Askew being eligible will give Fox another option and means we will once again have a player who was ranked in the Top 100 coming out of high school. Unfortunately, he did not fulfill those expectations at Kentucky or Texas, but hopefully he does at Cal.

There has been some talk about 3pt shooting. Here are the career 3 pt % of our guards:
Brown .313
Askew .291
Clayton .284
Hyder .269
Roberson ?

Brown, generally considered to be a poor shooter, has the best career %. Don't expect 3 pt shooting from this group.

Advanced metrics (W/S per 40 min)
Clayton .075
Askew .064
Brown .038
Hyder .030
Roberson ?

All of our guards generally are better on defense than offense. Clayton the only one that has scored in double figures and follows in the South and Shepherd transfer tradition. However, Askew and Clayton may have benefited from playing in better offenses. Roberson (and maybe Bowser?) are wildcards.

I am still confident Brown starts the season at the point. Ideally everyone exceeds their past performance , but hopefully at least a few do.

Excited to see Askew play. Also would be funny (and sad) to hear Fox say in the post-game that we need to be better on defense as we lose a game 37-45

eastcoastcal said:

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Excited to see Askew play. Also would be funny (and sad) to hear Fox say in the post-game that we need to be better on defense as we lose a game 37-45

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After losing a game where Cal went 2 of 20 coming out of halftime, Fox blamed the players and their lack of effort on defense:

"It's really hard for someone to understand why you wouldn't have that drive and fight," he said. "It's a long year, it's emotionally draining I get all that. Buy you're only young once and you get a chance to play and you should play with your hair on fire and tonight we didn't do that."

calumnus said:

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eastcoastcal said:

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Excited to see Askew play. Also would be funny (and sad) to hear Fox say in the post-game that we need to be better on defense as we lose a game 37-45

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After losing a game where Cal went 2 of 20 coming out of halftime, Fox blamed the players and their lack of effort on defense:

"It's really hard for someone to understand why you wouldn't have that drive and fight," he said. "It's a long year, it's emotionally draining I get all that. Buy you're only young once and you get a chance to play and you should play with your hair on fire and tonight we didn't do that."

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That quote reminds me of an old Tom Osborne quote about college football coaches:

"Some coaches know a lot about football, but for whatever reason, they can't get kids to play hard for them."

Has Askew been cleared to play this season?

RedlessWardrobe said:

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Has Askew been cleared to play this season?

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Supposedly yes. And Texas has formally supported his transfer.

calumnus said:

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evanluck said:

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BearSD said:

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calumnus said:

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eastcoastcal said:

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Excited to see Askew play. Also would be funny (and sad) to hear Fox say in the post-game that we need to be better on defense as we lose a game 37-45

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After losing a game where Cal went 2 of 20 coming out of halftime, Fox blamed the players and their lack of effort on defense:

"It's really hard for someone to understand why you wouldn't have that drive and fight," he said. "It's a long year, it's emotionally draining I get all that. Buy you're only young once and you get a chance to play and you should play with your hair on fire and tonight we didn't do that."

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That quote reminds me of an old Tom Osborne quote about college football coaches:

"Some coaches know a lot about football, but for whatever reason, they can't get kids to play hard for them."

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I don't actually think that Fox has a problem getting his players to play hard. I like the chemistry of the team and their effort overall. The players that stay tend to be bought in.

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Yeah, Tge players play hard. I think the problem is if we lose, and we lose more often than not, Fox thinks the players just needed to "try" harder. In my quote above, we came out of halftime and went 2 of 20. It wasn't lack of effort on defense as Fox claimed, it was our lack of offense, mostly due to the opposition's half time adjustments on defense that Fox had no answers for. Instead he blamed the players' "lack of effort."

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If you keep doin' what you've always done, you'll keep gettin' what you always got.

calumnus said:

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evanluck said:

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BearSD said:

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calumnus said:

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eastcoastcal said:

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Excited to see Askew play. Also would be funny (and sad) to hear Fox say in the post-game that we need to be better on defense as we lose a game 37-45

---

After losing a game where Cal went 2 of 20 coming out of halftime, Fox blamed the players and their lack of effort on defense:

"It's really hard for someone to understand why you wouldn't have that drive and fight," he said. "It's a long year, it's emotionally draining I get all that. Buy you're only young once and you get a chance to play and you should play with your hair on fire and tonight we didn't do that."

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That quote reminds me of an old Tom Osborne quote about college football coaches:

"Some coaches know a lot about football, but for whatever reason, they can't get kids to play hard for them."

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I don't actually think that Fox has a problem getting his players to play hard. I like the chemistry of the team and their effort overall. The players that stay tend to be bought in.

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Yeah, Tge players play hard. I think the problem is if we lose, and we lose more often than not, Fox thinks the players just needed to "try" harder. In my quote above, we came out of halftime and went 2 of 20. It wasn't lack of effort on defense as Fox claimed, it was our lack of offense, mostly due to the opposition's half time adjustments on defense that Fox had no answers for. Instead he blamed the players' "lack of effort."

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The problem is lack of recruiting success, then. The team doesn't have players that shoot well enough from the outside to overcome good halftime coaching adjustments.

BearSD said:

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calumnus said:

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evanluck said:

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BearSD said:

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calumnus said:

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eastcoastcal said:

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Excited to see Askew play. Also would be funny (and sad) to hear Fox say in the post-game that we need to be better on defense as we lose a game 37-45

---

After losing a game where Cal went 2 of 20 coming out of halftime, Fox blamed the players and their lack of effort on defense:

"It's really hard for someone to understand why you wouldn't have that drive and fight," he said. "It's a long year, it's emotionally draining I get all that. Buy you're only young once and you get a chance to play and you should play with your hair on fire and tonight we didn't do that."

---

That quote reminds me of an old Tom Osborne quote about college football coaches:

"Some coaches know a lot about football, but for whatever reason, they can't get kids to play hard for them."

---

I don't actually think that Fox has a problem getting his players to play hard. I like the chemistry of the team and their effort overall. The players that stay tend to be bought in.

---

Yeah, Tge players play hard. I think the problem is if we lose, and we lose more often than not, Fox thinks the players just needed to "try" harder. In my quote above, we came out of halftime and went 2 of 20. It wasn't lack of effort on defense as Fox claimed, it was our lack of offense, mostly due to the opposition's half time adjustments on defense that Fox had no answers for. Instead he blamed the players' "lack of effort."

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The problem is lack of recruiting success, then. The team doesn't have players that shoot well enough from the outside to overcome good halftime coaching adjustments.

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Part of it, but recruiting is all connected to the coach's personality, attitude, knowledge, strategy and vision. He could have said "credit to them, they made great halftime adjustments that we had no answer for." Instead he complained about the players losing their poise and not "playing like your hair's on fire" which sounds contradictory to me. There is a reason top payers don't want to play for him even when he was at Georgia. His famous first speech to the Cal players was all about how he was going to get them to work harder which sent our best players to the exit.

I think Fox has been fine defensively. He has recruited players with defensive talent, he has coached them up on defense, and he has them playing good team defense.

Offense is another story. I'd say in three years Fox has recruited only three players who have been able to achieve reasonable shooting percentages: Thiemann, Celestine, and Alajiki. Everyone else, including Shepherd, is near or below .400 overall and .300 on threes. And none of the three with decent percentages have taken enough shots, they're averaging just 12 ppg combined. Maybe Celestine will get healthy. Maybe Thiemann and Alajiki will break out. Maybe one or more of the the incoming players will be able to shoot.

Unfortunately that's a lot of maybes and I've seen no evidence Fox can coach them up on offense or work up schemes to get our players shots they can make.