OaktownBear said:
SFCityBear said:
BeachedBear said:
helltopay1 said:
Dear Beached: The "evidence" suggests that Cal is
lacking depth
lacks a reliable inside presence
lacks a true PG
does not have enough perimeter shooters
"Evidence" also suggests that if you solve the four variables listed above, thge "coaching " miraculously improves. Next year, variables #1 and #4 will be solved. Variables #2 and #3 will be improved slightly. Next year, cal will be significantly improved. I suggest holding onto your season tickets. Two years from now, Cal will be even better than next year. ( I'm assuming everyone, including the coaches, stay.) My deceased parakeet understands this. Cannot speak for any other species alive or otherwise.
I'm still on the fence about renewal. If I lived full time in the bay area and I could get any of my friends to join me at games, it is a slam dunk. However, I'm usually flying down for weekends and most of my friends are too fed up to join me at Cal games (the Wed/Sun games also make long weekends tougher to work). But I can separate my personal renewal decision from an objective evaluation of our coaching staff.
Here is a bit more evidence:
The rate of development of players is too slow.
The number of fundamental mistakes is too high.
The number of in game adjustments is too few.
The effectiveness of adjustments is poor.
Recruiting challenges seem too big a hurdle for this staff.
Support for this program is pretty low and waning further.
Players only have four seasons to develop (at best).
All of those, to some extent, are coaching flaws. Wyking taking this team to a 'competitive level' in two years is the best upside I've heard anyone mention. And that is the peak - and based primarily on hope and a little improvement over the last 6 gamesthat most programs show prior to conference play.
Look, Jones and this team appear to be improving. But it is very slight and waaaay too slow compared to about 350 other programs. I like that you support him. I support him at the games. He is our coach. But I can also be critical. My kids love me. I support them. But when they screw up, I let them know and expect improvement comparable to their peers. Jones is simply not measuring up to his peers.
You make good points, but how many coaches have almost literally no upperclassmen on their team? Along with having no big men (jury is out on whether Vanover's recent flashes of improvement are real going forward)?. Have you followed any other D1 coaches this year with so young, raw, and inexperienced talent? In my experience as a fan, the gap in being able to play well at this level between the average freshman and the average junior seems to be huge, and the gap between the average soph and the average senior is equally huge. Cal's opponents almost always present Cal with a three or more players 6-9 to 7-0 to deal with, which even in the era of more long rebounds is unsurmountable. You can go out there and compete with 6-6 guys if they are Wes Unseld or Paul Silas. I don't disagree with anything you say, but I think you are laying a little too much on the coach. He is not doing enough, and he's made some poor decisions, but he can only do so much with what he has to work with. This is by far the youngest team I have ever seen at Cal in over 60 years of watching Cal play basketball.
SFCity, you have made some good points in Jones favor through the season, but lately you have been overreaching. Yes, experience and size matter, but they aren't the only things that matter. Seattle You used this argument to argue that the Seattle loss was understandable. It wasn't. is 1-7 in a terrible conference. Their win is against a team that sucks every year even at their level and that is winless in conference. In conference, Seattle is 0-7 against New Mexico State, The Grand Canyon Antelopes, The Utah Valley State Wolverines, Cal State Bakersfield Roadrunners, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Vaqueros, the California Baptist Lancers, and the UMKC Kangaroos.
Quote:
No Pac-12 team should lose to that team. It cannot be excused. They suck. Their players suck. They have no business on the same floor with Pac-12 players. Yes they have a more experienced, bigger and vastly less talented roster.
I do not think Jones has a roster that allows for success this season. That doesn't mean he has a roster that excuses crash and burn failure. At some point having a better shooting percentage but worse win loss percentage than the previous worst team in decades is not enough improvement.
I think all of us often look only at the wins and the losses and form our opinions based on that. If we look at the actual games, the actual box scores, and the team's statistics, we can learn a little more of what happened. Did you do that? If you had done that, you would have seen that Seattle has played nearly all of its conference season without two starters. They are basically a 6 man rotation, and they were down to four for most of the conference games.
Seattle beat Washington State earlier in the season, when Seattle players were healthy. I know WSU is not a good team, but WSU is a PAC12 team, and they just knocked off traditional PAC12 powerhouse Arizona in Tucson. You accuse me of overreaching, but you are wildly exaggerating about the quality of the Seattle team, because you are not taking into account the injuries they've had. You've followed basketball enough to know an injury or two can ruin a team's season (Remember Bird and Wallace down with injury in the NCAA, and even though Cal had Brown and Rabb, they were badly beaten by an inferior Hawaii team) Many of us excuse that Cal loss, and I think the Seattle situation is similar, except that it is lasting for more games for Seattle.
I warned early in the season that we needed to look out for Seattle after they beat WSU. They also lost to Washington by only 8 points, and it looks like UW may be the best team in the PAC 12. Seattle was 11-3 before playing Cal, and there were perhaps one or two PAC12 teams Seattle might have been able to beat. One key to beating Seattle is how you handle 6-9 Myles Carter. Carter went off on Cal getting 13 rebounds and 26 points. Cal has no big men, no answer for a guy like Carter. UW held him to 15 points and 7 rebounds. UW has experienced big men. Cal does not.
I stand by what I said. Cal's young, less experienced and shorter players have a very hard time playing against bigger more experienced players. Seattle's players are all more experienced than Cal's players, AND THEY HAVE BEEN PLAYING TOGETHER FOR 2-3 YEARS. It was the same when we played USF, who many fans though Cal should have been able to beat. They had bigger more experienced players who have been playing together for 2-3 years, and for USF, those were 20 win seasons, as I remember.
You could still be right that Jones coaching is more responsible for all the losses than the inexperience of the players, and the lack of height, but I'd need to see better examples than Seattle to believe you.
SFCityBear