calumnus said:
HKBear97! said:
HoopDreams said:
I was surprised by the utah state results because the rumor out there was cal did pretty good (although the reference was vague)
utah state is 9-1 however
Well, bear in mind who those rumors came from. Many of them refuse to face reality about Fox and this program. Rod nailed it right off the bat that he didn't think we would win a game. That's as damning as it gets.
The amount of coach/AD propaganda that comes out of our football and basketball programs and is spread by our insiders is disheartening.
This is the fundamental issue I have with Knowlton- he doesn't seem to believe Cal is a great place to win. In my 1 conversation with him, as well as his public remarks, he constantly defaults to "how difficult of a situation" Fox inherited, and then the long list of excuses begin: COVID, no practice facility, NIL, fan apathy.
Mind you, in the bay area itself, USF and St. Mary's have better records (and have even beat us out for prospects!) while having far less funds/resources, less academic caliber to sell recruits on, no practice facility for USF.
The truth is, for the better part of 3 decades, Cal made the tournament more often than every other year. Some of the best teams in college basketball are academic brands: Duke, UVA, Michigan, UNC, UCLA, etc. We have a very loud basketball fanbase that will show up for a winner. During Shocky's monster class years, we were competing with blue bloods like UNC for recruits! Haas is a nice place to play. We are a top academic brand in the world. Beautiful weather year-round. We even have donors who've stepped up in the housing department (thanks 4thGen!), albeit that's a more recent development.
College basketball is so unbelievably winnable for a school like Cal, yet here we are, the worst high major team in the nation and a bottom 60 team in D1 most likely. The level of losing over the past 5 years is just inexcusable, and I understand the limitations with NIL + housing + practice facility but the truth is, that doesn't even come close to meriting how bad of a program we've run. At nearly any other power program, these results get the AD, coaches, and all staff canned.
I understand we'll almost certainly move on from Fox after this season. And hopefully the next coach will right the ship. But I truly hate hearing, especially from Knowlton & Fox, how "difficult of a situation" it is. How can you sell fans, prospective coaching hires, recruits, and parents on Cal if you internally believe this is a bad situation? It will inevitably show up in the way you sell Cal to all these people and I am willing to bet that is the issue Knowlton has. He remarked about how all his coaching interviews mentioned how difficult it will be to turn Cal around- really? You're telling me Gates was that reluctant? You're telling me Kidd, even if he wasn't truly interested, was willing to publicly state Cal is the only college job he'd take even though he believed the job sucks? My honest theory is that Knowlton doesn't realize the level of success Cal has had in basketball. We're not just an average school- historically in the preceeding 3 decades, we were a
good basketball school. I think Knowlton just views us as a loser that at best can compete for the middle of the conference. That's ridiculous and we should consistently be in the upper 3rd. Sure, UCLA, Arizona might be in a different echelon. But no reason why we can't place ourselves in the tier below on an annual basis.
My point is, I really hate hearing from the people who run our department & program how terrible of a job the Cal basketball program is. It's not. We expect our academic programs to be top 5 in the country. We have the best aquatics programs in the nation. Our golf team just recruited the top recruiting class. Our researchers discover new elements and energy sources. Our graduates found multi-billion dollar companies. Striving for mediocrity and acceptance of poor results enrages me, especially when Knowlton & his hire parrots the same nonsense over and over again