Jeff82;842821369 said:
You can't really put Braun in the coach-em-up camp. I mean, Montgomery won the Pac-12 title primarily with players that Ben had recruited. Braun sort of gets a double-whammy, in that he not only couldn't coach the players he recruited, he also in some cases couldn't keep them eligible, which is an even bigger problem. I do tend to agree with your broader point. The problem with the coach-em-up theory is that you never really know when to pull the plug, because it's always the next year that Monty, Campanelli, etc. would reach critical mass. I'm not sure I agree with you about Campanelli, who was sabotaged by Bozeman, and also by his own inability to keep his temper. Could his inability to control the Kidd group have resulted in a Romar-style collapse? Perhaps, but we don't have the evidence of that, because he was canned before we could find out.
The first Braun year was misleading to most of us. He was following in the heels of a guy who couldn't coach, period, so anything was good by comparison. Braun won with Bozeman's guys, in part because anybody with any idea of how to coach was going to be an improvement.
We got a good idea of how things were going with the Kidd group under Campy, it was worse than a Romar-style collapse. Even taking into account the occasional off night, there is no way they should have lost more than 2 of the 7 games they lost before Campy got fired. They clearly tanked 2 of them in response to being pissed at Campy. The first was the Cornell game, after Campy busted up the post-game spread following the loss in the Meadowlands and then left the team on its own, they lost by 20 to Cornell, and the game wasn't as close as the score would indicate. That team lost by TWENTY to CORNELL!! Why? Because the team was pissed at Lou. Then there was the game against WSU, Cal was up 20 right before the half and allowed a 3 at the buzzer to cut the lead to 17. Campy ripped the team a new one in the locker room when it had a 17 point lead, and that was it, the were done with him. The team said "FU" in its own way to Lou, losing the game by 7, and the backroom plotting began. You can justify the loss in the next game at Tucson, but no way they should have lost at ASU. I suspect it was more distraction by the backroom plotting going on than tanking, but still. Idiot Bockrath checked out the locker room on the trip to the desert the next week, but Campy's foul mouth at that point was an excuse for the real reason he had to be fired, Campy had lost the team due to his own behavior. You're right that Campy was sabotaged by his own inability to keep his temper, but while Bozeman's backroom plotting was designed to help Bockrath see the light, the person Bozeman truly sabotaged was Stanford's current James C. Gaither Assistant Coach of Men's Basketball Jeff Wulbrun, who as Campy's top assistant should have gotten the interim job after Campy lost the team (and deserved to lose his job, Bozeman plotting or no).
In any event, I think too many players regressed under Campy to put him in the coach-em-up camp. The fact that Campy helped KJ defensively and was an improvement over Kuchen doesn't really mean much. Sort of the same deal as with the Braun first year -- didn't take much coaching-em-up to be an improvement over Kuchen.
