For Cal fans, it was such a great win, coming against the best team and the best defensive team in the PAC12. The conference is in a down year, but nevertheless, since the last Cal-WSU game, this was perhaps the least likely win of all the opponents Cal would face until the end of the season. I am so glad for the team that their first win came against Washington, the best team they could have faced, rather than against a weakened WSU team, which had 3 rotation players out with concussion protocols, who could not play against Stanford. Now we can say Cal beat the best the PAC12 has to offer, rather than a bottom dwelling team short three players.
Many Cal fans will predictably go crazy over this, because this losing streak has been so disheartening. We are Cal fans, always blaming this or that, but always looking for that faint glimmer of hope that will return us to former glory. A short while ago, Cal recruited two huge high school stars, Brown and Rabb, and before the ink was dry on their commitment papers, some Cal fans were touting the Cal team would at least make it to the Final Four. After this great win over Washington, some Cal fans are looking at what seed we might get in the NCAA after we win the next 6 games. Ya gotta love Cal fans.
Anyone who has watched sports has seen players and teams who have gone into slumps and losing streaks, even the best of them. In an individual sport like golf, a pro golfer can get hot and over a 2-3 week period, finishing in top 10s and winning a couple of tournaments. Then, for some unexplained reason, he loses his swing and starts missing fairways or greens, or loses his putting stroke, and can't make a putt. He goes south, starts shooting 75, and he spends a year or two with his teacher, trying to find his game again. It is often or usually a mental thing. Look at Klay Thompson. For a month or two, he couldn't buy a bucket. Then he finds himself and is Klay again. When the Schneid hits an entire team, it is really hard to shake, with so many players having lost confidence in themselves. Cal has now taken the first step back to reality. They are not a good team, but they are better than they played during the first half of the PAC12 season, and now have shown it, by beating the best in the PAC12.
Wyking and the coaching staff have a difficult task ahead. First, they have to allow the players to celebrate, but they have to prevent the players from getting so over-confident that they overlook WSU, which the players will likely do. That is natural. But they have to study what they did right and what they did wrong last night, and try to focus on learning from that and improving on it. An encouraging moment for me was the post-game interview with Wyking. He related the players' love for each other in practice, and said he had told them to play that way in the game. He told them to look for a play, not go looking for shots. They did with 22 assists for 30 made buckets. The fact that Wyking said this meant to me that he knows what the right way to play looks like. Whether he is just coming to this realization or not, we don't know, but at least he knows it. Whether he knows how to coach the right way to play, we don't know, but I suspect he has been preaching this all along, and the players and coach have had some difficulty getting on the same page, leading to poor execution in games. Added to that is when a team is in a slump, players will revert to trying to help the team by themselves, trying to play hero, and Wyking Jones has likely had to coach them out of doing that. He doesn't have the option of benching players to make examples of how not to play, because he has hardly any bench to go to. Over the next year or two, whoever the coach is. There will be a longer bench and a full roster by year 4 after Cuonzo.
The hard path ahead for Jones is to keep his players from not getting too high in victory or too low in defeat, and take each game, one at a time. We may go forward and win another game, or 2 or 6. Or we may win none, but the foundation for the future has begun to be made, and the first step was to get out of this crummy slump, which we have now done.
Go Bears!
Many Cal fans will predictably go crazy over this, because this losing streak has been so disheartening. We are Cal fans, always blaming this or that, but always looking for that faint glimmer of hope that will return us to former glory. A short while ago, Cal recruited two huge high school stars, Brown and Rabb, and before the ink was dry on their commitment papers, some Cal fans were touting the Cal team would at least make it to the Final Four. After this great win over Washington, some Cal fans are looking at what seed we might get in the NCAA after we win the next 6 games. Ya gotta love Cal fans.
Anyone who has watched sports has seen players and teams who have gone into slumps and losing streaks, even the best of them. In an individual sport like golf, a pro golfer can get hot and over a 2-3 week period, finishing in top 10s and winning a couple of tournaments. Then, for some unexplained reason, he loses his swing and starts missing fairways or greens, or loses his putting stroke, and can't make a putt. He goes south, starts shooting 75, and he spends a year or two with his teacher, trying to find his game again. It is often or usually a mental thing. Look at Klay Thompson. For a month or two, he couldn't buy a bucket. Then he finds himself and is Klay again. When the Schneid hits an entire team, it is really hard to shake, with so many players having lost confidence in themselves. Cal has now taken the first step back to reality. They are not a good team, but they are better than they played during the first half of the PAC12 season, and now have shown it, by beating the best in the PAC12.
Wyking and the coaching staff have a difficult task ahead. First, they have to allow the players to celebrate, but they have to prevent the players from getting so over-confident that they overlook WSU, which the players will likely do. That is natural. But they have to study what they did right and what they did wrong last night, and try to focus on learning from that and improving on it. An encouraging moment for me was the post-game interview with Wyking. He related the players' love for each other in practice, and said he had told them to play that way in the game. He told them to look for a play, not go looking for shots. They did with 22 assists for 30 made buckets. The fact that Wyking said this meant to me that he knows what the right way to play looks like. Whether he is just coming to this realization or not, we don't know, but at least he knows it. Whether he knows how to coach the right way to play, we don't know, but I suspect he has been preaching this all along, and the players and coach have had some difficulty getting on the same page, leading to poor execution in games. Added to that is when a team is in a slump, players will revert to trying to help the team by themselves, trying to play hero, and Wyking Jones has likely had to coach them out of doing that. He doesn't have the option of benching players to make examples of how not to play, because he has hardly any bench to go to. Over the next year or two, whoever the coach is. There will be a longer bench and a full roster by year 4 after Cuonzo.
The hard path ahead for Jones is to keep his players from not getting too high in victory or too low in defeat, and take each game, one at a time. We may go forward and win another game, or 2 or 6. Or we may win none, but the foundation for the future has begun to be made, and the first step was to get out of this crummy slump, which we have now done.
Go Bears!
SFCityBear
