mcdbear;709965 said:
He whiffed on LeBron too
HoopDreams;709963 said:
from espn:
"But hey, I passed on Steve Nash, too," concedes Braun, now the coach at Rice. "We just didn't extend Jeremy a scholarship. I love the kid, but we just didn't. … I don't feel too bad. At least I'm not the only one."
mcdbear;709997 said:
Ben did a pretty good job of getting talent here. The problem was he just wasn't a very good coach
MisterNoodle;710056 said:
I have never heard the Le bron to cal story. SomeOne please fill me in. Unless that was a joke.
MisterNoodle;710056 said:
I have never heard the Le bron to cal story. SomeOne please fill me in. Unless that was a joke.
Quote:
2002 Oakland Soldiers
Key Players: LeBron James, Kendrick Perkins, Leon Powe, DeMarcus Nelson, Ayinde Ubaka
Looking Back: Leading up to the tournament in Houston, everybody in the state of Texas had Kendrick Perkins on their roster and thought he was playing with them. But we knew he was playing with us. We put him in the van and had him get dressed where nobody could see him. Then LeBron had just gotten off the plane, so when we walked into the gym single-file, man, it was unbelievable. It was like the Jackson 5 with those guys. Fans would rush the court and we’d have to be escorted out of the gym. You have a team from Oakland, and we have the No. 1 player in the South, the No. 1 player in the Midwest and we have Leon Powe? It was like a dream team.” -Mark Olivier, Soldiers coach/director
Quote:
Soldiers put on a show against Superstars
By Jared Green Daily Planet Staff
Wednesday August 01, 2001
The Oakland Soldiers needed a wakeup call. Leon Powe gave it to them.
Two thunderous dunks by the Oakland Tech star helped Slam ‘n Jam’s premiere team shake off some rust, and the Soldiers cruised to an 85-57 win over the Houston Superstars on the second day of the Slam ‘n Jam Elite 8x2 Tournament on Tuesday. The Soldiers put on a show for the crowd against an overmatched opponent, and must be considered the heavy favorites to win the tournament championship today.
The Soldiers came out very slowly against the Superstars, and trailed 8-4 with seven minutes gone. The game, played at RSF Fieldhouse, was very slow, with 13 fouls called at that point. But Powe used his muscle inside to tie the score at 8-8, and teammate LeBron James hit a nice fadeaway jumper to give the Soldiers the lead.
But Powe’s team was still playing as if they were half asleep, and it took a highlight-reel play from their opponents to get them fired up. When diminutive Houston point guard Eddie Rowe threw an alley-oop pass on a fastbreak to teammate Justin Carter for a spectacular dunk, the crowd cheered the Texas team for finally injecting some life into the game. Carter followed with an emphatic blocked shot on James, throwing the highly-touted guard’s shot into the stands, and the momentum seemed to be going with the visitors.
But the hosts finally got in gear soon after. John Sharper stole a pass and led Powe with a pass for a huge breakaway jam, then Powe put Carter in his place by throwing down another dunk, this one right in Carter’s face. The crowd exploded in response, and Powe urged the fans to get even louder. With chants of “Soldiers! Soldiers!” echoing in the gym, John Tofi scored five points in the last 30 seconds of the half to give the Slam ‘n Jam team a 34-23 halftime lead.
“We expect to make plays like that all the time. Anything less is unacceptable,” Powe said after the game. “These games are just fun.”
The second half was all Soldiers, as Marquis Kately led off with two dunks, the second a 360-degree two-hander that brought the house down. With James, Kately and Powe running the floor like racecars, they got the place rocking with bunches of alley-oops, dunks and spectacular drives. James, who is considered the best prep player in the nation, started taking it easy, opting for layups instead of dunks.
“I just want to go out and play my game,” said James, who is playing with the Soldiers for the first time this summer. “But when a lot of people come out to watch you and your team play, you gotta give them some kind of show.”
The Soldiers took turns tossing up long 3-pointers and running isolation plays, but turned it back up for the last two minutes. A Tofi steal turned into a James tomahawk, Powe got off another huge dunk, then followed with a crossover drive that missed but was slammed home by James. The game ended on an alley-oop pass from halfcourt by DeShawn Freeman to Kately, and the Soldiers were clearly enjoying themselves to the last.
“It was just showtime out there,” Freeman said. “It’s basically like practice, and I like practicing my lobs.”
The Soldiers will have to get more serious today, as they face West Coast Stars, who beat the Bay Area Ballers 70-46 on Tuesday, in a semi-final game. If they win that game, they will likely play the Michigan Hurricanes in the final. The Hurricanes are expected to beat EBO in the other semi, and the Soldiers are looking forward to facing a team that is comparable in talent to themselves.
“We want Michigan bad,” Soldiers coach Mark Olivier said.
Both semi-final matchups will take place at the RSF Fieldhouse at 3:30 p.m., with the championship set for 6:30.
Quote:
By Jared Green Daily Planet Staff
Thursday August 02, 2001
Through three games of the Slam N’ Jam Elite 8x2 Tournament, the Oakland Soldiers had blown past overmatched opponents with a whole lot of flashy plays and very little effort. But when it came down to the championship game, it was good old-fashioned muscle that carried them past a halftime deficit to the title.
Facing a Next Level team that very few people expected to make it to the final, the Soldiers found themselves in real trouble on Wednesday evening for the first time this week. Despite pulling off some spectacular plays in the first half, they found themselves trailing 38-32 at the intermission. The Next Level players, fresh off of upset wins over EBO and the Michigan Hurricanes, weren’t psyched out by the Soldiers’ dunks and alley-oops; they just went back down and scored some baskets of their own. Their backcourt trio of Brandon Worthy, Joe Calderon and Steve Cotton were able to penetrate the Oakland defense for some easy baskets, and proved a tough matchup for the favored host team.
With the highlight reel not getting them anywhere, the Soldiers turned to Leon Powe and John Winston to get some easy points inside to regain the lead early in the second half.
Powe started the half with a nice move that resulted in an easy dunk for the 6-foot-7 junior. He then tipped in a LeBron James miss to pull his team within two points. A couple of minutes later, he captured the lead for his squad with a score that was pure muscle, overpowering two Next Level defenders for a layup.
“I knew I had to pull us through, even though I was a little tired,” Powe said. “But we had to win this one. You have to win your home tournament.”
Then Winston got into the act. The Salesian High star got a putback on a DeMarcus Nelson miss, then made a three-point play the hard way, driving to the basket for a bucket and foul. He scored again off of penetration a minute later, and the Soldiers had a 48-43 lead that they would never relinquish.
Winston is one of the players that sometimes falls into the background playing with stars like Powe, James and Marquis Kately, but he proved that he can play with the best of them.
“We’ve got 10 of the best ballplayers in the country, and sometimes it’s a little hard to find the best five in any game,” Soldiers coach Mark Olivier said. “But we win with scoring by committee and by playing tough defense.”
Next Level’s Marcus Martinez tried to rally his team with a 3-pointer, but John Sharper answered with two bombs of his own to widen the Oakland lead to 57-50. All that was left was a few highlight plays by the Soldiers down the stretch, and the hosts walked away with the trophy.
Powe led all scorers with 24 points, after only scoring 14 in the semi-final victory against the LA Paladins earlier on Wednesday. James had a fairly quiet 18 in the final, but showed why many consider him to be the best prep player in the country with some spectacular passes and deft ballhandling. Jayson Obazuaye led Next Level with 22 points.
The Soldiers’ semi-final was a tough game early, but turned into a blowout in the second half, as James, Powe and Kately put on another show with alley-oops and breakaway dunks. Paladin point guard Deric Clark showed a nice game, breaking off a couple of sweet crossovers and leading his team with 17 points, and Doug Thomas showed a lot of heart despite a lack of size against the Soldier big men, but the Los Angeles team was clearly overmatched.
In the other semi-final, Next Level prevented the matchup the Soldiers really wanted with the Hurricanes when Cotton tied the score with a 3-pointer with two seconds left to force overtime. Five different Next Level players scored in overtime, and six points by star point guard Anthony Roberson couldn’t carry the Hurricanes to the final.
NOTES: Kately’s top four college choices are Cal, Arizona, North Carolina and UCLA, but he said he’s “still open to hearing from other schools.” The Riordan (San Francisco) wingman has attracted a lot of attention this summer after missing most of the last high school season... St. Mary’s (Berkeley) teammates Sharper and DeShawn Freeman have benefited from increased exposure this summer with the Soldiers, and each has several schools after him. Freeman listed his top schools as UTEP, Mississippi State, Pepperdina and UC Santa Barbara, while Sharper is considering Portland, Santa Clara, Dartmouth and Yale.
oskigobears;710054 said:
I don't recall that Braun whiffed on Dirk. The NBA came calling I believe.
MisterNoodle;710056 said:
I have never heard the Le bron to cal story. SomeOne please fill me in. Unless that was a joke.
goldfield9;710071 said:
No it was no joke. Cal was very high on Lebrons list. Just one of those things I guess. Personally and obviously we and no one else had any chance of getting him. He was worth too much money. The rest is history.
goldfield9;710073 said:
The funny thing is, we used to get a lot of interest in some of the elite recruits like lebron and Dirk who didn't come and Kidd, Powe and Shareef Abdur-Raheem who did come. Now we can't even sniff these kind of guys. Yes i think Jabari Bird is linked to us because he is local, but we probably will lose him. With Braun , we probably land him. Would we be betterwith Braun, No. Braun lacked coaching, montgomery lacks recruiting. Its a trade off. Personally I think we are better with Montgomery, coaching and training the 3 star prospects. But it would be very very nice to add 1 5 star with those 3 star guys. That's when we will make the jump in the dance. Until then 1 or 2 and done.
calumnus;710079 said:
I do think that when it comes to recruiting, we kind of give Braun credit for a lot of the big names that we were in on and lost out on. He almost recruited Cal to the next level. However, while I am all for recruiting great talent, once the kids don the blue and gold I am all for them and want a coach that can improve their game and adopt strategies that put them in the best position to win. Monty gives us that, Braun did not.
Under Braun I sometimes felt bad when a player with potential like Kately, Ubaka, Sampson, McGuire, Midgely, Paris, Hardin, Benson, Wilkes, Christopher, Langford, Randle, King, Smith, Knezivic.... signed with us and did not develop at all. I never want to feel like signing with Cal is a mistake, I always want it to be the best decision a student athlete can make. I can honestly say that EVERY player (that stayed for a season) has improved under Montgomery.
boredom;710087 said:
Monty is a better coach than Braun but I too think there's some exaggerating going on. First of all, many of the guys you cite did improve (or didn't stay long enough for us to judge - we had no baseline for a one and done guy like Sampson). Ubaka for one made huge strides. He became an all conference player and clutch team leader as an upper classman. Benson had a very good junior year, much more productive than anything he showed his first couple years. Christopher improved year to year, as did Randle.
DJ Seeley stayed a season and didn't improve under Monty. Bak hasn't seemed to get much better and the bar is quite low.
Also, I agree that Braun's recruiting prowess is overblown. He didn't actually get the highly ranked (or highly talented like Dirk) guys on campus and playing. In the early 2000s Braun had made Cal an annual NCAA team, a contender in the conference, but one built on overachieving hard workers. The blue and gold outlook was "wait until Braun can land some high level players". Then he landed the Powe class and the team fizzled, the bottom fell out of the program on all levels except ethical thankfully, and he was fired. Once he stopped winning the rap became "good recruiter, bad coach". Before it was "good coach, needs more talent."
LethalFang;710103 said:
Ben Braun is a below-average recruiter, with one exception of the Leon Powe class where he got a ton of highly highly touted prospects.
Other than that, his recruiting record is pretty spotty. A couple of good classes, but also a couple of really really bad classes to go along.
LethalFang;710103 said:
Ben Braun is a below-average recruiter, with one exception of the Leon Powe class where he got a ton of highly highly touted prospects.
Other than that, his recruiting record is pretty spotty. A couple of good classes, but also a couple of really really bad classes to go along.
HoopDreams;709963 said:
from espn:
"But hey, I passed on Steve Nash, too," concedes Braun, now the coach at Rice. "We just didn't extend Jeremy a scholarship. I love the kid, but we just didn't. I don't feel too bad. At least I'm not the only one."
bluesaxe;710161 said:
Everyone passed on Lin. Big deal.
goldfield9;710109 said:
Are you kidding me, Braun got Powe, Kately and Mcguire who were very highly touted, Ubaka, Hardin(4 stars) Christopher and Randle Top 100 guys and OH don't let me forget Ryan Anderson among a couple others. Braun recruited all kinds of talent but couldn't do anything with it. If Monty had these guys it would be game over. Elite eights and let me stretch, final fours. Monty has our team 20-6 with 3 star guys even Crabbe 3-4 star even though player of year in Cali(minus our starting center Solomon). Braun could recruit but couldn't seal the deal.
Um I forgot Lampley another top 100
LethalFang;710287 said:
These 4 guys are all in the one great class I talked about. He didn't do much else.
The other guys....... well, Braun has been here for like 10 years! So what he got a couple of good players here and there? We never had a team that is recognized as the top 1 or 2 talented team in the Pac-10. Any Pac-10 team can get a good player every now and then.
To be a good recruiter, you have to get multiple good players every year.
south bender;710311 said:
And, Ben actually coached 12 years at Cal.
LethalFang;710351 said:
Every year, the Pac-10 selects 10 players to be on the First Team All Pac-10. Since there were 10 teams in the conference, each team should expect one player to be selected each year on average.
If Braun's recruiting record were remarkably average, he would expect 12 First Team All Pac-10 selections during his tenure.
I counted 9 during Braun's tenure.
Ed Gray
Lampley x2
Shipp
Tamir
Powe x2
Ubaka
Ryan Anderson
That makes him below-average.
Even if you're generous and count Patrick Christopher and Jerome Randle's selections (two for each player) during Montogery's coaching, he's still at best average.
Big C_Cal;710519 said:
y making the change [from Braun to Montgomery], [w]e've gone up a level or two.
south bender;710560 said:
I guess that your levels analogy does not allow for many levels above Braun, or if it does, I would say with Monty we are now close to the top of where a coach can be placed and Ben from his vantage point can barely see that far up.
Consider: Under Ben our conference record over 12 seasons was not quite a handful of games above .500, 110 - 106. At this point, Monty is 44 - 23.
