This year's Bears team is giving me flashbacks to the first couple of Kuchen years. You youngsters can look it up, but it won't actually reveal how torturous it was to watch those teams.

Dick Kuchen was never as bad as The Guy Mike Williams Hired As MBB "Coach".

Coach Dick Kuchen (unlike this guy) had been the top assistant for a major university (Notre Dame) before being hired as Head Coach by Cal. This guy was never a top asiststant anywhere (university, college or high school) before Mike Williams hired him. His lack of experience clearly shows in every aspect.

National publications rated the hiring of The Guy Mike Williams Hired As MBB "coach" as the worst Head Coaching hire of any major school, even worse than the Head Coach hired by Akron Zips (yes, worse than Akron Zips). 1.5 years later, it is clear they were right.

Time For Change Is Now!

Bring Back Respect And Dignity To Cal MBB!

Go Bears!

calbear80 said:

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Dick Kuchen was never as bad as The Guy Mike Williams Hired As MBB "Coach".

Coach Dick Kuchen (unlike this guy) had been the top assistant for a major university (Notre Dame) before being hired as Head Coach by Cal. This guy was never a top asiststant anywhere (university, college or high school) before Mike Williams hired him. His lack of experience clearly shows in every aspect.

National publications rated the hiring of The Guy Mike Williams Hired As MBB "coach" as the worst Head Coaching hire of any major school, even worse than the Head Coach hired by Akron Zips (yes, worse than Akron Zips). 1.5 years later, it is clear they were right.

Time For Change Is Now!

Bring Back Respect And Dignity To Cal MBB!

Go Bears!

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Then you never saw those Kuchen teams. Kuchen had the pedigree - but not the chops while at Cal.

I saw all the Kuchen teams... very closely. His first year, the starting back court consisted of freshmen Kevin Sparks and Mel Holland, each of whom lasted only that year. His second year, his starting "book end" guards were 5-9 Phil Wilhite and 5-9 freshman Michael Chavez (think Brandon Chauca with a more reliable outside shot).

Kuchen was no great shakes as a coach, to be sure, but his teams generally played together and tried to play defense. They didn't achieve ABOVE their talent-level, but they usually played near it. In his later years at Cal, he usually had 3-4 Pac 10 quality players, but one of them was often out for the year with some sort of injury. Campanelli came in and took the four (KJ, Chris Washington, Dave Butler and Leonard Taylor), gave them a needed kick-in-the-butt and started a mini-renaissance for Cal Basketball.

Kuchen never got the Bears even as high as a .500 record in conference (I wanna say we were 14-13, 8-10 in his "best" year), but he left the program in slightly better shape than when he arrived and was usually a pretty good guy.

ncbears said:

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calbear80 said:

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Dick Kuchen was never as bad as The Guy Mike Williams Hired As MBB "Coach".

Coach Dick Kuchen (unlike this guy) had been the top assistant for a major university (Notre Dame) before being hired as Head Coach by Cal. This guy was never a top asiststant anywhere (university, college or high school) before Mike Williams hired him. His lack of experience clearly shows in every aspect.

National publications rated the hiring of The Guy Mike Williams Hired As MBB "coach" as the worst Head Coaching hire of any major school, even worse than the Head Coach hired by Akron Zips (yes, worse than Akron Zips). 1.5 years later, it is clear they were right.

Time For Change Is Now!

Bring Back Respect And Dignity To Cal MBB!

Go Bears!

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Then you never saw those Kuchen teams. Kuchen had the pedigree - but not the chops while at Cal.

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No disrespect to Kuchen as a person, but he was a terrible coach and those were terrible teams. Kuchen came in with the rep as a master recruiter, which was why he was a top assistant, but Jones has recruited better talent. Neither of them showed much in the way of game coaching chops. It's a fair comparison.

Big C said:

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I saw all the Kuchen teams... very closely. His first year, the starting back court consisted of freshmen Kevin Sparks and Mel Holland, each of whom lasted only that year. His second year, his starting "book end" guards were 5-9 Phil Wilhite and 5-9 freshman Michael Chavez (think Brandon Chauca with a more reliable outside shot).

Kuchen was no great shakes as a coach, to be sure, but his teams generally played together and tried to play defense. They didn't achieve ABOVE their talent-level, but they usually played near it. In his later years at Cal, he usually had 3-4 Pac 10 quality players, but one of them was often out for the year with some sort of injury. Campanelli came in and took the four (KJ, Chris Washington, Dave Butler and Leonard Taylor), gave them a needed kick-in-the-butt and started a mini-renaissance for Cal Basketball.

Kuchen never got the Bears even as high as a .500 record in conference (I wanna say we were 14-13, 8-10 in his "best" year), but he left the program in slightly better shape than when he arrived and was usually a pretty good guy.

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Chavez was a much more complete player than Chauca IMO.

59bear said:

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Big C said:

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I saw all the Kuchen teams... very closely. His first year, the starting back court consisted of freshmen Kevin Sparks and Mel Holland, each of whom lasted only that year. His second year, his starting "book end" guards were 5-9 Phil Wilhite and 5-9 freshman Michael Chavez (think Brandon Chauca with a more reliable outside shot).

Kuchen was no great shakes as a coach, to be sure, but his teams generally played together and tried to play defense. They didn't achieve ABOVE their talent-level, but they usually played near it. In his later years at Cal, he usually had 3-4 Pac 10 quality players, but one of them was often out for the year with some sort of injury. Campanelli came in and took the four (KJ, Chris Washington, Dave Butler and Leonard Taylor), gave them a needed kick-in-the-butt and started a mini-renaissance for Cal Basketball.

Kuchen never got the Bears even as high as a .500 record in conference (I wanna say we were 14-13, 8-10 in his "best" year), but he left the program in slightly better shape than when he arrived and was usually a pretty good guy.

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Chavez was a much more complete player than Chauca IMO.

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Yeah, Chavez was a decent PG by his junior/senior years, but, especially early on, he wasn't able to hide the fact that he was 5-9 and not all that fast or explosive (though quick). He always had the outside shot that Chauca was SUPPOSED to have, but didn't.

Agree that Chauca, all-around, wasn't as good as Chavez (which wasn't all that good in the first place), but maybe if he had had a reliable outside shot, he could've earned some playing time and built up his game a little bit, from there.