calumnus said:
Cal8285 said:
calumnus said:
HKBear97! said:
GMP said:
bearister said:
BC Calfan said:
Didn't think it was possible.
I think he is in that conversation for sure, but it will take the Jaws of Life* to extract that honor from Wyking.
*He needs 12 more consecutive losses to clip Wyking's school record.
First, Wyking lost to way better teams. All but one of those 16 was in conference play.
Second, Fox is at 8 straight, dating back to next year. So he only needs 9 more to eclipse 16.
Third, recruiting is a major part of coaching and this team is far less talented than that Wyking team. Which doesn't speak well of Wyking's in-game coaching, but says more about Fox's overall terribleness.
Fox is officially the worst coach, IMO, no matter how long this streak goes.
Well, Wyking did lose to Chaminade. Now that was a true low point.
Chaminade has a history of knocking off even highly ranked teams visiting Hawaii.
Cal does not have a history of losing to teams like UC Davis and UC San Diego at home.
This is the worst start, the worst rated team, in 115 years of Cal basketball history.
That Jones team had a lot of young talent and won its last three conference games. He never lost the team. What are the chances this team wins its last three PAC-12 games?
I don't think Chaminade ever beat a power conference team by 24 points. Certainly not in the Maui Classic. That was a truly bad loss by Jones.
Jones teams also got blown out at Haas by Central Arkansas (27 points) and Portland St (25 points). Really grim. For some reason, however, Jones' teams were able to get by San Diego St. two out of two, once in SD, once at Haas.
Jones' teams frequently quit, often played with no heart and effort, especially once they got behind. Jones' last year, he broke the conference winless streak with a win at Haas over a good (25th ranked) UW. Somehow, the Bears played out of their minds for 31 minutes to go ahead by 7, and then both teams played pretty terribly, it was tied with 2 minutes left but UW couldn't hit a shot and Cal made 3 FT's for a 3 point win. Until the UW game, Cal was apparently going to be either 0-18 or 1-17 in conference, depending on conference game #17, the WSU game at Haas. The 0-15 record included a lot of games where the Bears flat out quit. WSU was on its way to finish just ahead of the Bears in 11th place, but did lose Cal's conference game #17 (that was Ernie Kent's last season as well as Jones' last). The Bears then inexplicably won at Stanford, well, inexplicable except that Haase is a terrible coach.
In spite of those last three games, however, I think Jones did lose the team. Campy had already lost the team when the Bears blew out UCLA in 1993 at Pauley, but sometimes, players will play hard even if the coach has lost the team.
It is both good and bad that Fox's teams continue to play with effort. Bad, because while they continue to play with effort after getting behind by double digits, they don't have the talent to beat cream puffs even when they are trying. How can a team that is TRYING lose these cream puff games? Yet they are trying. Which in part shows the talent problem.
The season isn't over yet, but I don't see how it can possibly be anything except the worst season in the 115 years of Cal basketball. The bigger question is whether it will be the worst season of any team in the history of power conference basketball.
Monty and Stanford lost to Chaminade in the 1992 Maui Invitational
Chaminade's 8 Big Wins in the Maui Invitational
1984 Davidson 77-62
1991 Providence 111-108
1992 Stanford 71-63
2003 Villanova 52-49
2007 Princeton 74-70
2010 Oklahoma 68-64
2012 Texas 86-73
2017 Cal 96-72
A lot of better teams and better coaches than that Cal team and Wyking Jones have lost to Chaminade in the Maui Invitational. By itself, it does not make Wyking worse than Fox, or else you would have to say Monty is worse than Fox.
You don't need to try to minimize how bad Jones was to make Fox look worse. The fact that Jones was incredibly bad yet Fox can STILL steal the title from Jones of worst Cal coach ever shows just how bad Fox is.
No game by itself can show that any coach is worse than another. But if we're going to focus on the one Chaminade game, it was a MUCH worse loss than Monty's loss. Losing to Chaminade by itself doesn't make Jones a bad coach. Monty and Rick Barnes aren't bad coaches, and they lost to Chaminade. Losing in the MANNER the Bears did helps demonstrate that Jones was a really bad coach.
Before the Cal-Chaminade game, the worst power conference loss to the Silverswords was the Texas 86-73 loss in 2012, Rick Barnes the Texas coach at the time. With just over two minutes left, Texas was down 9, and desperation/fouling made it a 13 point game. With just over two minutes left in 2017, Cal was down THIRTY (30!!) and garbage time made it a 24 point game. If you watched that game, and watched this season, you'd know 2017 Chaminade was a far worse performance than any of the Cal losses so far this season.
Sorry, but saying, "Yeah, others have lost to Chaminade" doesn't mean that the loss by Cal in 2017 was anything but, far and away, the worst power conference team loss to Chaminade EVER, and doesn't mean Jones wasn't a horrible coach.
Again, one game doesn't mean that much, you need to look at overall resume. Add the 27 point loss to Central Arkansas and the 25 point loss to Portland St. that season, plus 2-16 in conference, and Jones was a really bad coach in 2017-18. He did have the inexplicable 1 point win against SD St. 3 days after the Central Arkansas debacle, and had the 3 point win at Stanford in early January, but those positives are part of what show how horrible Jones was -- the team had enough talent to beat a pretty decent SD St. team in San Diego, how can they play so badly through most of the rest of the season?
The overall resume for 2022-23 is almost certainly going to make Fox the worst Cal coach in history, yes worse than Jones, even if that is largely (but not completely) a result of the talent level. Even if they weren't blow out losses, losing to ALL FOUR of UC Davis, UCSD, Southern, and Texas St. is downright horrible. Going 0-20 or 2-18 or whatever we're likely to go in conference is downright horrible. The talent level is on Fox, period, but even with this talent level, a Monty would likely be at least 3-2 at this point.
Jones was a truly dreadful coach, and I'd hate to see how things would have looked if he had made it to season 4 at Cal, perhaps worse than this season will be. The fact that Fox got the chance to make it to season 4 isn't really his fault, he did poorly enough in seasons 2 and 3 to be fired (of course, he did poorly enough at Georgia not to be hired at Cal), but here he is, and barring a turnaround that no one around here can foresee, he will win the title of worst Cal MBB HC EVER, based on the entirety of the season, even if he never has a loss as bad as the 2017 losses to Chaminade, Central Arkansas and Portland St.
Knowlton could have kept the title in Jones' hands by firing Fox after last season, but Fox is the kind of guy Knowlton gets along with, so perhaps he wanted Fox to get a chance at the title.
