Starter for Arizona, grew up a Bears fan and wanted to play here. Never heard from Cuonzo/Fox. Also thanks to BC for posting a link! Thought this merited it's own thread.

https://tucson.com/sports/college/basketball/wildcats/men/pascoe/arizona-wildcats-pac-12-haas-pavilion-california-golden-bears-2023/article_a7725f84-a409-11ee-b0f3-c357a82a0274.html

Only explanation I can think of is grades- but Georgetown did offer him. Even still, how did we not reach out when he was a sophomore/junior and at least tell him if he can improve his GPA we'd be interested (if grades were an issue)? Now to be fair, he wasn't especially highly rated out of high school, but then again most of our '19 class was lowly ranked too...

Hurts so much to read some of the quotes in that article:

Quote:

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"Around the Jaylen Brown and Ivan Rabb years, I was getting to a lot of games," Johnson said. "Ivan Rabb was one of the hometown heroes. I looked up to him. I loved that team."
Johnson said he wanted to be the next local hero. But the Bears, coached in those high-achieving years by Cuonzo Martin and later by Wyking Jones and Mark Fox, never called.

"They never really recruited me," Johnson said. "That was that was always my dream school until I started getting recruited" by other schools.

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I can understand Cuonzo not looking at him at the time as a freshman & lowly rated- but what a drop by Wyking/Fox. Also underscores how important it is that we do outreach to the bay area kids! Future ballers should grow up like he did- a huge fan of Jaylen + Rabb and wanted to be the next Golden Bear star!! AHHHHHH

My overall thoughts are

I know there are some restrictions on offering free tickets to recruits above a certain age (14? 15?), as per NCAA. But honestly by that age it is too late-- we should seriously be giving away 100s if not thousands of tickets to every elementary and middle school in the east & south bay every single game. Every boy who is interested in basketball (especially since many kids from the east bay who are priced out of warriors games) should be at Haas, cheering for us & wanting to be like _____ (JB, ivan,... now Tyson or Fardaws or name your player). They should be able to imagine themselves wearing a Cal Bears uniform playing at Haas one day, just like this dude wanted to be like Ivan Rabb.

Even the kids who don't pan out to be basketball stars will still continue to root for Cal forever. And it's not like we're filling seats right now! I mean why not at least get people in Haas for free to make future fans? We have a team that's fun to watch but what's the point if we don't do the marketing and outreach to attract people of all incomes from all over the bay!?

It's clear that the fun era of Cal basketball with Braun, Monty, and Cuonzo made many fans. And I get that Wyking and Fox were so bad that it hurt a bit to watch. But now we have a pretty talented roster & a fun team. Why not do a holiday/Christmas promotion while all the schools are on break that gives back to the bay area community and allows any family with kids under the age of 14 to enter for free. Call it "Christmas at Cal". or "Holidays at Haas". Idk. Kids get to meet the players after the game. Easy.

Simple idea, costs zero to execute, and puts people in seats when we're not coming close to selling out.

Anyways let's win tonight and GO BEARS!!!

100% agree. It was pretty sparse there tonight with a lot of AZ fans around us.

I did notice 1 or 2 groups of kids in the upper side areas. Woulda been nice to have even more future Cal fans there.

Coastal...makes too much sense. Why would Markesha or JK ever do that. "Oh no...would dilute the value of the tickets." What?!