Uh wouldn't we take a "Ben Braun hire" all over again if we could? You wouldn't want to replicate Braun's first 6-years after the last two?

Uh go back and read his first sentence.

calumnus said:

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All I am saying is that as a coach, he reminds me of Ben Braun, not the Ben Braun we hired, the one we fired and Rice hired. Why compare him to Johnson? Did you hear me say we should hire Johnson? I just said that Fox's best results were with Fox's recruits and trended downward after, in a similar way Braun's best results were with Bozeman's recruits and trended down after. That 2006 Nevada team started 3 seniors and 2 juniors, with the next 2 off the bench also juniors, ie all Johnson recruits/signees.

Everything you say about Fox can be said double about Braun. Braun had FOURTEEN 20 win seasons under his belt. He took Eastern Michigan to the Sweet 16. He took Cal the Sweet 16 his first year after losing our prolific primary scorer. He won the NIT with a bunch of JC transfers. He had a winning Pac10/12 conference record and had Cal in the postseason 8 out of 12 years (I have no idea how many PAC-12 tournament games Braun won).

You complained a lot about Cuonzo's offense as I remember. Have you ever seen Fox's Georgia teams play? Again, he reminds me of Braun.

Both Braun and Fox were once hot coaching commodities, having won a lot of games in weaker leagues.

Braun accomplished a lot more at a power conference level. After being fired by Cal, he was hired by Rice for the next season.

There is a reason Fox had zero offers for a year after getting fired.

For many reasons I think it was a bad hire. That said, it is done and we will all hope for the best. He is definitely competent and people can learn and grow at any stage of their career. I am glad you are so optimistic, I hope you prove to be right on this.

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I can understand the points you are trying to make, but now you want to bring Ben Braun into the discussion, and that is a whole different subject. I think the Cal Admin did not hire Braun primarily to resurrect a losing program, but to resurrect the University's reputation by running a squeaky clean program without a hint of impropriety. If we won big under Braun, that would only be icing on the cake. The current admin wants primarily to reestablish Cal's basketball reputation, which had not been a losing one for many years until the arrival of Wyking Jones.

I compared Fox to Johnson, because I was talking about Fox at Nevada, and he had a much better record at Nevada than Johnson did. I think you meant to say, "Fox's best results were with Johnson's recruits," not with Fox's recruits. From here on, you confused me. I was talking about 2005, Fox's 1st season's roster, compared to Johnson's 2004 roster, but you want to talk about Fox's 2006 roster. Very well, let's do that: Fox's starters in 2006, his second season at Nevada, according to sports-reference.com, were Fazekas (JR), Shiloh (JR), Charlo (JR), Sessions (FR), and Kemp (SO). The rest of an 8-man rotation was Johnson (JR, a JC transfer), Bell (JR), and Burleson (SO). Fazekas, Shiloh, Kemp, and Bell were Johnson recruits. Kemp did not play for Fox in 2005, due to injury or eligiblity. The only seniors on the 2006 team were Charlo, who was a Fox recruit out of JC, and Bell, a Johnson recruit, a 7 footer who averaged 3 points and 3 rebounds and looks like he was almost irrelevant. So 3 starters were Johnson recruits, 2 were Fox's recruits, and of the rotation, Johnson and Burleson were Fox recruits and Bell a Johnson recruit.

BTW, Fox did recruit some good players at Nevada: JaVale McGee, Ramon Sessions, Luke Babbitt, and Armon Johnson. Like many coaches, he gets some, but not enough.

I was critical of Cuonzo's offense, and I was critical of Braun's offense (and his defense) as well. I haven't seen Fox's Georgia teams play. You might like this Georgia grad's view of Fox: http://section925.com/sports/2019/3/30/a-georgia-grad-lends-his-insight-on-mark-fox-californias-new-basketball-coach

I wrote in another post about not considering only Fox's Georgia record, because even though Georgia is a member of the SEC conference, their record as a program is not even as good as WSU's record in the PAC12. Georgia is a perennial doormat in the SEC. Fox was asked to establish a winning program there when the school has a losing record over their history since joining the SEC. They stink, they have nearly always stunk. Places like Georgia and WSU can be a burial ground for coaches. In Georgia's case they have a few coaches who coached there, and never got hired to coach again, maybe like our Wyking will turn out, though I wish him the best in recovering his reputation. Fox will be starting at a school which has a good basketball reputation

How do you know that "Fox had zero offers for a year after getting fired"? Did he reveal that? Isn't it possible he wanted a year off from one of the most stressful professions to get away from the game, regain his energy and enthusiasm, and decide what he wants to do with the rest of his life?

I don't feel comfortable being optimistic about a coach I know nothing much about. I guess what I am is anti-pessimistic. I just don't want to bury this guy before he gets started, which is sort of what happened with Wyking. The only optimism surrounding him in the pre-season seemed to be the administration's and his own, and very little positive, and a whole lot negative coming from the fans, and I was guilty of that as well. I want to just wait and see.

SFCityBear said:

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calumnus said:

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All I am saying is that as a coach, he reminds me of Ben Braun, not the Ben Braun we hired, the one we fired and Rice hired. Why compare him to Johnson? Did you hear me say we should hire Johnson? I just said that Fox's best results were with Fox's recruits and trended downward after, in a similar way Braun's best results were with Bozeman's recruits and trended down after. That 2006 Nevada team started 3 seniors and 2 juniors, with the next 2 off the bench also juniors, ie all Johnson recruits/signees.

Everything you say about Fox can be said double about Braun. Braun had FOURTEEN 20 win seasons under his belt. He took Eastern Michigan to the Sweet 16. He took Cal the Sweet 16 his first year after losing our prolific primary scorer. He won the NIT with a bunch of JC transfers. He had a winning Pac10/12 conference record and had Cal in the postseason 8 out of 12 years (I have no idea how many PAC-12 tournament games Braun won).

You complained a lot about Cuonzo's offense as I remember. Have you ever seen Fox's Georgia teams play? Again, he reminds me of Braun.

Both Braun and Fox were once hot coaching commodities, having won a lot of games in weaker leagues.

Braun accomplished a lot more at a power conference level. After being fired by Cal, he was hired by Rice for the next season.

There is a reason Fox had zero offers for a year after getting fired.

For many reasons I think it was a bad hire. That said, it is done and we will all hope for the best. He is definitely competent and people can learn and grow at any stage of their career. I am glad you are so optimistic, I hope you prove to be right on this.

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I can understand the points you are trying to make, but now you want to bring Ben Braun into the discussion, and that is a whole different subject. I think the Cal Admin did not hire Braun primarily to resurrect a losing program, but to resurrect the University's reputation by running a squeaky clean program without a hint of impropriety. If we won big under Braun, that would only be icing on the cake. The current admin wants primarily to reestablish Cal's basketball reputation, which had not been a losing one for many years until the arrival of Wyking Jones.

I compared Fox to Johnson, because I was talking about Fox at Nevada, and he had a much better record at Nevada than Johnson did. I think you meant to say, "Fox's best results were with Johnson's recruits," not with Fox's recruits. From here on, you confused me. I was talking about 2005, Fox's 1st season's roster, compared to Johnson's 2004 roster, but you want to talk about Fox's 2006 roster. Very well, let's do that: Fox's starters in 2006, his second season at Nevada, according to sports-reference.com, were Fazekas (JR), Shiloh (JR), Charlo (JR), Sessions (FR), and Kemp (SO). The rest of an 8-man rotation was Johnson (JR, a JC transfer), Bell (JR), and Burleson (SO). Fazekas, Shiloh, Kemp, and Bell were Johnson recruits. Kemp did not play for Fox in 2005, due to injury or eligiblity. The only seniors on the 2006 team were Charlo, who was a Fox recruit out of JC, and Bell, a Johnson recruit, a 7 footer who averaged 3 points and 3 rebounds and looks like he was almost irrelevant. So 3 starters were Johnson recruits, 2 were Fox's recruits, and of the rotation, Johnson and Burleson were Fox recruits and Bell a Johnson recruit.

BTW, Fox did recruit some good players at Nevada: JaVale McGee, Ramon Sessions, Luke Babbitt, and Armon Johnson. Like many coaches, he gets some, but not enough.

I was critical of Cuonzo's offense, and I was critical of Braun's offense (and his defense) as well. I haven't seen Fox's Georgia teams play. You might like this Georgia grad's view of Fox: http://section925.com/sports/2019/3/30/a-georgia-grad-lends-his-insight-on-mark-fox-californias-new-basketball-coach

I wrote in another post about not considering only Fox's Georgia record, because even though Georgia is a member of the SEC conference, their record as a program is not even as good as WSU's record in the PAC12. Georgia is a perennial doormat in the SEC. Fox was asked to establish a winning program there when the school has a losing record over their history since joining the SEC. They stink, they have nearly always stunk. Places like Georgia and WSU can be a burial ground for coaches. In Georgia's case they have a few coaches who coached there, and never got hired to coach again, maybe like our Wyking will turn out, though I wish him the best in recovering his reputation. Fox will be starting at a school which has a good basketball reputation

How do you know that "Fox had zero offers for a year after getting fired"? Did he reveal that? Isn't it possible he wanted a year off from one of the most stressful professions to get away from the game, regain his energy and enthusiasm, and decide what he wants to do with the rest of his life?

I don't feel comfortable being optimistic about a coach I know nothing much about. I guess what I am is anti-pessimistic. I just don't want to bury this guy before he gets started, which is sort of what happened with Wyking. The only optimism surrounding him in the pre-season seemed to be the administration's and his own, and very little positive, and a whole lot negative coming from the fans, and I was guilty of that as well. I want to just wait and see.

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Georgia is not Washington State. And you cannot look at their whole history. Georgia did not even allow African Americans as students until 1961. The first African American to play basketball in the SEC was 1 player for Vanderbilt in 1968. Ronnie Hogue in 1971 was the first African American player for Georgia, later that year 3 African Americans were signed to the football team for the first time ever.

However, at this point, USC is probably a better analogy. The state of Georgia, especially Atlanta, is one of the best recruiting home grounds in the SEC or the country. The 18 year span from 1979 to 1997 under Hugh Durham and especially Tubby Smith, Georgia's first African American coach, Georgia averaged more than 19 wins per season and made the post season regularly, with a Final Four in 1983 and a Sweet 16 in 1996 (beating #1 seed Purdue and losing to #4 Syracuse in OT).

Fox did not leave Crean much and the results show it, but Crean's first recruiting class was decent (two four star players 4 of 5 from Georgia) and his incoming class is ranked #10 in the country and features 5 star shooting guard Anthony Edwards out of Atlanta, the #2 ranked player in the country, plus four 4 star players. That is 5 players in the top 100.

It simply isn't true that Georgia hindered Fox in any way. People were successful there before and will be successful after. Don't let that change your optimism though. Just because he was not successful at Georgia does not mean he won't be at Cal.

Maybe your hero Pete Newell is a good example for optimism: successful at USF (70-37) then unsuccessful at Michigan State (45-42, his final year finishing 8th in the Big 10) then coming to Cal and having great success (after a horrible first year)?

There was a long line of Hall of Fame coaches lined up outside of Haas wanting to take this job. I don't understand why we didn't pick one of them instead of Fox.

GBear4Life said:

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Uh wouldn't we take a "Ben Braun hire" all over again if we could?

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I'd aim higher

Nobody with a track record better than Braun is taking the Cal job.

Musselmans and Montgomerys were home run outliers that were an aberration.

The aim is to have a better program than how Braun finished. Hiring an up and comer or Fox doesn't change that.

calumnus said:

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Georgia is not Washington State. And you cannot look at their whole history. Georgia did not even allow African Americans as students until 1961. The first African American to play basketball in the SEC was 1 player for Vanderbilt in 1968. Ronnie Hogue in 1971 was the first African American player for Georgia, later that year 3 African Americans were signed to the football team for the first time ever.

However, at this point, USC is probably a better analogy. The state of Georgia, especially Atlanta, is one of the best recruiting home grounds in the SEC or the country. The 18 year span from 1979 to 1997 under Hugh Durham and especially Tubby Smith, Georgia's first African American coach, Georgia averaged more than 19 wins per season and made the post season regularly, with a Final Four in 1983 and a Sweet 16 in 1996 (beating #1 seed Purdue and losing to #4 Syracuse in OT).

Fox did not leave Crean much and the results show it, but Crean's first recruiting class was decent (two four star players 4 of 5 from Georgia) and his incoming class is ranked #10 in the country and features 5 star shooting guard Anthony Edwards out of Atlanta, the #2 ranked player in the country, plus four 4 star players. That is 5 players in the top 100.

It simply isn't true that Georgia hindered Fox in any way. People were successful there before and will be successful after. Don't let that change your optimism though. Just because he was not successful at Georgia does not mean he won't be at Cal.

Maybe your hero Pete Newell is a good example for optimism: successful at USF (70-37) then unsuccessful at Michigan State (45-42, his final year finishing 8th in the Big 10) then coming to Cal and having great success (after a horrible first year)?

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How can you just dismiss all the years of little or no success in Georgia's history just because they didn't accept black players during those years? For most of those same years, Cal didn't accept black players either and Cal won 8 Conference championships before Newell and the first black players arrived in 1954. And only one black player, Earl Robinson was a starter in just two of Newell's four conference championships. Bob Washington was a reserve on the '59 team. Cal won all the titles before Newell, plus a Final Four appearance in 1946 with only white players, just like Georgia (and probably Washington State) had on their rosters for the same years. BTW, in 1941, WSU was 26-6, won the PCC, and lost in the NCAA Final. (I couldn't believe it either.) Georgia did not have good coaching or good recruiting throughout much of their history. I just don't think Georgia is a popular place for a young Georgia high school star to go to college and play basketball. Fox's teams were loaded with Georgia players, but very few good ones, with Caldwell-Pope the exception.

The only success Georgia has ever had began in the Southern Conference, of which Georgia was a member from 1921-1932, and in 1931 they were conference champion and in 1932 they won the conference tourney. In 1933, Georgia and several schools left the conference to form the SEC. Rex Enright coached Georgia from 1933-38, and went 52-49. Elmer Lampe coached Georgia from 1939-47 and went 82-92. Red Lawson was a real winner he coached Georgia from 1952 to 1965 and went 112-241, a 0.317 percentage. How he never got fired in all those years is beyond me. He was followed by Ken Rosemond, from 1966-73, who went 92-111 (he had to have recruited some of those black players), and he in turn was followed by another SEC coaching giant, John Guthrie, from 1974-78, who went 46-86, a 0.348 percentage, in an era where presumably was recruiting black players.

Hugh Durham followed Guthrie and did have a winning record 298-216, a 0.580 percentage, but it was not as good a record as he had previously with Florida State, from 1967-78, a 0.708 percentage. Durham's teams averaged 17.5 points. In 17 years, he had only four 20-win seasons, and took Georgia to the NCAA only 5 times (which is not regularly) and reached the Final Four once. He won one SEC title.

Durham was followed by Tubby Smith for a cup of coffee, two years, 2 NCAA invites and a trip to the Sweet 16. Then things came apart for Georgia. Jim Harrick gets hired, has two NCAA invites in 4 years, but puts the program on probation for payments to players. Harrick would never coach again.

Harrick was followed by Dennis Felton, who had an excellent record at Western Kentucky, 100-54, and a 0.649 percentage. At Georgia from 2004-09, he was almost a complete flop, going 84-91 with only one good year, 2008, where Georgia won the conference tourney and got an NCAA bid.

I don't live in Georgia, so I have little knowledge of Georgia basketball, other than what the record shows. It does not look like Georgia is a very good basketball school, never won much, and they hired coaches who were successful elsewhere, but not so much when they came to Georgia, or hired coaches who just could not win much or recruit very well. Georgia has had few All-Americans, but they did have Domenique. In all these years, they had only 3 SEC players of the year, and two of them were recruited by and played under Mark Fox. California is Cal's traditional source of recruits and hopefully Fox can adjust to things here and do a better job of landing good players than was done by Wyking Jones.

BearNakedLadies said:

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GBear4Life said:

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Uh wouldn't we take a "Ben Braun hire" all over again if we could?

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I'd aim higher

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Exactly. I'd rather take a chance and hire an up and comer which success at a lower level and hope they can do well at a higher level and achieve great things at Cal. Georgia took that chance when they hired Fox out of Nevada. After 9 years of never getting there they fired him. We aren't hiring the up and coming Fox out of Nevada, we are hiring him a year after getting fired after 9 years of mediocrity at Georgia. It is why it was called a "head scratcher" by the pundits. Instead Georgia hired a coach who has had success at a higher level, Tom Crean, who just brought in the #10 recruiting class in the country.

annarborbear said:

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There was a long line of Hall of Fame coaches lined up outside of Haas wanting to take this job. I don't understand why we didn't pick one of them instead of Fox.

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I know you are being facetious, but who knows who we might have come up with if we actually did an extensive search instead of just hiring one of two (?) candidates presented by the search firm after a two day search?

Anyway, it is a done deal. No use arguing against the process and decision at this point. I'd rather be optimistic myself and don't like being on this side of the equation prior to the season so I will hold my tongue when SFCity and others defend the hire by pointing to his "great" record at Georgia given Georgia"s history before 1975 or how "at least he is better than Wyking" or "nobody better would ever come to Cal and take our $8.5 million plus incentives."

I will shut up until we have some actual results on the court to discuss.

Go Bears!

When you ask Fox-haters what Cal should have done, their lips start to flap, and then they'll inevitably concede they want a mid-major "up and comer" who is too green to have much of a track record to speak of anyways. I wasn't opposed to that route, but it's a poor argument against Fox hire.

GBear4Life said:

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When you ask Fox-haters what Cal should have done, their lips start to flap, and then they'll inevitably concede they want a mid-major "up and comer" who is too green to have much of a track record to speak of anyways. I wasn't opposed to that route, but it's a poor argument against Fox hire.

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First, I do not "hate" Fox, though I am not a fan of his style, he is a competent coach, by all accounts a good person. I simply would not have hired him as the guy to pay $millions to resurrect Cal basketball. And I don't blame him at all for taking a good job at a power conference in a great area paying $millions of dollars when he doesn't have a job. The guy I am taking issue with is Knowlton.

Here is what I wanted: anticipate in the midst of a horrific season for one of your two premier sports that you might be making a coaching change. Do a real search, see who is interested, including people who are currently coaching elsewhere. You don't know who is available if you don't ask. There are 351 Division 1 basketball teams. Asking Cal fans on a message board to come up with the candidate is almost as ridiculous as just having a search firm give you a couple candidates off of their set list. Knowlton gets paid $517,000 a year to do this and other than hiring the head football coach, it is his most important task, one that will impact the entire department for years to come.

But just like that I took the bait....well played.

I don't get this hate for search firms. Should every AD, let alone a new one to a power conference possess an almost unlimited network of the best candidates in every sport?

The firm identifies candidates based on criteria the AD sets. It's all the AD from there in selecting candidates to interview and select etc.

Plus, it's Cal. Otherwise, for any AD the choice would have been obvious without any help of a search firm: Rick Pitino.

GBear4Life said:

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I don't get this hate for search firms. Should every AD, let alone a new one to a power conference possess an almost unlimited network of the best candidates in every sport?

The firm identifies candidates based on criteria the AD sets. It's all the AD from there in selecting candidates to interview and select etc.

Plus, it's Cal. Otherwise, for any AD the choice would have been obvious without any help of a search firm: Rick Pitino.

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Good thought. He is obviously a great coach, but Cal would never hire him, I believe, because of all the scandals he was involved in at Louisville. We've been there, done that, with Todd Bozeman (minus the great coach part), and Cal was a long time recovering from that unfortunate hire. Cal is on thin ice when it comes to attracting great recruits, and any scandal would kill whatever chance we might have for future recruits for some time to come.

Nothing was ever proven against Pitino.

Nevertheless, Pitino would be on bended knee for Cal job, and the message could be sent home to him loud and clear. He agrees, everybody's comfortable, you move forward.

But yeah, a pipe dream at Cal. Sad.

GBear4Life said:

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Nothing was ever proven against Pitino.

Nevertheless, Pitino would be on bended knee for Cal job, and the message could be sent home to him loud and clear. He agrees, everybody's comfortable, you move forward.

But yeah, a pipe dream at Cal. Sad.

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An accusation in the media is often believed by many, and that belief can last forever, even when it hasn't been proved. Also sad.

SFCityBear said:

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GBear4Life said:

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Nothing was ever proven against Pitino.

Nevertheless, Pitino would be on bended knee for Cal job, and the message could be sent home to him loud and clear. He agrees, everybody's comfortable, you move forward.

But yeah, a pipe dream at Cal. Sad.

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An accusation in the media is often believed by many, and that belief can last forever, even when it hasn't been proved. Also sad.

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Don't get me wrong, I still think Pitino is culpable (maybe responsible is a better word) even if he had zero knowledge of any of it. If your assistants are going behind your back to make bribes and violate NCAA rules, they either don't respect you, or you hire bad character people which reflects poorly on you, or you gave their behavior your tacit endorsement.

The key for Pitino is it wasn't his first run-in at Louisville. I would hope that incident in isolation would not get him fired.

calumnus said:

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BearNakedLadies said:

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GBear4Life said:

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Uh wouldn't we take a "Ben Braun hire" all over again if we could?

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I'd aim higher

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Exactly. I'd rather take a chance and hire an up and comer which success at a lower level and hope they can do well at a higher level and achieve great things at Cal. Georgia took that chance when they hired Fox out of Nevada. After 9 years of never getting there they fired him. We aren't hiring the up and coming Fox out of Nevada, we are hiring him a year after getting fired after 9 years of mediocrity at Georgia. It is why it was called a "head scratcher" by the pundits. Instead Georgia hired a coach who has had success at a higher level, Tom Crean, who just brought in the #10 recruiting class in the country.

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So, I have $100 to put on an investment. I have my eye on a company that has been in business a few years. They've grown a ton. Early days. They are about ready to really make a push into the national market with the big boys. It's really risky. They could hit the market and find they just don't have a national appeal or the competitors are too strong. But they also could be on the cusp of something really good. They've done a really good job setting up their business to this point. I can get the stock cheap because no one has heard of them yet.

Or, I could take that $100 and put it on a mature, experienced company. 10 years ago they were in exactly the same position as the first. They went national. Got some fleeting attention. Grew a little. Then their earnings went down 4 straight years. Maybe they are ready to stabilize and bounce back and my $100 could be worth a whopping $101 dollars next year. Or maybe it is just clear it isn't going anywhere and my $100 is worth $50 next year.

This I know. Hiring somebody because you can make excuses for his mediocrity is not the same as having positive reasons for the hire. I've seen posts like SFCity's before. They were on the Udub board when they hired Keith Gilbertson. They were made on this board by Stanford Observer when they hired Buddy Teevans. I think for Cal, of all schools, to look at any other school and say "we are going to hire your mediocre coach because we think he has a greater chance of succeeding here than he did at your school" is EXTRAORDINARILY questionable. You can argue how hard it is to succeed at Georgia, but it is hard to argue that Cal is an easy place to succeed. And wouldn't you rather hire a coach where you talk about how well he has done rather than talk about the reasons why he couldn't do well at the last place?

Georgia made a good hire when they hired Fox. Not all good hires work out especially when it is a promotion to a new level. That hire didn't work out. Fox would have been a good hire for a mid major. He succeeded there before, maybe he could again.

Unless there was somebody better, Cal should have hired DeCuire. He had the support of Monty, of the Cal players that played for him, of the people at Cal who worked along side him and he went off and had success at a mid major. Like Fox at Georgia, it might not have worked. But at least you aren't buy a coach with your primary hope being a dead cat bounce.

calumnus said:

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annarborbear said:

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There was a long line of Hall of Fame coaches lined up outside of Haas wanting to take this job. I don't understand why we didn't pick one of them instead of Fox.

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I know you are being facetious, but who knows who we might have come up with if we actually did an extensive search instead of just hiring one of two (?) candidates presented by the search firm after a two day search?

Anyway, it is a done deal. No use arguing against the process and decision at this point. I'd rather be optimistic myself and don't like being on this side of the equation prior to the season so I will hold my tongue when SFCity and others defend the hire by pointing to his "great" record at Georgia given Georgia"s history before 1975 or how "at least he is better than Wyking" or "nobody better would ever come to Cal and take our $8.5 million plus incentives."

I will shut up until we have some actual results on the court to discuss.

Go Bears!

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Just to set the record straight, I did not ever say or imply that Mark Fox had a "great" record at Georgia. I was trying to point out facts that would counter your claim that Fox "spent the last 9 years not achieving anything." I pointed out that Fox had achieved some things at Georgia, not enough things for you and me and many other fans, but they were achievements.

I like to look at a coach over 4-5 seasons as a head coach to evaluate them, so I can see what he does with a roster entirely made up of his own recruits. Georgia has had 14 head coaches since they joined the SEC. Eight of those coaches stayed 3 years or more. Of those eight coaches, Hugh Durham was the best, the best that Georgia ever had. He coached Georgia for 17 seasons and had a winning percentage of 0.580. Do you know where that would rank on the list of Cal's best coaches since joining the PCC? He would rank 7th best, behind Earl Wright, Pete Newell, Mike Montgomery, Cuonzo Martin, Nibs Price, and Ben Braun. The Georgia coach who coached 3 years or more with the second best record is Jim Harrick, but I would disqualify him from the discussion because he put Georgia on probation, just as I disqualify Todd Bozeman from any discussion of Cal's best coaches for the same reason. So that leaves Mark Fox as the second best coach who stayed 3 years or more at Georgia with a 0.551 winning percentage. That, in my mind, is an achievement for Georgia basketball, given that the school has an overall losing record.

Other coaches have come to Georgia for a cup of coffee, usually 2 years, and done better, usually because they were left enough good players to start with. Tubby Smith might have been Georgia's best coach ever, percentage wise, staying only two years. He inherited a roster from Hugh Durham that lost only two players out of a 9-man rotation to graduation, an 18-10 team and took that that team to a 21-10 record in his first season and a trip to the SW16. Tubby's second season might have been an even better coaching (or recruiting) job, as 6 more of Durham's seniors had graduated, and he took that team to a 24-9 record.

I see you are sort of giving Tom Crean a pass for his poor record at Georgia in his first year, by saying earlier that "Fox did not leave him much, and the record proves it". Not quite true. Fox's last team at Georgia went 18-15, and after that, they only lost two players out of a 10-man rotation, and Crean took that roster directly into the tank, with a 11-21 record, almost as bad as Wyking Jones' bad. Admittedly one of the players lost was Yante Maten, SEC player of the year, but that is still too far to fall for a decent roster and a supposedly successful coach like Crean. BTW, Maten was a project as a high school recruit, ranked #225 by 247 sports. I see that Maten improved every year he played at Georgia, so I am guessing that Fox and his staff had a lot to do with Maten's development. I really like that Fox can develop players. I hope that if Fox has a poor record at Cal in his first season, you will acknowledge that Wyking left him with much less talent than Fox left Crean, and you will judge his first year accordingly, and give him a few seasons to prove himself. Of course, if Fox starts off with a pair of 8-win seasons like Wyking did, then by all means, let's fire the bum.