we're going the be the best 8-10 win team in the country

I really like our team. The starters are experienced players, but have only played 9 games together.

I believe the biggest missing piece to this team is a PG that can control the tempo of the game, facilitate during the game during critical times, and who can calm guys down during other team's runs. We have a shoot first gunner at PG in Cone. He was clutch today and kept us in it. I can appreciate that skill, but I do not think he necessarily makes our other players better.

I believe Newell needs to play with more aggression. He is a little in the pants, despite being long , but he needs to get more aggressive and much stronger next off season.

Heartbreaking loss.

udaman1 said:

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we're going the be the best 8-10 win team in the country

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Fire the moral victory cannon.

bearsandgiants said:

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I'm pretty confident if we had a do-over on this season, starting now, we'd be 8-1 or maybe even undefeated, ranked, and elated.

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Yeah, that's what's frustrating to me.

RedlessWardrobe said:

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Well based on what everyone is saying, and I know the goal is to win every game, the practical PAC 12 goal is to finish in the top 4, reducing the wins required in Vegas in order to keep playing.

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Exactly. That is the goal at this point.

RedlessWardrobe said:

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Well based on what everyone is saying, and I know the goal is to win every game, the practical PAC 12 goal is to finish in the top 4, reducing the wins required in Vegas in order to keep playing.

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4th in the PAC-12 is practical? OooooK, I love a homer fan base but a few reality checks for the Wishful Bears Club, courtesy of KenPom.com
Out of 362 D1 teams Cal is…
167th overall, right behind Radford and Oral Roberts.
Offense: 114
Defense: 249
Nonconference Strength of Schedule (for those of you saying we've been playing tough teams): 268
KenPom projects Cal to finish 11th out of 12 in the conference standings.

These are not the numbers of a team about to bust out or compete with the top of the conference.
My "practical" top expectation was a .500 season, but starting to genuinely doubt that goal now.

We can have a team that's fun to watch but still loses a lot, we don't need to break with reality to root for the Bears. We've got some big holes, they'll get filled as long as we trust in the Mad Dog, but it could take a few recruiting classes.

drizzlybear said:

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We don't need KenPom to tell us we're 3-6. The question is, is there reason to think we might be better than what our results have been so far? I think the answer is yes, and I'd be more than happy to bet anyone who thinks KenPom's projection of 11th place will come to pass.

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OK, I'll bite, you're asking whether the record will be better than 3 wins for every 9 games the rest of the way? 22 more regular season games, so that's 7 more wins, 10-21 for the season?
Nope, that sounds about right, + or - 2 wins.
KenPom isn't a subjective ranking or projection and isn't based on game records, it's a pretty objective look at Offensive and Defensive team performance. I won't bet anyone Cal finishes at 11th, let's hope not, but as of today their team performance is 11th out of 12, no getting around that fact.

bearsandgiants said:

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I'm pretty confident if we had a do-over on this season, starting now, we'd be 8-1 or maybe even undefeated, ranked, and elated.

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Its quite obvious that bearsandgiants and KenPom are not one in the same. I kind of prefer bearsandgiants of the two.

drizzlybear said:

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barsad said:

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drizzlybear said:

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We don't need KenPom to tell us we're 3-6. The question is, is there reason to think we might be better than what our results have been so far? I think the answer is yes, and I'd be more than happy to bet anyone who thinks KenPom's projection of 11th place will come to pass.

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OK, I'll bite, you're asking whether the record will be better than 3 wins for every 9 games the rest of the way? 22 more regular season games, so that's 7 more wins, 10-21 for the season?
Nope, that sounds about right, + or - 2 wins.
KenPom isn't a subjective ranking or projection and isn't based on game records, it's a pretty objective look at Offensive and Defensive team performance. I won't bet anyone Cal finishes at 11th, let's hope not, but as of today their team performance is 11th out of 12, no getting around that fact.

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No, the post I was responding to was touting KenPom's assessment of our team, and the post said KenPom's assessment currently projects Cal to finish 11th in the Pac12, which I think is very likely to be an incorrect projection. If you (or anyone else) want to bet me on that projection of 11th, I would be very happy to do so. So far, no one has taken me up on it. I think that includes you?

I'm not saying KenPom is subjective nor that it's based on our record. What I'm saying is that it is based on the same circumstances as are reflected in our record. KenPom's numbers are unflattering to the Bears, exactly as is our record, because of such things as having had Pavlovic play meaningful minutes in earlier games, and Monty Bowser starting some games, and Keonte Kennedy miss most of those games, etc. If KenPom can predict that those things will continue to be the case throughout the season then we probably will continue to play at a very low level and might indeed finish 11th in the conference. But there's very little chance all those things do continue to happen the rest of the season. So, because KenPom's current projections, for this team at this particular point in time, are based on difficult circumstances that are no longer present, those current projections are, IMO, pretty meaningless and no more insightful than is our current record.

Bottom line: it's not about not being realistic or statistically informed; it's about the lineups Cal has been using so far, compared to the lineups Cal will put up the rest of the way. (I happen to also hope there will be additional improvement resulting from the synergistic effect of this team getting more comfortable playing together and under the new coach's system, but I recognize that may be more wishful optimism, and don't expect others to share that particular additional basis for optimism.)

Cal's lineip the past several games is more reflective of the lineups they should have the rest of the season, and with those lineups we've played three pretty evenly-matched games against teams with an average KenPom rating of 79. That would suggest we'll be more in that range of team than the 167 ranking where KenPom currently has us. And KenPom's ranking of Cal will lag reality all season because it will always include bad data from a group of games Cal was playing with a very different lineup.

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Can I get in on the finishing no better than 11th bet? Or the over/under 10 wins for the season? Where did barsad go?

ducky23 said:

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drizzlybear said:

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barsad said:

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drizzlybear said:

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We don't need KenPom to tell us we're 3-6. The question is, is there reason to think we might be better than what our results have been so far? I think the answer is yes, and I'd be more than happy to bet anyone who thinks KenPom's projection of 11th place will come to pass.

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OK, I'll bite, you're asking whether the record will be better than 3 wins for every 9 games the rest of the way? 22 more regular season games, so that's 7 more wins, 10-21 for the season?
Nope, that sounds about right, + or - 2 wins.
KenPom isn't a subjective ranking or projection and isn't based on game records, it's a pretty objective look at Offensive and Defensive team performance. I won't bet anyone Cal finishes at 11th, let's hope not, but as of today their team performance is 11th out of 12, no getting around that fact.

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No, the post I was responding to was touting KenPom's assessment of our team, and the post said KenPom's assessment currently projects Cal to finish 11th in the Pac12, which I think is very likely to be an incorrect projection. If you (or anyone else) want to bet me on that projection of 11th, I would be very happy to do so. So far, no one has taken me up on it. I think that includes you?

I'm not saying KenPom is subjective nor that it's based on our record. What I'm saying is that it is based on the same circumstances as are reflected in our record. KenPom's numbers are unflattering to the Bears, exactly as is our record, because of such things as having had Pavlovic play meaningful minutes in earlier games, and Monty Bowser starting some games, and Keonte Kennedy miss most of those games, etc. If KenPom can predict that those things will continue to be the case throughout the season then we probably will continue to play at a very low level and might indeed finish 11th in the conference. But there's very little chance all those things do continue to happen the rest of the season. So, because KenPom's current projections, for this team at this particular point in time, are based on difficult circumstances that are no longer present, those current projections are, IMO, pretty meaningless and no more insightful than is our current record.

Bottom line: it's not about not being realistic or statistically informed; it's about the lineups Cal has been using so far, compared to the lineups Cal will put up the rest of the way. (I happen to also hope there will be additional improvement resulting from the synergistic effect of this team getting more comfortable playing together and under the new coach's system, but I recognize that may be more wishful optimism, and don't expect others to share that particular additional basis for optimism.)

Cal's lineip the past several games is more reflective of the lineups they should have the rest of the season, and with those lineups we've played three pretty evenly-matched games against teams with an average KenPom rating of 79. That would suggest we'll be more in that range of team than the 167 ranking where KenPom currently has us. And KenPom's ranking of Cal will lag reality all season because it will always include bad data from a group of games Cal was playing with a very different lineup.

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Can I get in on the finishing no better than 11th bet? Or the over/under 10 wins for the season? Where did barsad go?

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Barsad is currently either on google or reading Webster's in order to verify the definition difference between the words "goal" and "prediction."

barsad said:

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RedlessWardrobe said:

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Well based on what everyone is saying, and I know the goal is to win every game, the practical PAC 12 goal is to finish in the top 4, reducing the wins required in Vegas in order to keep playing.

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4th in the PAC-12 is practical? OooooK, I love a homer fan base but a few reality checks for the Wishful Bears Club, courtesy of KenPom.com
Out of 362 D1 teams Cal is…
167th overall, right behind Radford and Oral Roberts.
Offense: 114
Defense: 249
Nonconference Strength of Schedule (for those of you saying we've been playing tough teams): 268
KenPom projects Cal to finish 11th out of 12 in the conference standings.

These are not the numbers of a team about to bust out or compete with the top of the conference.
My "practical" top expectation was a .500 season, but starting to genuinely doubt that goal now.

We can have a team that's fun to watch but still loses a lot, we don't need to break with reality to root for the Bears. We've got some big holes, they'll get filled as long as we trust in the Mad Dog, but it could take a few recruiting classes.

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How can you make accurate descriptions or future predictions of this Cal team, or any team, when you base any or all of it on KenPom ratings? They are a nice thing to play with to read or swallow, but THEY DO NOT TAKE INJURIES INTO ACCOUNT.

Most good teams have 5-8 players who make nearly all the contributions to a team's success. If you have one or two of these key players out with injury or illness, it throws all evaluations and predictions for that team out of whack. If it is just one player, and he happens to be the team's best player, or the one most important to a team's success, not just the leading scorer but maybe a player who is the only good point guard, or the only good rim protector, the team will lose more games than predicted. In the distant past, Leon Powe comes to mind. Or Tyrone Wallace right before the NCAA tournament, and to make it worse Jabari goes down as well. No way a bunch of number crunchers could have predicted that by looking at all the gaudy numbers and wins Cal had a couple weeks prior to that NCAA game.

What makes predictions even worse (for Cal at least) is that more players seem to be getting injured and some getting injured more frequently in the last 20 years or so. (Just guessing). It certainly feels that way. This current Cal team has had Kennedy, Celestine, Askew, Curtis out with injuries so far. Based on what I saw in this game, Celestine was not ready to be a major contributor yet. Okafor got hurt in this game, and we don't know how serious that is. Cal has some players who have a history of been out with injuries in the past, like Aimaq, Tyson, Askew, Celestine, and Cone.


Need I remind you of last season when Askew, Clayton, and Celestine missed a lot of games each? That may or may not have helped a bit to cause Fox to lose his job, but in any case, it killed any chance that Cal had to have even the season that KenPom ratings might have predicted.

This team, if healthy, and they are not all healthy yet, would have a chance to finish at .500 in the PAC12, all in my opinon. All mostly healthy, nobody knows, especially KenPom.

Most teams are never fully healthy. The difference is most teams usually get less healthy as the season wears on, but we seem to have started the season with injury hiccups.

The problem is that as one player gets healthy, someone else gets hurt. Okafor yesterday. (And how serious is that?--it looked pretty bad). Tyson hobbling and getting picked on for three consecutive buckets in the second OT. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a team in which all the key players are healthy for a sustained period of time.

75bear said:

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Most teams are never fully healthy. The difference is most teams usually get less healthy as the season wears on, but we seem to have started the season with injury hiccups.

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It can start even earlier, as many coaches are forced by need to take a chance on signing a recruit who was injured in high school or a transfer who was previously injured, and maybe susceptible to re-injury, or injuring some other related muscle, etc. An example of the first would be Ben Braun signing Leon Powe. Powe was so good, he was very hard to pass up. Braun signed him, and he gave Cal one good year, missed a year with injury, and gave Cal another good year. A more recent example of that would be Mark Fox taking Jalen Celestine. Celestine was injured in high school. He has missed an entire season, and has never been fully healthy in his college career. He was also good enough that it was hard to pass on him. Another was Mark Fox taking the oft-injured Dejuan Clayton. He played only a handful of games for Cal, but it was clear that he was a very talented guard with several skills. He finished the season injured.

Out of necessity, the need to satisfy the Cal fan base, hungry to see good basketball at Cal, and pressure from the Cal Administration to hire a coach who could give us a chance at that, along with having a only a few months to recruit some good players from a small group of talented recruits and transfers, Mark Madsen had to move quickly, and sign the best he could find. Several of those he signed had been previously injured. Aimaq, Tyson, Kennedy, Cone. Of the players he inherited, Celestine, Askew, Bowser, and maybe Curtis were previously injured. Previously injured players often get reinjured or injure a related body part.

As a dinosaur, I come from an era of watching Cal under Nibs Price and Pete Newell, and I don't remember a Cal player getting injured. Cal won a national title in '59 without an injury. I don't remember a Cal player missing a game in 1960, until the NCAA Championship game, when Newell had to pull Darrall Imhoff out of the game, as he was sick with the flu, and exhausted. I don't remember anyone from USF getting injured, except Fred LaCour, who broke his arm over the summer. The game back then was slower, and players did not try and break 50 yard dash records or high jump records when they played. Today, they play much faster, jump much higher, and over-extend themselves to get to the rim against a defender who is overextending himself just as much trying to stop that offensive player. A fertile field for injuries, the injured, and their doctors. The NCAA and the NBA do little to change this and protect the players from injury. I'm not sure they can co anything. There were many teams who played fast in the 1960s, all the great midwest teams out of Indiana and Ohio, or the great UCLA teams of Johnny Wooden. They played very fast, just as fast at today's teams, scored more points than today's teams, who all try to play fast, and they did it all with very few injuries compared to today's teams. How did they do that?

RedlessWardrobe said:

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Always remember what the great hall of famer Vin Scully once said about statistics:

"Statistics are like girls wearing bikinis. They show you a lot, but they don't show you everything."

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Thanks. That was a great quote.

Red Auerbach: "I don't pay much attention to statistics. The one thing statistics can't measure is heart."

Great job, SFCB!

SFCityBear said:

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75bear said:

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Most teams are never fully healthy. The difference is most teams usually get less healthy as the season wears on, but we seem to have started the season with injury hiccups.

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It can start even earlier, as many coaches are forced by need to take a chance on signing a recruit who was injured in high school or a transfer who was previously injured, and maybe susceptible to re-injury, or injuring some other related muscle, etc. An example of the first would be Ben Braun signing Leon Powe. Powe was so good, he was very hard to pass up. Braun signed him, and he gave Cal one good year, missed a year with injury, and gave Cal another good year. A more recent example of that would be Mark Fox taking Jalen Celestine. Celestine was injured in high school. He has missed an entire season, and has never been fully healthy in his college career. He was also good enough that it was hard to pass on him. Another was Mark Fox taking the oft-injured Dejuan Clayton. He played only a handful of games for Cal, but it was clear that he was a very talented guard with several skills. He finished the season injured.

Out of necessity, the need to satisfy the Cal fan base, hungry to see good basketball at Cal, and pressure from the Cal Administration to hire a coach who could give us a chance at that, along with having a only a few months to recruit some good players from a small group of talented recruits and transfers, Mark Madsen had to move quickly, and sign the best he could find. Several of those he signed had been previously injured. Aimaq, Tyson, Kennedy, Cone. Of the players he inherited, Celestine, Askew, Bowser, and maybe Curtis were previously injured. Previously injured players often get reinjured or injure a related body part.

As a dinosaur, I come from an era of watching Cal under Nibs Price and Pete Newell, and I don't remember a Cal player getting injured. Cal won a national title in '59 without an injury. I don't remember a Cal player missing a game in 1960, until the NCAA Championship game, when Newell had to pull Darrall Imhoff out of the game, as he was sick with the flu, and exhausted. I don't remember anyone from USF getting injured, except Fred LaCour, who broke his arm over the summer. The game back then was slower, and players did not try and break 50 yard dash records or high jump records when they played. Today, they play much faster, jump much higher, and over-extend themselves to get to the rim against a defender who is overextending himself just as much trying to stop that offensive player. A fertile field for injuries, the injured, and their doctors. The NCAA and the NBA do little to change this and protect the players from injury. I'm not sure they can co anything. There were many teams who played fast in the 1960s, all the great midwest teams out of Indiana and Ohio, or the great UCLA teams of Johnny Wooden. They played very fast, just as fast at today's teams, scored more points than today's teams, who all try to play fast, and they did it all with very few injuries compared to today's teams. How did they do that?

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Great observations regarding injuries! I would add two related factors:

With all the weight training, players are often carrying 10-20 more pounds of muscle and I'm assuming the additional weight and strength adds stress on the joints.

Athletes in high school used to play different sports in the off-season. Some still do, but there is a pressure to specialize in one sport and play that year round, club teams and such. So the athletes' bodies are probably overworked in some areas and underworked in others, also contributing to injury.

"With all the weight training, players are often carrying 10-20 more pounds of muscle and I'm assuming the additional weight and strength adds stress on the joints."

Yes, and I have some examples of pro athletes that had chronic injuries at the joints because of over development of their God given frames:
Tiger Woods, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire.*

*No, I'm not suggesting that any Cal athlete over developed their frame using the methods of the athletes referenced above.

*I can't believe playing one sport year round since boyhood isn't a contributing factor for many. I'm sure the Allocco training regime destroyed Theo Robertson's hips.

An example I was going to cite is Zion Williamson: I have no idea how much of his musculature is natural and how much is due to training, but it sure looks like he has too much strength/bulk to play for a full season without injury.

(Those of you who have followed ZW's career closely, feel free to chime in... )

Big C said:

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SFCityBear said:

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75bear said:

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Most teams are never fully healthy. The difference is most teams usually get less healthy as the season wears on, but we seem to have started the season with injury hiccups.

---

It can start even earlier, as many coaches are forced by need to take a chance on signing a recruit who was injured in high school or a transfer who was previously injured, and maybe susceptible to re-injury, or injuring some other related muscle, etc. An example of the first would be Ben Braun signing Leon Powe. Powe was so good, he was very hard to pass up. Braun signed him, and he gave Cal one good year, missed a year with injury, and gave Cal another good year. A more recent example of that would be Mark Fox taking Jalen Celestine. Celestine was injured in high school. He has missed an entire season, and has never been fully healthy in his college career. He was also good enough that it was hard to pass on him. Another was Mark Fox taking the oft-injured Dejuan Clayton. He played only a handful of games for Cal, but it was clear that he was a very talented guard with several skills. He finished the season injured.

Out of necessity, the need to satisfy the Cal fan base, hungry to see good basketball at Cal, and pressure from the Cal Administration to hire a coach who could give us a chance at that, along with having a only a few months to recruit some good players from a small group of talented recruits and transfers, Mark Madsen had to move quickly, and sign the best he could find. Several of those he signed had been previously injured. Aimaq, Tyson, Kennedy, Cone. Of the players he inherited, Celestine, Askew, Bowser, and maybe Curtis were previously injured. Previously injured players often get reinjured or injure a related body part.

As a dinosaur, I come from an era of watching Cal under Nibs Price and Pete Newell, and I don't remember a Cal player getting injured. Cal won a national title in '59 without an injury. I don't remember a Cal player missing a game in 1960, until the NCAA Championship game, when Newell had to pull Darrall Imhoff out of the game, as he was sick with the flu, and exhausted. I don't remember anyone from USF getting injured, except Fred LaCour, who broke his arm over the summer. The game back then was slower, and players did not try and break 50 yard dash records or high jump records when they played. Today, they play much faster, jump much higher, and over-extend themselves to get to the rim against a defender who is overextending himself just as much trying to stop that offensive player. A fertile field for injuries, the injured, and their doctors. The NCAA and the NBA do little to change this and protect the players from injury. I'm not sure they can co anything. There were many teams who played fast in the 1960s, all the great midwest teams out of Indiana and Ohio, or the great UCLA teams of Johnny Wooden. They played very fast, just as fast at today's teams, scored more points than today's teams, who all try to play fast, and they did it all with very few injuries compared to today's teams. How did they do that?

---

Great observations regarding injuries! I would add two related factors:

With all the weight training, players are often carrying 10-20 more pounds of muscle and I'm assuming the additional weight and strength adds stress on the joints.

Athletes in high school used to play different sports in the off-season. Some still do, but there is a pressure to specialize in one sport and play that year round, club teams and such. So the athletes' bodies are probably overworked in some areas and underworked in others, also contributing to injury.

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All true. John Madden's theory was that athletes had bulked up and trained so hard that they became capable of stretching their frame or skeleton beyond the amount that it could tolerate.

The worst injury I ever saw was in a TV game a few years ago, when a player suffered a compound fracture of his leg, with the broken bone protruding from the skin, with lots of bleeding. Could that have been caused by the overtraining and stronger muscles than his body could tolerate?

SFCityBear said:

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RedlessWardrobe said:

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Always remember what the great hall of famer Vin Scully once said about statistics:

"Statistics are like girls wearing bikinis. They show you a lot, but they don't show you everything."

---

Thanks. That was a great quote.

Red Auerbach: "I don't pay much attention to statistics. The one thing statistics can't measure is heart."

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SFCityBear said:

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The worst injury I ever saw was in a TV game a few years ago, when a player suffered a compound fracture of his leg, with the broken bone protruding from the skin, with lots of bleeding. Could that have been caused by the overtraining and stronger muscles than his body could tolerate?

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When I was a 6-year-old idiot child I had a compound arm fracture. No training, no identifiable muscles, just more enthusiasm than skill.

stu said:

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SFCityBear said:

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The worst injury I ever saw was in a TV game a few years ago, when a player suffered a compound fracture of his leg, with the broken bone protruding from the skin, with lots of bleeding. Could that have been caused by the overtraining and stronger muscles than his body could tolerate?

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When I was a 6-year-old idiot child I had a compound arm fracture. No training, no identifiable muscles, just more enthusiasm than skill.

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Ouch! It hurts me to even think about you having that happen to you.

Do you feel that players today are more susceptible to injuries, and if so why?

I'd like to hear your thoughts.