevant. Other than not wanting to do a payout, I have no idea what the cost-benefit of having Mark Fox coach another game is.
If I were you, I'd cut bait and start interviewing. And high on my list would be Todd Simon from Southern Utah. He has a top scoring offense, and Cal needs to bring some excitement to Haas. He has a great track record; even if we sucked as he rebuilt the program, there would be some hope. Now? There's none.
----------------
Hi Lawrence,
Thank you for your note.
No one is happy with the current record, least of all Mark or I. No one is making excuses . . . period. There are challenges but everyone has them.
Thank you for your recommendation. There is way more to any situation and there is definitely no coach in the country that is worth their salt that would abandon their team mid-season to come to Cal (and if they would, they are not the kind of coach we want).
Thank you for your continued support and I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and an even better 2023!
Go Bears!
Jim
Knowlton not understanding the concept of the 'interim' tag seems a bit sus. No one would expect a full-on hire mid-season, but allowing an assistant the chance to salvage some respectability instead of tanking to an entirely lost season? Just makes me curse the AD even more. What an asshat!
Knowlton can’t be serious, can he? Is he really that clueless? It is amazing, and honestly somewhat baffling, how many people are so obviously confused by the “interim coach” process…in almost all cases, you’re elevating a current assistant, NOT running a coaching search mid-season, FFS…it’s really simple - you fire Fox to send a message and start the process, and elevate Marty Wilson (a guy with 7 seasons as a Head Coach on his resume) to interim HC, a position he actually also held back in ‘96 in Malibu.
If Knowlton is unfamiliar with this concept, I fear he’s an even bigger f-ing buffoon than I suspected and Cal is likely in deep trouble unless the donors take control.
Elevate an existing coach to be the head coach. Hopefully they'd do something different other than the same old thing Fox was doing.
Cal hoops has tried the 'develop talent' style of existence (with a few happy aberrations) for the entire modern era with limited success.
Time to abandon that philosophy. It's a different world now.
With NIL & the portal, you can't count on even half of your HS recruits being around for their senior year. To paraphrase real estate agents, or Steve Ballmer, it's recruiting, recruiting, recruiting.
We need talent now. Our next coach has to have endless energy & enthusiasm for the recruiting process, create relationships with all of the bay area high schools, work nationwide plus the international hotbeds (have a dedicated international recruiter on staff). Double the recruiting budget as a condition of hire. Needs to have a big, persuasive personality to woo administrators to gain admission for the athletes he wants.
Agree we should not worry about age, and should not consider coaches with prior failures or sustained mediocracy, tempo would be nice (mostly as a recruiting inducement) but not a requirement, minor violations are ok.
Things that don't matter: prior turnaround projects (Cal is different enough that there's no assurance of it translating), prior limited resource experience - any competent coach would know what's they're getting into at Cal & would have a plan for success with what they're given (see recruiting budget above).
Embraces the UC Berkeley paradigm and Fiat Lux, a great teacher who gets the best from what they have, plays a type of game that stands up to scrutiny for being intelligent, and is charismatic enough to generate enthusiasm among donors and students. Win more games than you lose. Poke into March Madness every couple years.