calumnus said:
eastcoastcal said:
SFCityBear said:
Civil Bear said:
SFCityBear said:
KoreAmBear said:
eastcoastcal said:
I know his Missouri stint was not super great (though he did reach 2 NCAA tournaments) but would you all be interested in a reunion? Obviously whether he'd even want to come back is important, but let's say he did want a job- would fans here want him back?
Much better recruiter than Fox.
Much easier school to recruit for in Duke.
Pretty sure the Fox recruiting comparison is to Martin. With the exception of two recruiting classes, I'm not to confident Martin is any better.
Thanks for pointing that out. I apologize for the brain cramp. With so many good posts to respond to, I got them mixed up.
I agree with you on Cuonzo. I think he recruited for star power, name recognition, players who he had to know would not be around for more than one or two seasons. That was true for Brown, Rabb, and maybe Moore. Domingo had the recruit chops once, but was a bust for Georgetown. I think recruiting for star power is not a good fit for Cal, especially now, with the program at the bottom of the conference. The best way to build a program from the bottom up, IMO, is to go after good players who are not NBA-ready, and perhaps not future NBA talent, but rather are 3 and 4 star players who will stay at Cal for 3 or 4 years. The program I like is Virginia, and they started in this fashion, with 3 and 4 star recruits, and with coaching the results just got better and better.
What do you think about Tony Bennett's apparent recruiting strategy at Virginia? Bennett took over a program in 2009 that had finished in 11th place in the ACC. He inherited a team with four top 100 players (three 4* and one 3*). They improved gradually and made the NCAA in his 3rd season, losing in the 2nd round. Then he lost the 4 players, and had to rebuild. He slowly began landing his own top 100 recruits, and went on to many season of success. In his 5th season, he won the ACC title, with a team which had 3 top 100 players (one 4* and two 3*). The following season, he won the ACC again, with 5 top 100 players (two 4* and three 3*) . The following season, he finished 2nd in the ACC with 3 top 100 players, all 3*. He was doing this with players like London Perrantes, who was not ranked in the top 100 as a recruit. Bennett does it all with primarily 3 and 4 year players, most of whom are not top 100 ranked, or ranked at all.
In 2018 Bennett won the ACC again, this time with three 4* and a 3*. In 2019, he won the ACC and the NCAA title, with five 4* players. In 2021, he won the ACC again with five 4* and a 3*.
Tony Bennett has been the head coach at Virginia for 13 seasons. His teams have won one NCAA title, and have been seeded #1 four times. The have also made an Elite 8, and a Sweet 16, out of 8 appearances in the tournament. He has won the ACC title 5 times. And he did all this with only one bona fide consensus 5* player, Austin Nichols who transferred from Memphis, played one season at Virginia before turning pro. He had two other players who were either 4* or 5* (depending on which recruit rankings you look at): Sylven Landesberg, who Bennett inherited when he was named head coach, and who played one season for Bennett before turning pro, and Kyle Guy, who played 3 years for Bennett, before he turned pro.
The problem with Cuonzo's approach is that it is good for only one season, maybe two at best, before they leave. And one or two injuries, and there goes even your one season. Cuonzo was fortunate that Montgomery had left him with enough very good players to complement his star recruits. But he either had no plan or his plan failed, because he was unable tor bring in more good players to replace the ones who left. Lee was good, and Moore, but that was not much, considering how many players Cal lost. And Cuonzo himself lost Mathews, whom he did not handle well. Duke and Kentucky attract a stable full of one-and-dones year after year. That is not Cal, and likely never will be. I would shoot for the Virginia model for Cal. I'd hire Bennett in a heartbeat, and I'd take a look at any of Bennett's assistants who might be willing to leave Virginia for the Bay Area. Unless Cal shows some real improvement this season, that is.
I agree that the Virginia model would be great to emulate- another note, is that Virginia itself is a pretty good school so he has to deal with admissions as well.
I guess the difference is that he was able to recruit the 4 stars to Virginia consistently (outside 2013 and 2017 he's always had a top-100 player in his recruiting class) whereas at this point we aren't even getting anyone in the top 150. The exception being Bowser. I mean if you look at hyper-recently, we're not even recruiting in the top 200 lol. Even with all the pitfalls of Cal, there's no reason why recruiting should be this poor. Even with the lack of practice facility and new NIL world, we simply can't be that bad that we're only getting no-stars and low 3-stars.
The next coach simply has to do better and bring a much better recruiting staff. Got to win the norcal recruits (the Mahaney's of the world) and have a better socal presence. I also refuse to believe that every good Oakland Soldier & Prolific Prep player doesn't qualify for admission. Cmon. In today's world with grade inflation there MUST be kids from those programs with > 3.0 GPA.
Would love to grab a top Virginia assistant to lead our team. I know some posters have reservations about a non-california based head coach but I think given the similarity of how we'd like to transform our program like Virginia did, I'd be happy to nab a Virginia staff member.
Virginia teams have been full of Top 100 players when they were good. However, last year Bennett had "only" two, finished 6th in the ACC and missed the NCAA tournament, narrowly won a couple games in the NIT.
Bennett, plays very slow, but is VERY efficient on offense and defense. I much prefer Few whose Gonzaga teams are also VERY efficient on both ends but play fast. Randy Bennett at St. Mary's is similar (as was Monty and Coach K). However, slow and efficient is MUCH preferable to slow and inefficient (Fox and Martin).
Last year Cal was #330 in 3pt shots made, Virginia was #350. USF was #17.
I just don't think slow down, defense first basketball is ever going to be popular with recruits on the West Coast who grew up rooting for the Lakers and Warriors. Finding a charismatic (young?) coach who can recruit and, along with his staff, can teach, coach and strategize efficient basketball really isn't as tough as people make it out to be.
You would marginalize Tony Bennett, a very successful coach, by distorting what his roster looked like? What do you mean when you say that he had a roster "full" of top 100 players? Compared to what, exactly? Compared to Cal's current roster, Virginia's roster would be "full". But Virginia doesn't have to get past Cal to get to the NCAA. They have to get past the rest of the ACC. To evaluate Bennett as a coach and recruiter, we need to compare his rosters to the rosters of his competitors in the ACC.
Bennett was hired by Virginia in 2009, and his best seasons were from 2014 to 2021, an 8 year period, where Virginia was the ACC champion 4 times, tied for ACC champion another time, won the ACC Tournament twice, and won the NCAA National Championship. Bennett's Virginia rosters in those 8 years averaged only 4 top 100 players per roster, with ZERO five-star or top 25 ranked players. (He signed one five-star player, Austin Nichols, who redshirted one season, and then the next season, played one game and then broke team rules, and was dismissed from the team by Bennett)
Let me tell you what I think a roster "full" of Top 100 players for the same 8 year period looked like in the ACC:
Duke over the same 8-year period: 72 top 100 players, (45 5-star players, and 27 4-stars) That is an average of 9 top 100 players per roster, more than twice as many as Bennett had at Virginia, 45 were 5-stars, while Bennett had no 5-star players at all.
North Carolina over the same 8-year period: 66 top 100 players on his 8 rosters, 29 5-star players, and 37 4-stars. That is an average of 8.3 top 100 players per roster, twice as many as Bennett had at Virginia, 29 were 5-stars, while Bennett had no 5-star players at all.
Bennett's record from 2014-2019 vs all AP ranked teams (including Cal) with more top 100 players on their rosters than Virginia in those games was 38-21.
Going back to Cal for a moment, it may be instructive to look at the Virginia-Cal games of 2015 and 2016. In both games, Cal's rosters would seem to be "full" by your definition, compared to Virginia. In 2015, Cal had three 5-star players and one 4-star player, while Virginia had Brogdon, a 4-star, and the rest were all 3-stars. Brogdon was a two-time Consensus All America. Four of Virginia's starters were later named to the ACC All-defensive team in their careers. Virginia won in overtime.
In the 2016 game, Cal had two five-stars, Rabb and Bird, a 4-star, Moore, while Virginia had two 4-stars, Kyle Guy, who was the 6th man, and Mike Tobey, who played 7 minutes and scored 2 pts.
All of Virginia's starters were 3-star players. Virginia won by 4.
Tony Bennett's rosters were not "full" of top 100 players, not even close. He appears to be a really good judge of player ability, landing some very good Top 100 players, and an extraordinary number of 3-star and unranked players who won as many or more individual ACC awards than did his Top 100 recruits, who won a lot of those awards themselves. Nearly every year his players made the All-ACC teams and the ACC All-Defense teams. After looking over all his rosters and the accomplishments it looks to me like
he recruited especially for two things, defense and longevity. He had an extraordinary number of 3-star and unranked recruits who were great players for him. His best player might have been Malcolm Brogdon, ranked #94 in the top 100, who should have been ranked much higher, IMO. Unlike a lot of successful programs, he had a lot of players, both Top 100, and 3-star or unranked, who stayed for 3 or 4 years. I feel that this is the way to recruit when you are starting at or near the bottom of your league (Bennett took over a team which had a losing record, finishing in 11th place in the ACC, and in a very short time, raised them to national prominence, not with 5-star players, but with 4-stars, often players near the bottom of the top 100 list, along with really talented 3-star players like London Perrantes, Darion Atkins, Isaiah Wilkins, Joe Harris, and many others who played 4 years. I think you build programs with recruits like that, and when you start having success, then add the occasional 5-star, to help you get over the top. If the 5-star guy leaves early, it is easier to replace him than it is to replace 3 or 4 of them.
As to playing fast, you can't play fast if you don't have the horses. They must have speed and stamina, and able to play fast without turnovers or injuries. There are not enough players like that to fill all the teams, even all the P5 teams. I like defense first coaches. There is no reason a defense first coach can not play fast on offense, if he has the personnel.
As to whether a defense-minded coach can recruit California kids, Bennett did have three California kids on his rosters, and two were outstanding: 3-star London Perrantes, a 4-year starter from LA, who was a huge factor in Virginia defeating Cal in 2015, when he had 6 assists and held Tyrone Wallace to 10 points and zero assists. He also was named NCAA All Region, All-ACC, and ACC All-Tourney teams. The other was unranked Kihei Clark, a 5'-9", 145 pound guard who was a 4 year player and 3-year starter from Woodland Hills, who was on the NCAA Championship team and also was named to the All-ACC team.
SFCityBear
