KoreAmBear said:
calumnus said:
Yogi Bear said:
calumnus said:
NVBear78 said:
tsubamoto2001 said:
Brown was an idiot for going to Nevada to begin with. Muss's Method there was to build with transfers. But on the other hand, had Cal hired a competent coach (not Wyking, obviously), it had a great chance to land Brown.
stu said:
PtownBear1 said:
Wonder if Jordan brown is going to go with him.
I thought Brown had planned to be going to the NBA.
Out of curiosity where do you rank our new coach in competence relative to Monty, Martin, Braun, Campanelli, Wyking, Bozeman and Kuchen?
I'd say somewhat below Braun. Fox went 0-2 in the Tournament over 9 seasons. Braun did much better than that. Both are defense first, offensively challenged. Braun was a much better recruiter, though that opinion is partly based on all the guys where he finished second.
Ben Braun never won over 60% of his games in any conference (not even with Siena Heights). Fox won 74% of his games at Nevada.
There is no question that Fox is better than Braun at the coaching piece. The recruiting piece is the part that is the worry.
Fox took over a 25 win Nevada team, held the great recruiting class together when HC Trent Johnson took a better job, and then won at good margin in the WAC until those players were gone an he had to rely on his own recruits.
Braun took over a bad Sienna team and improved them. Braun took over a terrible Eastern Michigan team and made them an NCAA team even making the Sweet 16. He took an underperforming Cal team, lost the best scorer going into the post season, replaced him with a Hall of Fame tight end and still made the Sweet 16.
Now look at Fox's history in the post season. Few appearances and fewer wins. He has never won more than a single game and advanced to the second weekend of any tournament, the NCAA, the NIT or even the CBI. Braun gets in the NIT and we won it. And Braun was the epitome of mediocrity in a power conference. Compare Braun at Cal and Fox at Georgia? I'll take Braun every time.
That said, I hope he is awesome at Cal and Georgia ends up regretting having fired him.
Calumnus, I think you overrate Braun a bit. No question his first year was terrific. While Cal did under perform under Bozeman, they were coming off a 4th place finish in the Pac-10 and got a 12 seed losing to Tim Floyd's Iowa State team. I think that was the Jelani Gardner, Tremaine Fowlkes team that underachieved like crazy. Yet Bozeman still recruited well enough to leave Braun with a lot of talent. Having two future NBA centers, a HOF TE, a very adept PG and a gunner, mostly seniors, helped a lot. Yes Gray was lost to his broken foot, but that still was a very good team (that beat the national champs Arizona during the season).
We had some solid if not exciting years thereafter, but we all know the trajectory. He knew how to develop the walkon program. Probably the best I've seen in terms of walkons.
He was completely awful at Rice, and pretty much never recovered. So I'd say overall Braun is not much better than Fox if at all, and especially not the Braun by the time he got to Rice.
I do not overrate Braun, I was one of Braun's biggest critics on this board. He would put out lineups that excluded our best players in order to match up in man with the other team. He would follow rulesone foul sit, 2 fouls sit for the half, that other coaches easily exploited. He played slow-down pointless offense in the idea that was "defense" too often relying on hero ball as the shot clock expired. He was mediocre and Cal kept him too long. The problem is, all of the above applies to Fox at Georgia too. Between the two, Braun had a better postseason record which is more important to me than regular season winning percentage.
Further on the plus side, Braun was a great finder of talent. He brought in some underrated future conference POYs and finished second on future NBA all-stars and Hall of Faners. He ran a clean program, even donated part of his own salary to the AD. He loved Berkeley and still lives there. And his great relationship with our largest donors cannot be underestimated.
Fox runs a clean program. The rest we will see. However, right now I would rate him below Braun. That is not overrating Braun, it is saying how much I did not like this hire. Again, I hope he greatly exceeds his past performance.