calumnus said:

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Another guy with smarts, charisma, enthusiasm and a love for Cal who would be great if he got some experience is Jamal Boykin. Top recruit out of LA city (Fairfax) he went to Duke where he was a fan favorite but not good enough on a great team and transferred to Cal. Who else can claim to be from the Krzyzewski, Braun and Montgomery coaching trees? He's been playing all over the world professionally since Cal so that might be good for international recruiting. Definitely would be a good candidate for an assistant coaching position at Cal.

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SFCityBear said:

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Dennis Gates is basically an assistant coach with just 2 years as a head coach in a conference at least a couple of cuts below the PAC12. He may have overachieved in his first year, even with a losing record. He had a very good 2nd season, and overall has a .500 record.

As an assistant coach, Wyking Jones had more to recommend him for the Cal head coach job than does Gates, on paper, that is. Gates has been an assistant coach for 17 years, and Jones was an assistant for 13 years, but Jones coached at higher level conferences, and more tournament teams and for better head coaches than did Gates.

I am very skeptical of hiring anyone to be Cal's coach, if they don't have at least 5-10 years as a head coach in a decent conference. I don't think we should have such a low opinion of Cal that we have to settle for anything less, and I really don't like the idea of hiring an assistant coach to his first head coaching job. Wyking Jones should have taught us a lesson of going down that road. Besides Cal has had no success hiring assistant coaches to the Cal head coaching job. Rene Herrerias, Jim Padgett, and Dick Kuchen were all hired with never being a head coach at the college level, and they all fared poorly at Cal. Todd Bozeman had been an assistant at Cal, and gave us some thrills before he ran the program into the toilet as our head coach. Our only successful head coaches were head coaches in their previous jobs: Newell, Campanelli, Braun, Montgomery, and Martin had all been head coaches at other schools before they were offered the Cal head coach job. Even Nibs Price had been the head football coach at Cal before he became the head basketball coach, I believe.

Gates has very little experience as a head coach, compared to any of the men I mentioned above. It is so different running a ship than just working with players to improve their individual skills, or running drills or scrimmages, or scouting or breaking down tape, etc.

The reason I was not in the Travis DeCuire camp was that he had never been a head coach at the D1 level, only an assistant. He had a few years under Monty as associate head coach, whatever that means. Travis now has had that experience as head coach at Montana, and he has a record of 8 seasons there as good or better than a lot of big name D1 coaches who had coached Montana: Mike Montgomery, Larry Kristowiak, Wayne Tinkle, Jud Heathcote, and Blaine Taylor. I'd be much more likely now to support DeCuire than Dennis Gates, as much as I liked Gates when he played at Cal.

Gates needs more head coaching experience to be qualified for the Cal job. I am curious how so many of you are so ready to throw Mark Fox under the bus ASAP, after only 2 years on the job, and at the same time, you are so willing hire Dennis Gates to be the Cal head coach, with so little information to go on. He has had only 2 years in a head coaching job, in a conference not close to the level of the one Fox is now coaching in.

If you want to change coaches, fine, but please get one with 5-10 years experience as a head coach, and let's not be looking at assistant coaches. I don't think the "window" on Gates will close any time soon, but I do think the window on DeCuire might be closing.

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