oskidunker said:
Usc looked badly overmatched. I thought they would be more competitive. Hard to watch fucla. May watch The Black list.
Gonzaga stifled USC pretty easily but also keeping up with a team that shoots 50% is going to be a tall order no matter who would have played them.sycasey said:oskidunker said:
Usc looked badly overmatched. I thought they would be more competitive. Hard to watch fucla. May watch The Black list.
IMO this is really more about how good this Gonzaga team is rather than anything to do with USC. Just about anyone would have gotten steamrolled by that Zags performance.
If you close your eyes and listen to the fight song you can pretend it's Cal going to the Final Fourphilbert said:
Hated rooting for fucla, but go pac12!
bearister said:
....and in January Bears lost to Bruins by 4 at Haas without Bradley. By deductive reasoning, Bears are a Sweet 16 caliber team, right?
UCLA vs. California - Box Score - January 21, 2021 - ESPN
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/boxscore?gameId=401265385
HoopDreams said:
I thought USC would be more competitive vs Zags, but Zags proved they are the best team in college basketball as they dismantled another good team
I don't give ucla much chance against Michigan
I'm not surprised ucla is in the elite 8, as I think they have a top coach.
I am surprised that Cronin's defense-minded, slow it down style is successful at UCLA, in the same way I was skeptical that Harrick would be a good match at UCLA (he proved me wrong when they got to 3 Final Fours
HoopDreams said:
I had no faith UCLA would beat Michigan
But credit their defense in this slugfest
UM missed their last 9 shots
UCLA has no one and done players but are loaded with 4 and 5 stars
They have a 5 star PG coming next year
With Cronin's defensive focus we are past the days where Cal can steal a win from them
their starting big is plenty good, and their backup big is a solid defenderdrizzlybear said:HoopDreams said:
I had no faith UCLA would beat Michigan
But credit their defense in this slugfest
UM missed their last 9 shots
UCLA has no one and done players but are loaded with 4 and 5 stars
They have a 5 star PG coming next year
With Cronin's defensive focus we are past the days where Cal can steal a win from them
I think I'd take Tyger as a junior over the 5*. Experienced (and successful) gamer at PG is so incredibly valuable in college hoops. Juzang has been UCLA's hero overall, but Tyger is the reason they escaped Alabama. Will be interesting to see what Cronin does with that. Too bad they can't trade the 5* PG for a 5* big.
HoopDreams said:their starting big is plenty good, and their backup big is a solid defenderdrizzlybear said:HoopDreams said:
I had no faith UCLA would beat Michigan
But credit their defense in this slugfest
UM missed their last 9 shots
UCLA has no one and done players but are loaded with 4 and 5 stars
They have a 5 star PG coming next year
With Cronin's defensive focus we are past the days where Cal can steal a win from them
I think I'd take Tyger as a junior over the 5*. Experienced (and successful) gamer at PG is so incredibly valuable in college hoops. Juzang has been UCLA's hero overall, but Tyger is the reason they escaped Alabama. Will be interesting to see what Cronin does with that. Too bad they can't trade the 5* PG for a 5* big.
and yes drizzly, thx for the correction ... I meant howland
by the way, ASU signed 3 players in a week. a top prep and two transfers
BeachedBear said:
I didn't watch the entire Zag/Condom match, but what I did see (from Gonzaga) was the best man-to-man Defense, I've seen at the D1 level for quite some time.
They also seem to have the best talent level this season - and not many would disagree that Mark Few is a very good D1 coach.
I also have a number of friends in Spokane who are NOT college basketball fans, but speak about the Zags as if they were the Niners, Giants, Dubs, Cal & Stanford all wrapped up in one. The complete opposite of fan support for Cal in the Bay Area.
I have to agree that there is a tendency on this board to overuse labels like "incompetent". IMO, there is a vast difference between "not good enough" and incompetent. Any coach who can win more than half his games has exhibited some level of competence.SFCityBear said:You lose all credibility when you state that Ben Braun was incompetent. Ben Braun is the second most winning coach in Cal history. His 219 wins at Cal are second only to Nibs Price, who had 453. His winning percentage was .587, ranking him 6th among the 13 coaches Cal has had in my lifetime. I would describe Braun as an above average coach. I believe he was a better coach than Todd Bozeman or Cuonzo Martin, both of whom had better a better winning percentage than Braun. Visually, Braun's offense stalled at times with too much perimeter dribbling, but they often ran recognizable set plays, much more often than did several coaches at Cal, like Padgett, Campanelli, Bozeman, Martin, Jones or Fox. Braun's defense had some holes, but it was average or above, IMO. A coach is incompetent when his teams can't compete, and he has losing record after losing record. And a coach is incompetent when his teams don't look good, or look confused, and Ben's teams seldom looked that bad. I think he won most of the games Cal should have won, and lost the ones he shouldn't have won. He was not creative like Newell or Montgomery, who often beat the teams they were not supposed to beat, just by outsmarting them. But they are Hall of Fame caliber coaches, and Ben Braun was not that. He was good, and I suspect a lot of Cal fans would take him right now, in a heartbeat. I would, because I think he would bring us back to respectability, just like he did years ago when he was hired to revamp the Cal program which had lost all respect by hiring a coach who would cheat to win, and got caught, putting Cal on NCAA probation. If Braun did nothing else, he saved the Cal basketball program, continued with some good recruiting, and some pretty good coaching to produce several winning years, all of it squeaky clean, never breaking NCAA rules. You don't accomplish that if you are incompetent. His winning percentage was well above .500, which I would define as average, so in my book, he was an above average coach.sluggo said:It is completely fair. Tinkle did not build a great program at OSU. He is just a good coach who puts his team in a position to have success if they get a few breaks. Similar to Mike M., Thad Boyle, Kyle Smith and Larry K.. The formula is you hire a coach who is good at Xs and Os and player development. Every so often, the planets will align and you will have success. It is no coincidence that the best Cal coach of my lifetime is the only one to win a conference championship in my lifetime.SFCityBear said:That is unfair, just another chance to bash the current Cal coach.sluggo said:Wayne Tinkle versus Mark Fox.philbert said:
Go Beavs! If they can make the elite 8, why can't Cal?
Wayne Tinkle is a good coach, but it took him 7 years to have this good team at Oregon State. He still hasn't had a 20 win season at OSU. And much of his success, maybe even allowing him to hold his job was he brought along his son, who was arguably his best player for 4 seasons.The year that Tres Tinkle was hurt, and played only 6 games, Wayne Tinkle's OSU team went 5-27, right down there with Fox's season this year and both Wyking Jones' seasons in terms of failure. Unfortunately, Fox did not bring a son of Tres Tinkle's caliber with him to Cal.
It takes time to build a winner at schools like OSU and Cal. Both schools had great basketball success in the past, and both have suffered a loss of basketball reputation over time. It is hard to recruit to either school, and hard to find the money to pay a proven coach. It took Larry Kristowiak four years to have a good team, a 20-win team at Utah. It just takes time.
When Monty came Cal looked good right away. It was night and day compared to Braun, who was incompetent like Fox. Every Tinkle team plays at or above their talent. Fox's team looked like crap last year and this year. And they will next year and every year until he is fired. I am looking forward to that day.
The 1997 season alone was pretty damn impressive. The team lost their top scorer and still managed to scrap their way into the Sweet 16.59bear said:I have to agree that there is a tendency on this board to overuse labels like "incompetent". IMO, there is a vast difference between "not good enough" and incompetent. Any coach who can win more than half his games has exhibited some level of competence.SFCityBear said:You lose all credibility when you state that Ben Braun was incompetent. Ben Braun is the second most winning coach in Cal history. His 219 wins at Cal are second only to Nibs Price, who had 453. His winning percentage was .587, ranking him 6th among the 13 coaches Cal has had in my lifetime. I would describe Braun as an above average coach. I believe he was a better coach than Todd Bozeman or Cuonzo Martin, both of whom had better a better winning percentage than Braun. Visually, Braun's offense stalled at times with too much perimeter dribbling, but they often ran recognizable set plays, much more often than did several coaches at Cal, like Padgett, Campanelli, Bozeman, Martin, Jones or Fox. Braun's defense had some holes, but it was average or above, IMO. A coach is incompetent when his teams can't compete, and he has losing record after losing record. And a coach is incompetent when his teams don't look good, or look confused, and Ben's teams seldom looked that bad. I think he won most of the games Cal should have won, and lost the ones he shouldn't have won. He was not creative like Newell or Montgomery, who often beat the teams they were not supposed to beat, just by outsmarting them. But they are Hall of Fame caliber coaches, and Ben Braun was not that. He was good, and I suspect a lot of Cal fans would take him right now, in a heartbeat. I would, because I think he would bring us back to respectability, just like he did years ago when he was hired to revamp the Cal program which had lost all respect by hiring a coach who would cheat to win, and got caught, putting Cal on NCAA probation. If Braun did nothing else, he saved the Cal basketball program, continued with some good recruiting, and some pretty good coaching to produce several winning years, all of it squeaky clean, never breaking NCAA rules. You don't accomplish that if you are incompetent. His winning percentage was well above .500, which I would define as average, so in my book, he was an above average coach.sluggo said:It is completely fair. Tinkle did not build a great program at OSU. He is just a good coach who puts his team in a position to have success if they get a few breaks. Similar to Mike M., Thad Boyle, Kyle Smith and Larry K.. The formula is you hire a coach who is good at Xs and Os and player development. Every so often, the planets will align and you will have success. It is no coincidence that the best Cal coach of my lifetime is the only one to win a conference championship in my lifetime.SFCityBear said:That is unfair, just another chance to bash the current Cal coach.sluggo said:Wayne Tinkle versus Mark Fox.philbert said:
Go Beavs! If they can make the elite 8, why can't Cal?
Wayne Tinkle is a good coach, but it took him 7 years to have this good team at Oregon State. He still hasn't had a 20 win season at OSU. And much of his success, maybe even allowing him to hold his job was he brought along his son, who was arguably his best player for 4 seasons.The year that Tres Tinkle was hurt, and played only 6 games, Wayne Tinkle's OSU team went 5-27, right down there with Fox's season this year and both Wyking Jones' seasons in terms of failure. Unfortunately, Fox did not bring a son of Tres Tinkle's caliber with him to Cal.
It takes time to build a winner at schools like OSU and Cal. Both schools had great basketball success in the past, and both have suffered a loss of basketball reputation over time. It is hard to recruit to either school, and hard to find the money to pay a proven coach. It took Larry Kristowiak four years to have a good team, a 20-win team at Utah. It just takes time.
When Monty came Cal looked good right away. It was night and day compared to Braun, who was incompetent like Fox. Every Tinkle team plays at or above their talent. Fox's team looked like crap last year and this year. And they will next year and every year until he is fired. I am looking forward to that day.
sycasey said:The 1997 season alone was pretty damn impressive. The team lost their top scorer and still managed to scrap their way into the Sweet 16.59bear said:I have to agree that there is a tendency on this board to overuse labels like "incompetent". IMO, there is a vast difference between "not good enough" and incompetent. Any coach who can win more than half his games has exhibited some level of competence.SFCityBear said:You lose all credibility when you state that Ben Braun was incompetent. Ben Braun is the second most winning coach in Cal history. His 219 wins at Cal are second only to Nibs Price, who had 453. His winning percentage was .587, ranking him 6th among the 13 coaches Cal has had in my lifetime. I would describe Braun as an above average coach. I believe he was a better coach than Todd Bozeman or Cuonzo Martin, both of whom had better a better winning percentage than Braun. Visually, Braun's offense stalled at times with too much perimeter dribbling, but they often ran recognizable set plays, much more often than did several coaches at Cal, like Padgett, Campanelli, Bozeman, Martin, Jones or Fox. Braun's defense had some holes, but it was average or above, IMO. A coach is incompetent when his teams can't compete, and he has losing record after losing record. And a coach is incompetent when his teams don't look good, or look confused, and Ben's teams seldom looked that bad. I think he won most of the games Cal should have won, and lost the ones he shouldn't have won. He was not creative like Newell or Montgomery, who often beat the teams they were not supposed to beat, just by outsmarting them. But they are Hall of Fame caliber coaches, and Ben Braun was not that. He was good, and I suspect a lot of Cal fans would take him right now, in a heartbeat. I would, because I think he would bring us back to respectability, just like he did years ago when he was hired to revamp the Cal program which had lost all respect by hiring a coach who would cheat to win, and got caught, putting Cal on NCAA probation. If Braun did nothing else, he saved the Cal basketball program, continued with some good recruiting, and some pretty good coaching to produce several winning years, all of it squeaky clean, never breaking NCAA rules. You don't accomplish that if you are incompetent. His winning percentage was well above .500, which I would define as average, so in my book, he was an above average coach.sluggo said:It is completely fair. Tinkle did not build a great program at OSU. He is just a good coach who puts his team in a position to have success if they get a few breaks. Similar to Mike M., Thad Boyle, Kyle Smith and Larry K.. The formula is you hire a coach who is good at Xs and Os and player development. Every so often, the planets will align and you will have success. It is no coincidence that the best Cal coach of my lifetime is the only one to win a conference championship in my lifetime.SFCityBear said:That is unfair, just another chance to bash the current Cal coach.sluggo said:Wayne Tinkle versus Mark Fox.philbert said:
Go Beavs! If they can make the elite 8, why can't Cal?
Wayne Tinkle is a good coach, but it took him 7 years to have this good team at Oregon State. He still hasn't had a 20 win season at OSU. And much of his success, maybe even allowing him to hold his job was he brought along his son, who was arguably his best player for 4 seasons.The year that Tres Tinkle was hurt, and played only 6 games, Wayne Tinkle's OSU team went 5-27, right down there with Fox's season this year and both Wyking Jones' seasons in terms of failure. Unfortunately, Fox did not bring a son of Tres Tinkle's caliber with him to Cal.
It takes time to build a winner at schools like OSU and Cal. Both schools had great basketball success in the past, and both have suffered a loss of basketball reputation over time. It is hard to recruit to either school, and hard to find the money to pay a proven coach. It took Larry Kristowiak four years to have a good team, a 20-win team at Utah. It just takes time.
When Monty came Cal looked good right away. It was night and day compared to Braun, who was incompetent like Fox. Every Tinkle team plays at or above their talent. Fox's team looked like crap last year and this year. And they will next year and every year until he is fired. I am looking forward to that day.
bearmanpg said:
If I could have one player from UCLA's roster I would take Jaime Jaquez without a second thought...he plays both ends of the floor as well as doing all the dirty work it takes to win.....Last night he didn't shoot the ball very well but was getting tie ups, rebounds or tipping a pass at crucial times for the Bruins....This UCLA team does something that I haven't seen in a Bruin team in a looong, loong time and that is play hard for 40 minutes...that is what Cronin has this team buying into....
Yes, I think way they played "big" (with the ferocious rebounding and rim protection) surprised some opponents in the tournament, particularly Villanova who didn't seem to expect that from a Pac-10 team. And the way Tony G stepped up as a scorer with Ed Gray out was also pretty legendary, probably helping his NFL draft standing in the process.drizzlybear said:sycasey said:The 1997 season alone was pretty damn impressive. The team lost their top scorer and still managed to scrap their way into the Sweet 16.59bear said:I have to agree that there is a tendency on this board to overuse labels like "incompetent". IMO, there is a vast difference between "not good enough" and incompetent. Any coach who can win more than half his games has exhibited some level of competence.SFCityBear said:You lose all credibility when you state that Ben Braun was incompetent. Ben Braun is the second most winning coach in Cal history. His 219 wins at Cal are second only to Nibs Price, who had 453. His winning percentage was .587, ranking him 6th among the 13 coaches Cal has had in my lifetime. I would describe Braun as an above average coach. I believe he was a better coach than Todd Bozeman or Cuonzo Martin, both of whom had better a better winning percentage than Braun. Visually, Braun's offense stalled at times with too much perimeter dribbling, but they often ran recognizable set plays, much more often than did several coaches at Cal, like Padgett, Campanelli, Bozeman, Martin, Jones or Fox. Braun's defense had some holes, but it was average or above, IMO. A coach is incompetent when his teams can't compete, and he has losing record after losing record. And a coach is incompetent when his teams don't look good, or look confused, and Ben's teams seldom looked that bad. I think he won most of the games Cal should have won, and lost the ones he shouldn't have won. He was not creative like Newell or Montgomery, who often beat the teams they were not supposed to beat, just by outsmarting them. But they are Hall of Fame caliber coaches, and Ben Braun was not that. He was good, and I suspect a lot of Cal fans would take him right now, in a heartbeat. I would, because I think he would bring us back to respectability, just like he did years ago when he was hired to revamp the Cal program which had lost all respect by hiring a coach who would cheat to win, and got caught, putting Cal on NCAA probation. If Braun did nothing else, he saved the Cal basketball program, continued with some good recruiting, and some pretty good coaching to produce several winning years, all of it squeaky clean, never breaking NCAA rules. You don't accomplish that if you are incompetent. His winning percentage was well above .500, which I would define as average, so in my book, he was an above average coach.sluggo said:It is completely fair. Tinkle did not build a great program at OSU. He is just a good coach who puts his team in a position to have success if they get a few breaks. Similar to Mike M., Thad Boyle, Kyle Smith and Larry K.. The formula is you hire a coach who is good at Xs and Os and player development. Every so often, the planets will align and you will have success. It is no coincidence that the best Cal coach of my lifetime is the only one to win a conference championship in my lifetime.SFCityBear said:That is unfair, just another chance to bash the current Cal coach.sluggo said:Wayne Tinkle versus Mark Fox.philbert said:
Go Beavs! If they can make the elite 8, why can't Cal?
Wayne Tinkle is a good coach, but it took him 7 years to have this good team at Oregon State. He still hasn't had a 20 win season at OSU. And much of his success, maybe even allowing him to hold his job was he brought along his son, who was arguably his best player for 4 seasons.The year that Tres Tinkle was hurt, and played only 6 games, Wayne Tinkle's OSU team went 5-27, right down there with Fox's season this year and both Wyking Jones' seasons in terms of failure. Unfortunately, Fox did not bring a son of Tres Tinkle's caliber with him to Cal.
It takes time to build a winner at schools like OSU and Cal. Both schools had great basketball success in the past, and both have suffered a loss of basketball reputation over time. It is hard to recruit to either school, and hard to find the money to pay a proven coach. It took Larry Kristowiak four years to have a good team, a 20-win team at Utah. It just takes time.
When Monty came Cal looked good right away. It was night and day compared to Braun, who was incompetent like Fox. Every Tinkle team plays at or above their talent. Fox's team looked like crap last year and this year. And they will next year and every year until he is fired. I am looking forward to that day.
Perhaps my all-time favorite team. I loved the way they played basketball, with fabulous defense and ferocious rebounding and rim protection. And I also got a kick out of the hodgepodge way that roster came together, with players coming from such disparate paths to play terrific team basketball.
bearister said:joe amos yaks said:
Final 4 ... two public research universities, a Jesuit, and a Baptist ...
I know who I'm throwing my lot in with:
I went to spokane for the tournament a few years backdrizzlybear said:BeachedBear said:
I didn't watch the entire Zag/Condom match, but what I did see (from Gonzaga) was the best man-to-man Defense, I've seen at the D1 level for quite some time.
They also seem to have the best talent level this season - and not many would disagree that Mark Few is a very good D1 coach.
I also have a number of friends in Spokane who are NOT college basketball fans, but speak about the Zags as if they were the Niners, Giants, Dubs, Cal & Stanford all wrapped up in one. The complete opposite of fan support for Cal in the Bay Area.
That's because the Spokane team sports options are indeed all wrapped into one. Outside of Zag hoops, the Spokane sports fan has to be a connoisseur of minor league sports. It is, as you say, "the complete opposite of Cal in the Bay Area."
They're on the short list for Johnson and Miami center Nysier Brooks, who is also in the transfer portal.ncbears said:
FWIW, my brother in law says UCLA is angling for/counting on getting Rutgers big man Myles Johnson who is in the portal and, while a graduate transfer, still has two years of eligibility. Johnson averaged 8.3 points, 8.7 rebounds, 2.5 blocks and 1.1 steals in 24.5 minutes per game this year. He was listed at 6'9 when at Long Beach Poly.
He is an engineering student - and Cal does have quite the most excellent engineering school ---
