SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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BeachedBear said:

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I love the passion of OTB and SCT. However, their rant against Cal fans is misguided, albeit hilarious. Reminds me of the alcoholic father who screamed about his kids being losers. Was one kid a loser? Yes. Was he one of his kids? Yes. But all of the siblings suffered. That type of misplaced venom does more damage than good - so why do they do it? They are bright enough guys to call out indivuals (I have been their target before), without resorting to irrational generalizations. Please boys - use your power for good!

Having said that, I will reinforce some of their irrational generalizations, that I wholeheartedly agree with - at least wrt Basketball:

• Has the program lost their fans? Yes. I'm one of the die hards, but it is lonely and sad. We're all that's left. The numbers don't lie - 3,000 is being generous. Most of the young alum base and students are not interested. The fair weather fans also need to be brought back. There is only one long-term proven method. Winning. That's it folks.
• The administration has been a joke forever. This unfortunately is true. It goes beyond hiring (and keeping) coaches. I don't think it is intentional or institutionally structured - simply dysfunction of the highest order. The best we have is hope. Knowlton seems like the right direction, but he did not come from a proven P5 program with a record of strong hires. He IS doing a lot to address the dysfunction - and I don't think OTB or SCT give him enough or any credit for that.
• Talent is important. I find it hard to believe anyone is still arguing this point. Pac-12 is a 4 star league in Bball. That means an occasional 5 star and a couple 3 stars. Mostly 3-stars with a 2-star and occasional 4 star won't cut it. And yes, we all agree it needs to be coached. However, even those 100 3 stars that get coached up to the NBA come from a few programs that have proven staffs that can develop players. Cal hasn't had that level of player development EVER in my memory and doesn't hire coaches to do so. Seriously, most of those 3-stars powerhouses are in mid-major conferences, where it makes sense.
• Cal can't figure out what it wants. This is sort of true, but I don't think it is a simple as they want it to be. For example, Cal can't just drop out of P12 Basketball and remain in the other sports (many of which we compete at the highest level). However, as OTB points out, if Cal wants to stay in the P12, but not be competitive in Bball, then at least do it in a pragmatic, cost-effective way. Overpaying two HC salaries for mediocrity will get you fired in the real world.

After seeing 5 games and then some (the OP starting point). Here is what I see as the best case scenario of the Knowlton/Fox experience. Fox gets the most out of current players and recruits some players to fit his program. After three years, CalmBball is playing OK and has reached it's ceiling. Knowlton and the larger Campus Community is somewhat supporting the program, but no one is really SATISFIED. However, during three years, the college basketball community recognizes three things:

• Knowlton is stable and supports the program
• It is no longer a rebuild - nor a stepping stone, but a place to really build a program.
• Knowlton has now spent enough years at the P5 level to build relationships that he has some names and connections to hire better.
• Cal has the opportunity to do better in Bball

Cal parts ways with Fox and hires a younger high-ceiling coach who proves worthy of enough money to keep around for a decade or two (that is why we want someone under about 45 yrs old).

While I would have liked that to happen with Jones replacement, I don't think the bullets were in place (and aren't yet). The best alternative provided by ANYONE was Decuire - and our next hire needs to be better than Travis D (although I think he was just as capable of being the transition coach that Fox is destined to be - and could have been had cheaper, but I guess he didn't have the interview).

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I agree with most of what you're saying, but a couple of points.

I haven't seen one argument that talent doesn't matter. I have seen arguments about realistic options for acquiring and developing that talent, and maybe what "talent" actually is. I'd also argue that it's the team that matters, not individuals, and if the talent doesn't fit together you'll have problems. Martin's best team is a good example of pieces that did not mesh well compounded by a coach who couldn't figure out how to minimize that problem. But you need talent, which we currently lack.

On who develops lower ranked recruits, I haven't seen anyone do a deep dive on that but Derrick Williams was a three-star (Arizona), Russel Westbrook was a three-star (UCLA), Wesley Johnson was a two-star (Iowa State), Ekpe Udoh was a three-star (Michigan), Joe Alexander a three-star (West Va.), Frank Kaminsky a three-star (Wisc.) All those guys were first round picks. You also obviously have guys like Gordon Hayward, Steph Curry, Dame Lillard, Paul George who were with mid-majors, but it would be interesting to test your hypothesis on that.

I'm just hoping Fox can get the program to a point where it's respectable and stable, and then we'll see if Cal can make the right decision. Your best-case scenario seems right, but it is best case and that's a bit sad.

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Again, as I pointed out. 3 star players have a less than 1 in 35 chance of being drafted. 5 stars a 60% chance. You can name the one in 35. Good for you.

But again, the problem is that it is a dangerous myth ("we just need to find that great teacher and all will be OK") No. You need, in the modern game, a guy who can RECRUIT.

And, I want to underscore this, look at Juwan Howard . Do you really want to make the argument that a guy who has never coached in college is a "great teacher?" Of COURSE NOT. You know what he is doing? KILLING it on the recruiting trail - especially with instate talent.

This is the kind of hire that you make it you want to win. Michigan gets that. Memphis gets it. GTown gets it. Cal gets Mark Fox.

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Oh JFC, get off your high horse dude. I never said anything close to "we just need to find a great teacher." I never said any of that. I'm pointing out that we aren't going to get the 5 stars, but that talent exists elsewhere that can be developed. I'm not saying that a good coach can take ****ty players and win. I'm saying that there is talent other than five stars that we need to find. I'm saying that because of WHERE THIS PROGRAM IS NOW we aren't going to be in a position to do anything but look for those gems in the rough for now. I asked if you can explain why that isn't true in another post. You didn't. I'm talking about what Fox can do right now to get THIS program into position to actually compete for some of that other talent. You don't seem to want to hear that. Again, explain why Juwan Howard at Michigan, a team that was in the national finals a couple of years ago, the Sweet 16 last year, and whose coach left for the NBA instead of being fired two of the worst years in history is particularly relevant to where we are now. Even Memphis, which has had a tourney drought, at least had winning records the last five years. And is very likely to end up in more NCAA trouble I predict.

I get that you don't like the last hire. I don't either. But I'm not talking about that.

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Fair enough. You ask about "What Fox can do right now."

1) Explain to JK that absent a practice facility the program is dead in the water and can not compete. Explain that to alumni as well. Disabuse them of the idea that with "good coaching" he can take Germans who have a vertical jump of 0.5 inches and turn them into all world Pac-12 centers.

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

2) Explain to the powers that be that Cal currently is competing with 1 arm and 2 legs tied behind back when it comes to especially the grad school transfer rules. Absent changes we will NOT do better there and that it is a critical piece of the puzzle


Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

3) Explain to the powers that be that the GPA rule is ridiculous. Cal should NOT compete lower or HIGHER than either Washington or UCLA (the other 2 decent PUBLIC R1s in our conference). If there is no GPA rule at UCLA there should not be one at Cal

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

All three of the above DEEPLY hamper our recruiting. But we have TOO many people (on this board especially) that believe

A) We don't need a practice facility cause a hoop and a black top is OK for me so it is OK for them...and they should be studying ANYWAY
B ) That we don't want to "cheapen" cal's grad schools and hey, a great teacher can "coach em up" and especially those 3 starts that are going to stay 4 years
C) Less support but still some. God forbid we take a "dumb azz".

The problem (and why I am mad) is that too many Cal "fans" buy A-C and then say "Well with a good coach that watches Newell tapes we can win titles....and lets face it...that is all that matters since I went to school before the tournament blew up so who cares anyway." I get that everyone is a stakeholder. WHat pisses me off is not recognizing that life is about trade offs and that searching for unicorns is usually a search that doesn't work. If we want to win we have to recruit. End of story.

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I'm done with this. You are venting gripes, not addressing anything I actually said and are attributing opinions to me that I don't hold and haven't expressed because apparently you're pissed at the world.

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You do realize directly above SFB just essentially argued that stars do not matter.

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I wasn't arguing that at all. Of course stars matter, talented star players matter, much more so than subjective "star" ratings assigned by judges or panels of experts. As I posted a few years back a spreadsheet detailing the accomplishments of the top 100 RCSI Composite ranked players of one year for their 4 years of eligibility, and I found that only 40% of them either lived up to their ranking as an individual star, or helped their team to some real success in their college careers. 5-star players were a little more likely to live up to their ranking than 4-star players. That was just one class, and so it is anecdotal evidence. But until someone proves different, I'll believe that recruit rankings of the star players is maybe 40-50% accurate. Looking at that 2016 roster, 5 stars Rabb and Brown lived up to their recruit rankings as to individual performance, but Bird did not, IMO. 4-star Wallace lived up to his ranking, but Domingo did not. Mathews lived up to his 3-star ranking, or even a 4 star ranking, but Singer did not live up to his 3 star ranking, except defensively, where he became a tiger, again IMO. None of those players helped Cal to any great team success.

We still have to recruit the star players, but we need to carefully evaluate them for their fit at Cal, and in our team's system, and for need, and not just sign him because has 5-stars after his name in recruit rankings.

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I linked above. One of the services went back. 5 stars have a 60% chance of being drafted; 4 stars about 20%; 3 stars 1 in 36. Data pulled from about 15 years of rating services.

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I couldn't find your link. I'll expand on the criteria in my spreadsheet for the one year, which was the class of 2009. I did the spreadsheet in 2015 or so, so it would track the full college career of all 100 players, which for some took 5 or 6 years to finish, due to injuries, redshirts, etc. I found that 60 players had had a successful career as individual players, but that only 40 players had actually helped their teams to some serious success. My criteria for a successful team would be achieving one of the following, by making a significant contribution as a member of the team's rotation (top 7 or 8 players in terms of minutes) for one of their seasons in college:

1. A 25 win season
2. A Conference Championship
3. A Conference Tournament Championship
4. Reaching the Sweet 16 in the NCAA

If a player had achieved any of those things, I felt he had helped his team and had been worth the effort to be highly recruited. I realize that getting drafted is an achievement, but I don't really give a rat's behind about what a Cal player does in the NBA. There are some fans who seem to be more excited about what a player does in the NBA after he leaves Cal, than they are excited about what he does while he is playing for Cal. I did the spreadsheet solely to find out how many top recruits help their college teams, if at all. If someone tells me a player was drafted, I'll ask, "Yes, but did he help his college team?"

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One of many problems with your methodology is that you only look at the rate of success as you define it among top players and say "gee that isn't high" based on some subjective standard you pull out of thin air. A 40% hit rate would actually be very high. You never compare your hit rate to lower ranked guys. I don't need to do a spreadsheet. The hit rate is a lot lower for guys rated lower

I really don't know what you think you have proven. No one has ever said that high star ratings guaranteed success. They increase your chance of success tremendously.

socaltownie said:

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http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.statistics.20160604.04.html#Sec3

Increase your N.

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This article takes almost all the fun out of the game, for me, at least. Or as Amarillo Slim, the great poker player, once said, when asked if he bet on horse racing, "I never bet on anything that eats."

SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.statistics.20160604.04.html#Sec3

Increase your N.

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This article takes almost all the fun out of the game, for me, at least. Or as Amarillo Slim, the great poker player, once said, when asked if he bet on horse racing, "I never bet on anything that eats."

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This is the conclusion for those who didn't click the link:

"It was shown through this study that the likelihood of success in college and NFL draft increases with a player's star ranking. Higher-star players are drafted with a higher probability and are selected earlier in the draft. Our study did not find any statistically significant evidence that the choice of a conference affects the probability of the draft. However, we found that playing for a school in a power conference generally results in a higher probability of being selected as an All-American. "

OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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BeachedBear said:

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I love the passion of OTB and SCT. However, their rant against Cal fans is misguided, albeit hilarious. Reminds me of the alcoholic father who screamed about his kids being losers. Was one kid a loser? Yes. Was he one of his kids? Yes. But all of the siblings suffered. That type of misplaced venom does more damage than good - so why do they do it? They are bright enough guys to call out indivuals (I have been their target before), without resorting to irrational generalizations. Please boys - use your power for good!

Having said that, I will reinforce some of their irrational generalizations, that I wholeheartedly agree with - at least wrt Basketball:

• Has the program lost their fans? Yes. I'm one of the die hards, but it is lonely and sad. We're all that's left. The numbers don't lie - 3,000 is being generous. Most of the young alum base and students are not interested. The fair weather fans also need to be brought back. There is only one long-term proven method. Winning. That's it folks.
• The administration has been a joke forever. This unfortunately is true. It goes beyond hiring (and keeping) coaches. I don't think it is intentional or institutionally structured - simply dysfunction of the highest order. The best we have is hope. Knowlton seems like the right direction, but he did not come from a proven P5 program with a record of strong hires. He IS doing a lot to address the dysfunction - and I don't think OTB or SCT give him enough or any credit for that.
• Talent is important. I find it hard to believe anyone is still arguing this point. Pac-12 is a 4 star league in Bball. That means an occasional 5 star and a couple 3 stars. Mostly 3-stars with a 2-star and occasional 4 star won't cut it. And yes, we all agree it needs to be coached. However, even those 100 3 stars that get coached up to the NBA come from a few programs that have proven staffs that can develop players. Cal hasn't had that level of player development EVER in my memory and doesn't hire coaches to do so. Seriously, most of those 3-stars powerhouses are in mid-major conferences, where it makes sense.
• Cal can't figure out what it wants. This is sort of true, but I don't think it is a simple as they want it to be. For example, Cal can't just drop out of P12 Basketball and remain in the other sports (many of which we compete at the highest level). However, as OTB points out, if Cal wants to stay in the P12, but not be competitive in Bball, then at least do it in a pragmatic, cost-effective way. Overpaying two HC salaries for mediocrity will get you fired in the real world.

After seeing 5 games and then some (the OP starting point). Here is what I see as the best case scenario of the Knowlton/Fox experience. Fox gets the most out of current players and recruits some players to fit his program. After three years, CalmBball is playing OK and has reached it's ceiling. Knowlton and the larger Campus Community is somewhat supporting the program, but no one is really SATISFIED. However, during three years, the college basketball community recognizes three things:

• Knowlton is stable and supports the program
• It is no longer a rebuild - nor a stepping stone, but a place to really build a program.
• Knowlton has now spent enough years at the P5 level to build relationships that he has some names and connections to hire better.
• Cal has the opportunity to do better in Bball

Cal parts ways with Fox and hires a younger high-ceiling coach who proves worthy of enough money to keep around for a decade or two (that is why we want someone under about 45 yrs old).

While I would have liked that to happen with Jones replacement, I don't think the bullets were in place (and aren't yet). The best alternative provided by ANYONE was Decuire - and our next hire needs to be better than Travis D (although I think he was just as capable of being the transition coach that Fox is destined to be - and could have been had cheaper, but I guess he didn't have the interview).

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I agree with most of what you're saying, but a couple of points.

I haven't seen one argument that talent doesn't matter. I have seen arguments about realistic options for acquiring and developing that talent, and maybe what "talent" actually is. I'd also argue that it's the team that matters, not individuals, and if the talent doesn't fit together you'll have problems. Martin's best team is a good example of pieces that did not mesh well compounded by a coach who couldn't figure out how to minimize that problem. But you need talent, which we currently lack.

On who develops lower ranked recruits, I haven't seen anyone do a deep dive on that but Derrick Williams was a three-star (Arizona), Russel Westbrook was a three-star (UCLA), Wesley Johnson was a two-star (Iowa State), Ekpe Udoh was a three-star (Michigan), Joe Alexander a three-star (West Va.), Frank Kaminsky a three-star (Wisc.) All those guys were first round picks. You also obviously have guys like Gordon Hayward, Steph Curry, Dame Lillard, Paul George who were with mid-majors, but it would be interesting to test your hypothesis on that.

I'm just hoping Fox can get the program to a point where it's respectable and stable, and then we'll see if Cal can make the right decision. Your best-case scenario seems right, but it is best case and that's a bit sad.

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Again, as I pointed out. 3 star players have a less than 1 in 35 chance of being drafted. 5 stars a 60% chance. You can name the one in 35. Good for you.

But again, the problem is that it is a dangerous myth ("we just need to find that great teacher and all will be OK") No. You need, in the modern game, a guy who can RECRUIT.

And, I want to underscore this, look at Juwan Howard . Do you really want to make the argument that a guy who has never coached in college is a "great teacher?" Of COURSE NOT. You know what he is doing? KILLING it on the recruiting trail - especially with instate talent.

This is the kind of hire that you make it you want to win. Michigan gets that. Memphis gets it. GTown gets it. Cal gets Mark Fox.

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Oh JFC, get off your high horse dude. I never said anything close to "we just need to find a great teacher." I never said any of that. I'm pointing out that we aren't going to get the 5 stars, but that talent exists elsewhere that can be developed. I'm not saying that a good coach can take ****ty players and win. I'm saying that there is talent other than five stars that we need to find. I'm saying that because of WHERE THIS PROGRAM IS NOW we aren't going to be in a position to do anything but look for those gems in the rough for now. I asked if you can explain why that isn't true in another post. You didn't. I'm talking about what Fox can do right now to get THIS program into position to actually compete for some of that other talent. You don't seem to want to hear that. Again, explain why Juwan Howard at Michigan, a team that was in the national finals a couple of years ago, the Sweet 16 last year, and whose coach left for the NBA instead of being fired two of the worst years in history is particularly relevant to where we are now. Even Memphis, which has had a tourney drought, at least had winning records the last five years. And is very likely to end up in more NCAA trouble I predict.

I get that you don't like the last hire. I don't either. But I'm not talking about that.

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Fair enough. You ask about "What Fox can do right now."

1) Explain to JK that absent a practice facility the program is dead in the water and can not compete. Explain that to alumni as well. Disabuse them of the idea that with "good coaching" he can take Germans who have a vertical jump of 0.5 inches and turn them into all world Pac-12 centers.

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

2) Explain to the powers that be that Cal currently is competing with 1 arm and 2 legs tied behind back when it comes to especially the grad school transfer rules. Absent changes we will NOT do better there and that it is a critical piece of the puzzle


Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

3) Explain to the powers that be that the GPA rule is ridiculous. Cal should NOT compete lower or HIGHER than either Washington or UCLA (the other 2 decent PUBLIC R1s in our conference). If there is no GPA rule at UCLA there should not be one at Cal

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

All three of the above DEEPLY hamper our recruiting. But we have TOO many people (on this board especially) that believe

A) We don't need a practice facility cause a hoop and a black top is OK for me so it is OK for them...and they should be studying ANYWAY
B ) That we don't want to "cheapen" cal's grad schools and hey, a great teacher can "coach em up" and especially those 3 starts that are going to stay 4 years
C) Less support but still some. God forbid we take a "dumb azz".

The problem (and why I am mad) is that too many Cal "fans" buy A-C and then say "Well with a good coach that watches Newell tapes we can win titles....and lets face it...that is all that matters since I went to school before the tournament blew up so who cares anyway." I get that everyone is a stakeholder. WHat pisses me off is not recognizing that life is about trade offs and that searching for unicorns is usually a search that doesn't work. If we want to win we have to recruit. End of story.

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can we get a raise of hands, who thinks all three (A, B and C)?

let's just say everyone on this board agrees with you. how about you make the first $10M donation to pay for part of the practice facility? I'll support that!

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I have seen PLENTY of support for those three propositions by posters on this board who then go on to suggest that "diamond in the rough" and "coaching" will solve all ills and 4 starts aint great cause look at Mr. Fuji Water and losing to Hawaii.

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Speaking of 4 stars (I think you meant that instead of "4 starts"), there are a number of posters here who feel the main reason the water guy and Cal lost to Hawaii was the fact that both 4-star Ty Wallace and 5 star Jabari Bird missed the game with injuries. Cal played the game with 5 stars Brown and Rabb, 4 star (by some recruiting services but not in RCSI Composite rankings) Stephen Domingo. Wallace was "great" in the eyes of those fans, because had he played they felt Cal would likely have won. Many believed that without the injuries, Cal would have gone deep in the tournament. I am not one of those.

For those who think 5 stars are the great hope, I'd point out that 5-star Jalen Brown had the worst game of his college career against Hawaii. 5-star Rabb played well as expected, but without the fine play of 3 stars Mathews and Singer, that game would have been a blowout for Hawaii (which was basically a team of 2-stars and the unranked). 4-star Domingo played 14 minutes, but did not score.

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For those who think 5 stars aren't the great hope I'd point out that 1 star, 5 foot 3 Joe Bloggs didn't make the tournament. Because one game of anecdotal evidence proves a point.

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If you would like more than one game, let's look at Cal's teams with the most top recruits. Recruit rankings have only been around for less than 30 years, so I'll add my own guesses for some of the rankings:

2016: Brown 5*, Rabb 5*, Bird 5*, Wallace 4*, Domingo 4*, Mathews 4* or 3* Record 23-11, 3rd in PAC12

2014: Bird 5*, Wallace 4* Mathews 4* or 3* Record 21-14, 3rd in PAC12 Record 21-14, 3rd in PAC12

2009: Powe 5*, McGuire 4*, Ubaka 4*, Kately 4*or 3* , Tamir 4*, Midgley 4* Record 13-15, 4th place PAC10

1997: Gray 5*, Marks 5*, Grigsby 4*, Stewart 4* or 3*, Duck 4* or 3* Record 23-9, 3rd in PAC10, Sweet 16

1993: Kidd 5*, Murray 5*, Grigsby 4*, Hendrick 4* Record 21-9, 2nd in PAC10, Sweet 16

1971: Ridgle 5*, Chenier 5*, Charles Johnson 5*, Truitt 5*, Coughran 4* Record 16-9, 3rd in PAC8

1955: Mckeen 5*, Friend 5* Record 9-16, 4th in PCC Southern Division

So if 3rd place conference finishes and 2 sweet 16s for these 7 teams, some with good coaching and some without, is our objective, then highly-rated recruits are the way to go. Personally, I'd rather start with a coach I could trust. A good coach should be a steadying influence in an ever-changing roster, replete with many injuries, transfers and players leaving early for the NBA. And let the coach recruit the best players for the needs he has. I'd like Cal to have better results than any of these teams had, much better results.

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And where did we finish when we didn't have those recruits?

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Sometimes higher, sometimes lower. Some highs: Elite 8s in 1957 and 1958, NCAA Champ in 1959, and NCAA Runnerup in 1960. Friend (a JC transfer) was the only player who might have been highly rated on the 1957 team, IMO. '58, '59, '60 had none, IMO. Four conference championships in those four years.

SFCityBear said:

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OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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BeachedBear said:

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I love the passion of OTB and SCT. However, their rant against Cal fans is misguided, albeit hilarious. Reminds me of the alcoholic father who screamed about his kids being losers. Was one kid a loser? Yes. Was he one of his kids? Yes. But all of the siblings suffered. That type of misplaced venom does more damage than good - so why do they do it? They are bright enough guys to call out indivuals (I have been their target before), without resorting to irrational generalizations. Please boys - use your power for good!

Having said that, I will reinforce some of their irrational generalizations, that I wholeheartedly agree with - at least wrt Basketball:

• Has the program lost their fans? Yes. I'm one of the die hards, but it is lonely and sad. We're all that's left. The numbers don't lie - 3,000 is being generous. Most of the young alum base and students are not interested. The fair weather fans also need to be brought back. There is only one long-term proven method. Winning. That's it folks.
• The administration has been a joke forever. This unfortunately is true. It goes beyond hiring (and keeping) coaches. I don't think it is intentional or institutionally structured - simply dysfunction of the highest order. The best we have is hope. Knowlton seems like the right direction, but he did not come from a proven P5 program with a record of strong hires. He IS doing a lot to address the dysfunction - and I don't think OTB or SCT give him enough or any credit for that.
• Talent is important. I find it hard to believe anyone is still arguing this point. Pac-12 is a 4 star league in Bball. That means an occasional 5 star and a couple 3 stars. Mostly 3-stars with a 2-star and occasional 4 star won't cut it. And yes, we all agree it needs to be coached. However, even those 100 3 stars that get coached up to the NBA come from a few programs that have proven staffs that can develop players. Cal hasn't had that level of player development EVER in my memory and doesn't hire coaches to do so. Seriously, most of those 3-stars powerhouses are in mid-major conferences, where it makes sense.
• Cal can't figure out what it wants. This is sort of true, but I don't think it is a simple as they want it to be. For example, Cal can't just drop out of P12 Basketball and remain in the other sports (many of which we compete at the highest level). However, as OTB points out, if Cal wants to stay in the P12, but not be competitive in Bball, then at least do it in a pragmatic, cost-effective way. Overpaying two HC salaries for mediocrity will get you fired in the real world.

After seeing 5 games and then some (the OP starting point). Here is what I see as the best case scenario of the Knowlton/Fox experience. Fox gets the most out of current players and recruits some players to fit his program. After three years, CalmBball is playing OK and has reached it's ceiling. Knowlton and the larger Campus Community is somewhat supporting the program, but no one is really SATISFIED. However, during three years, the college basketball community recognizes three things:

• Knowlton is stable and supports the program
• It is no longer a rebuild - nor a stepping stone, but a place to really build a program.
• Knowlton has now spent enough years at the P5 level to build relationships that he has some names and connections to hire better.
• Cal has the opportunity to do better in Bball

Cal parts ways with Fox and hires a younger high-ceiling coach who proves worthy of enough money to keep around for a decade or two (that is why we want someone under about 45 yrs old).

While I would have liked that to happen with Jones replacement, I don't think the bullets were in place (and aren't yet). The best alternative provided by ANYONE was Decuire - and our next hire needs to be better than Travis D (although I think he was just as capable of being the transition coach that Fox is destined to be - and could have been had cheaper, but I guess he didn't have the interview).

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I agree with most of what you're saying, but a couple of points.

I haven't seen one argument that talent doesn't matter. I have seen arguments about realistic options for acquiring and developing that talent, and maybe what "talent" actually is. I'd also argue that it's the team that matters, not individuals, and if the talent doesn't fit together you'll have problems. Martin's best team is a good example of pieces that did not mesh well compounded by a coach who couldn't figure out how to minimize that problem. But you need talent, which we currently lack.

On who develops lower ranked recruits, I haven't seen anyone do a deep dive on that but Derrick Williams was a three-star (Arizona), Russel Westbrook was a three-star (UCLA), Wesley Johnson was a two-star (Iowa State), Ekpe Udoh was a three-star (Michigan), Joe Alexander a three-star (West Va.), Frank Kaminsky a three-star (Wisc.) All those guys were first round picks. You also obviously have guys like Gordon Hayward, Steph Curry, Dame Lillard, Paul George who were with mid-majors, but it would be interesting to test your hypothesis on that.

I'm just hoping Fox can get the program to a point where it's respectable and stable, and then we'll see if Cal can make the right decision. Your best-case scenario seems right, but it is best case and that's a bit sad.

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Again, as I pointed out. 3 star players have a less than 1 in 35 chance of being drafted. 5 stars a 60% chance. You can name the one in 35. Good for you.

But again, the problem is that it is a dangerous myth ("we just need to find that great teacher and all will be OK") No. You need, in the modern game, a guy who can RECRUIT.

And, I want to underscore this, look at Juwan Howard . Do you really want to make the argument that a guy who has never coached in college is a "great teacher?" Of COURSE NOT. You know what he is doing? KILLING it on the recruiting trail - especially with instate talent.

This is the kind of hire that you make it you want to win. Michigan gets that. Memphis gets it. GTown gets it. Cal gets Mark Fox.

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Oh JFC, get off your high horse dude. I never said anything close to "we just need to find a great teacher." I never said any of that. I'm pointing out that we aren't going to get the 5 stars, but that talent exists elsewhere that can be developed. I'm not saying that a good coach can take ****ty players and win. I'm saying that there is talent other than five stars that we need to find. I'm saying that because of WHERE THIS PROGRAM IS NOW we aren't going to be in a position to do anything but look for those gems in the rough for now. I asked if you can explain why that isn't true in another post. You didn't. I'm talking about what Fox can do right now to get THIS program into position to actually compete for some of that other talent. You don't seem to want to hear that. Again, explain why Juwan Howard at Michigan, a team that was in the national finals a couple of years ago, the Sweet 16 last year, and whose coach left for the NBA instead of being fired two of the worst years in history is particularly relevant to where we are now. Even Memphis, which has had a tourney drought, at least had winning records the last five years. And is very likely to end up in more NCAA trouble I predict.

I get that you don't like the last hire. I don't either. But I'm not talking about that.

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Fair enough. You ask about "What Fox can do right now."

1) Explain to JK that absent a practice facility the program is dead in the water and can not compete. Explain that to alumni as well. Disabuse them of the idea that with "good coaching" he can take Germans who have a vertical jump of 0.5 inches and turn them into all world Pac-12 centers.

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

2) Explain to the powers that be that Cal currently is competing with 1 arm and 2 legs tied behind back when it comes to especially the grad school transfer rules. Absent changes we will NOT do better there and that it is a critical piece of the puzzle


Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

3) Explain to the powers that be that the GPA rule is ridiculous. Cal should NOT compete lower or HIGHER than either Washington or UCLA (the other 2 decent PUBLIC R1s in our conference). If there is no GPA rule at UCLA there should not be one at Cal

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

All three of the above DEEPLY hamper our recruiting. But we have TOO many people (on this board especially) that believe

A) We don't need a practice facility cause a hoop and a black top is OK for me so it is OK for them...and they should be studying ANYWAY
B ) That we don't want to "cheapen" cal's grad schools and hey, a great teacher can "coach em up" and especially those 3 starts that are going to stay 4 years
C) Less support but still some. God forbid we take a "dumb azz".

The problem (and why I am mad) is that too many Cal "fans" buy A-C and then say "Well with a good coach that watches Newell tapes we can win titles....and lets face it...that is all that matters since I went to school before the tournament blew up so who cares anyway." I get that everyone is a stakeholder. WHat pisses me off is not recognizing that life is about trade offs and that searching for unicorns is usually a search that doesn't work. If we want to win we have to recruit. End of story.

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can we get a raise of hands, who thinks all three (A, B and C)?

let's just say everyone on this board agrees with you. how about you make the first $10M donation to pay for part of the practice facility? I'll support that!

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I have seen PLENTY of support for those three propositions by posters on this board who then go on to suggest that "diamond in the rough" and "coaching" will solve all ills and 4 starts aint great cause look at Mr. Fuji Water and losing to Hawaii.

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Speaking of 4 stars (I think you meant that instead of "4 starts"), there are a number of posters here who feel the main reason the water guy and Cal lost to Hawaii was the fact that both 4-star Ty Wallace and 5 star Jabari Bird missed the game with injuries. Cal played the game with 5 stars Brown and Rabb, 4 star (by some recruiting services but not in RCSI Composite rankings) Stephen Domingo. Wallace was "great" in the eyes of those fans, because had he played they felt Cal would likely have won. Many believed that without the injuries, Cal would have gone deep in the tournament. I am not one of those.

For those who think 5 stars are the great hope, I'd point out that 5-star Jalen Brown had the worst game of his college career against Hawaii. 5-star Rabb played well as expected, but without the fine play of 3 stars Mathews and Singer, that game would have been a blowout for Hawaii (which was basically a team of 2-stars and the unranked). 4-star Domingo played 14 minutes, but did not score.

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For those who think 5 stars aren't the great hope I'd point out that 1 star, 5 foot 3 Joe Bloggs didn't make the tournament. Because one game of anecdotal evidence proves a point.

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If you would like more than one game, let's look at Cal's teams with the most top recruits. Recruit rankings have only been around for less than 30 years, so I'll add my own guesses for some of the rankings:

2016: Brown 5*, Rabb 5*, Bird 5*, Wallace 4*, Domingo 4*, Mathews 4* or 3* Record 23-11, 3rd in PAC12

2014: Bird 5*, Wallace 4* Mathews 4* or 3* Record 21-14, 3rd in PAC12 Record 21-14, 3rd in PAC12

2009: Powe 5*, McGuire 4*, Ubaka 4*, Kately 4*or 3* , Tamir 4*, Midgley 4* Record 13-15, 4th place PAC10

1997: Gray 5*, Marks 5*, Grigsby 4*, Stewart 4* or 3*, Duck 4* or 3* Record 23-9, 3rd in PAC10, Sweet 16

1993: Kidd 5*, Murray 5*, Grigsby 4*, Hendrick 4* Record 21-9, 2nd in PAC10, Sweet 16

1971: Ridgle 5*, Chenier 5*, Charles Johnson 5*, Truitt 5*, Coughran 4* Record 16-9, 3rd in PAC8

1955: Mckeen 5*, Friend 5* Record 9-16, 4th in PCC Southern Division

So if 3rd place conference finishes and 2 sweet 16s for these 7 teams, some with good coaching and some without, is our objective, then highly-rated recruits are the way to go. Personally, I'd rather start with a coach I could trust. A good coach should be a steadying influence in an ever-changing roster, replete with many injuries, transfers and players leaving early for the NBA. And let the coach recruit the best players for the needs he has. I'd like Cal to have better results than any of these teams had, much better results.

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And where did we finish when we didn't have those recruits?

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Sometimes higher, sometimes lower. Some highs: Elite 8s in 1957 and 1958, NCAA Champ in 1959, and NCAA Runnerup in 1960. Friend (a JC transfer) was the only player who might have been highly rated on the 1957 team, IMO. '58, '59, '60 had none, IMO.

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The teams of the 50's are very relevant to a lot of issues, but they are not relevant to this one because the recruiting services were barely existent. I would not claim at all that recruiting rankings from the 50's were accurate. How about we leave this to 2000 or later when recruiting services had a financial model that allowed national networks and when the internet allowed many more kids to be seen? To clarify, I am talking about the effectiveness of current recruiting rankings not ones from 60 years ago.

However, if you want to go back that far, you are talking about maybe 5 better teams vs. 50 worse ones.

calumnus said:

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The season ended badly under extenuating circumstances, but undefeated at Haas, #4 seed despite consensus horrible coaching? That is as good a testimonial for recruiting as the primary factor for success as you can point to.

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It did, and that season is an example of recruiting as a major factor for success. Obviously landing Rabb and Brown was huge. But also keep in mind that of the top ten players by minutes on that team only three were recruited by Martin. Key players who weren't include Ty Wallace, Jabari Bird, Jordan Matthews. And then Brown left and Martin did not recruit a quality replacement. Matthews left for Gonzaga and no quality replacement. Martin recruited one decent player for the next year, Charlie Moore. And despite still having Rabb and Bird Martin couldn't even make the tourney. Which tells me that Martin had exactly one good recruiting year, not that he was a good recruiter. He didn't keep the pipeline going.

bluesaxe said:

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calumnus said:

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The season ended badly under extenuating circumstances, but undefeated at Haas, #4 seed despite consensus horrible coaching? That is as good a testimonial for recruiting as the primary factor for success as you can point to.

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It did, and that season is an example of recruiting as a major factor for success. Obviously landing Rabb and Brown was huge. But also keep in mind that of the top ten players by minutes on that team only three were recruited by Martin. Key players who weren't include Ty Wallace, Jabari Bird, Jordan Matthews. And then Brown left and Martin did not recruit a quality replacement. Matthews left for Gonzaga and no quality replacement. Martin recruited one decent player for the next year, Charlie Moore. And despite still having Rabb and Bird Martin couldn't even make the tourney. Which tells me that Martin had exactly one good recruiting year, not that he was a good recruiter. He didn't keep the pipeline going.

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I'd disagree a bit. Martin recruited Grant Mullins to replace Mathews, and that was a really good get. He was just as good a shot as Mathews, plus he was a complete player. He could drive, dish, shoot threes, make free throws, and play defense. Mathews was a two tool player, the three point shot and free throws. The only drawback with Mullins was he was one-and-done, and all Cuonzo had left to replace him was Coleman.

Recruiting is all important, only if you don't have a coach. If you have a coach, he can get 5-stars to play together, and he can get lesser players to develop and play beyond their abilities. If you have a good coach, he can weather losing some of the one-and-dones better than a guy who is not an accomplished coach.

We also need to remember, that to compete with the basketball schools, you will need a steady stream of 5 star players. Every year there are only about 25 recruits who will end up in the NBA one day. 15-20 will leave school early. In 4 years, a coach like Martin has to have maybe 3 of these guys on his team every year, along with some good 4 star players. With only 100 quality recruits available to him over a 4 year period and with a hundred other schools chasing the same recruits, he will be very lucky to get more than one or two a year. Martin, a good recruiter, got only 2 in three years at Cal. One was one-and-done, the other was two-and-done. They gave Cal nothing, except "We coulda, shoulda won that Hawaii game". They gave Cal nothing for the years going forward, and left two gaping holes in the roster. They gave us the right to say "Brown and Rabb once played for my school, Cal." And a lot of fans are good with that. I'm not.

I think it best to focus on getting a top coach, and hope to get one top recruit each year, while focusing on the guys in the bottom 75% of the top 100 list. Look for potential and not necessarily recruit ranking.

SFCityBear said:

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bluesaxe said:

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calumnus said:

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The season ended badly under extenuating circumstances, but undefeated at Haas, #4 seed despite consensus horrible coaching? That is as good a testimonial for recruiting as the primary factor for success as you can point to.

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It did, and that season is an example of recruiting as a major factor for success. Obviously landing Rabb and Brown was huge. But also keep in mind that of the top ten players by minutes on that team only three were recruited by Martin. Key players who weren't include Ty Wallace, Jabari Bird, Jordan Matthews. And then Brown left and Martin did not recruit a quality replacement. Matthews left for Gonzaga and no quality replacement. Martin recruited one decent player for the next year, Charlie Moore. And despite still having Rabb and Bird Martin couldn't even make the tourney. Which tells me that Martin had exactly one good recruiting year, not that he was a good recruiter. He didn't keep the pipeline going.

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I'd disagree a bit. Martin recruited Grant Mullins to replace Mathews, and that was a really good get. He was just as good a shot as Mathews, plus he was a complete player. He could drive, dish, shoot threes, make free throws, and play defense. Mathews was a two tool player, the three point shot and free throws. The only drawback with Mullins was he was one-and-done, and all Cuonzo had left to replace him was Coleman.

Recruiting is all important, only if you don't have a coach. If you have a coach, he can get 5-stars to play together, and he can get lesser players to develop and play beyond their abilities. If you have a good coach, he can weather losing some of the one-and-dones better than a guy who is not an accomplished coach.

We also need to remember, that to compete with the basketball schools, you will need a steady stream of 5 star players. Every year there are only about 25 recruits who will end up in the NBA one day. 15-20 will leave school early. In 4 years, a coach like Martin has to have maybe 3 of these guys on his team every year, along with some good 4 star players. With only 100 quality recruits available to him over a 4 year period and with a hundred other schools chasing the same recruits, he will be very lucky to get more than one or two a year. Martin, a good recruiter, got only 2 in three years at Cal. One was one-and-done, the other was two-and-done. They gave Cal nothing, except "We coulda, shoulda won that Hawaii game". They gave Cal nothing for the years going forward, and left two gaping holes in the roster. They gave us the right to say "Brown and Rabb once played for my school, Cal." And a lot of fans are good with that. I'm not.

I think it best to focus on getting a top coach, and hope to get one top recruit each year, while focusing on the guys in the bottom 75% of the top 100 list. Look for potential and not necessarily recruit ranking.

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If your argument against recruiting stars is that Cal should get 1 top 25 pick and the rest from the 26-100 range, then I think we have a big misunderstanding going on here. If 26-100 is not paying attention to recruiting star ratings, fine by me. I'd be thrilled if we had a class made up of guys in the 26-100 range. Cal is lucky to get one guy in that range. I think you'd find that everyone, including socaltownie, would be ecstatic if we brought in a class of prospects rated something like 26, 52, 85 and 120. I'm positive that everyone would be over the moon if we added a top 25 pick to that list.

OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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BeachedBear said:

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I love the passion of OTB and SCT. However, their rant against Cal fans is misguided, albeit hilarious. Reminds me of the alcoholic father who screamed about his kids being losers. Was one kid a loser? Yes. Was he one of his kids? Yes. But all of the siblings suffered. That type of misplaced venom does more damage than good - so why do they do it? They are bright enough guys to call out indivuals (I have been their target before), without resorting to irrational generalizations. Please boys - use your power for good!

Having said that, I will reinforce some of their irrational generalizations, that I wholeheartedly agree with - at least wrt Basketball:

• Has the program lost their fans? Yes. I'm one of the die hards, but it is lonely and sad. We're all that's left. The numbers don't lie - 3,000 is being generous. Most of the young alum base and students are not interested. The fair weather fans also need to be brought back. There is only one long-term proven method. Winning. That's it folks.
• The administration has been a joke forever. This unfortunately is true. It goes beyond hiring (and keeping) coaches. I don't think it is intentional or institutionally structured - simply dysfunction of the highest order. The best we have is hope. Knowlton seems like the right direction, but he did not come from a proven P5 program with a record of strong hires. He IS doing a lot to address the dysfunction - and I don't think OTB or SCT give him enough or any credit for that.
• Talent is important. I find it hard to believe anyone is still arguing this point. Pac-12 is a 4 star league in Bball. That means an occasional 5 star and a couple 3 stars. Mostly 3-stars with a 2-star and occasional 4 star won't cut it. And yes, we all agree it needs to be coached. However, even those 100 3 stars that get coached up to the NBA come from a few programs that have proven staffs that can develop players. Cal hasn't had that level of player development EVER in my memory and doesn't hire coaches to do so. Seriously, most of those 3-stars powerhouses are in mid-major conferences, where it makes sense.
• Cal can't figure out what it wants. This is sort of true, but I don't think it is a simple as they want it to be. For example, Cal can't just drop out of P12 Basketball and remain in the other sports (many of which we compete at the highest level). However, as OTB points out, if Cal wants to stay in the P12, but not be competitive in Bball, then at least do it in a pragmatic, cost-effective way. Overpaying two HC salaries for mediocrity will get you fired in the real world.

After seeing 5 games and then some (the OP starting point). Here is what I see as the best case scenario of the Knowlton/Fox experience. Fox gets the most out of current players and recruits some players to fit his program. After three years, CalmBball is playing OK and has reached it's ceiling. Knowlton and the larger Campus Community is somewhat supporting the program, but no one is really SATISFIED. However, during three years, the college basketball community recognizes three things:

• Knowlton is stable and supports the program
• It is no longer a rebuild - nor a stepping stone, but a place to really build a program.
• Knowlton has now spent enough years at the P5 level to build relationships that he has some names and connections to hire better.
• Cal has the opportunity to do better in Bball

Cal parts ways with Fox and hires a younger high-ceiling coach who proves worthy of enough money to keep around for a decade or two (that is why we want someone under about 45 yrs old).

While I would have liked that to happen with Jones replacement, I don't think the bullets were in place (and aren't yet). The best alternative provided by ANYONE was Decuire - and our next hire needs to be better than Travis D (although I think he was just as capable of being the transition coach that Fox is destined to be - and could have been had cheaper, but I guess he didn't have the interview).

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I agree with most of what you're saying, but a couple of points.

I haven't seen one argument that talent doesn't matter. I have seen arguments about realistic options for acquiring and developing that talent, and maybe what "talent" actually is. I'd also argue that it's the team that matters, not individuals, and if the talent doesn't fit together you'll have problems. Martin's best team is a good example of pieces that did not mesh well compounded by a coach who couldn't figure out how to minimize that problem. But you need talent, which we currently lack.

On who develops lower ranked recruits, I haven't seen anyone do a deep dive on that but Derrick Williams was a three-star (Arizona), Russel Westbrook was a three-star (UCLA), Wesley Johnson was a two-star (Iowa State), Ekpe Udoh was a three-star (Michigan), Joe Alexander a three-star (West Va.), Frank Kaminsky a three-star (Wisc.) All those guys were first round picks. You also obviously have guys like Gordon Hayward, Steph Curry, Dame Lillard, Paul George who were with mid-majors, but it would be interesting to test your hypothesis on that.

I'm just hoping Fox can get the program to a point where it's respectable and stable, and then we'll see if Cal can make the right decision. Your best-case scenario seems right, but it is best case and that's a bit sad.

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Again, as I pointed out. 3 star players have a less than 1 in 35 chance of being drafted. 5 stars a 60% chance. You can name the one in 35. Good for you.

But again, the problem is that it is a dangerous myth ("we just need to find that great teacher and all will be OK") No. You need, in the modern game, a guy who can RECRUIT.

And, I want to underscore this, look at Juwan Howard . Do you really want to make the argument that a guy who has never coached in college is a "great teacher?" Of COURSE NOT. You know what he is doing? KILLING it on the recruiting trail - especially with instate talent.

This is the kind of hire that you make it you want to win. Michigan gets that. Memphis gets it. GTown gets it. Cal gets Mark Fox.

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Oh JFC, get off your high horse dude. I never said anything close to "we just need to find a great teacher." I never said any of that. I'm pointing out that we aren't going to get the 5 stars, but that talent exists elsewhere that can be developed. I'm not saying that a good coach can take ****ty players and win. I'm saying that there is talent other than five stars that we need to find. I'm saying that because of WHERE THIS PROGRAM IS NOW we aren't going to be in a position to do anything but look for those gems in the rough for now. I asked if you can explain why that isn't true in another post. You didn't. I'm talking about what Fox can do right now to get THIS program into position to actually compete for some of that other talent. You don't seem to want to hear that. Again, explain why Juwan Howard at Michigan, a team that was in the national finals a couple of years ago, the Sweet 16 last year, and whose coach left for the NBA instead of being fired two of the worst years in history is particularly relevant to where we are now. Even Memphis, which has had a tourney drought, at least had winning records the last five years. And is very likely to end up in more NCAA trouble I predict.

I get that you don't like the last hire. I don't either. But I'm not talking about that.

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Fair enough. You ask about "What Fox can do right now."

1) Explain to JK that absent a practice facility the program is dead in the water and can not compete. Explain that to alumni as well. Disabuse them of the idea that with "good coaching" he can take Germans who have a vertical jump of 0.5 inches and turn them into all world Pac-12 centers.

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

2) Explain to the powers that be that Cal currently is competing with 1 arm and 2 legs tied behind back when it comes to especially the grad school transfer rules. Absent changes we will NOT do better there and that it is a critical piece of the puzzle


Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

3) Explain to the powers that be that the GPA rule is ridiculous. Cal should NOT compete lower or HIGHER than either Washington or UCLA (the other 2 decent PUBLIC R1s in our conference). If there is no GPA rule at UCLA there should not be one at Cal

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

All three of the above DEEPLY hamper our recruiting. But we have TOO many people (on this board especially) that believe

A) We don't need a practice facility cause a hoop and a black top is OK for me so it is OK for them...and they should be studying ANYWAY
B ) That we don't want to "cheapen" cal's grad schools and hey, a great teacher can "coach em up" and especially those 3 starts that are going to stay 4 years
C) Less support but still some. God forbid we take a "dumb azz".

The problem (and why I am mad) is that too many Cal "fans" buy A-C and then say "Well with a good coach that watches Newell tapes we can win titles....and lets face it...that is all that matters since I went to school before the tournament blew up so who cares anyway." I get that everyone is a stakeholder. WHat pisses me off is not recognizing that life is about trade offs and that searching for unicorns is usually a search that doesn't work. If we want to win we have to recruit. End of story.

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I'm done with this. You are venting gripes, not addressing anything I actually said and are attributing opinions to me that I don't hold and haven't expressed because apparently you're pissed at the world.

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You do realize directly above SFB just essentially argued that stars do not matter.

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I wasn't arguing that at all. Of course stars matter, talented star players matter, much more so than subjective "star" ratings assigned by judges or panels of experts. As I posted a few years back a spreadsheet detailing the accomplishments of the top 100 RCSI Composite ranked players of one year for their 4 years of eligibility, and I found that only 40% of them either lived up to their ranking as an individual star, or helped their team to some real success in their college careers. 5-star players were a little more likely to live up to their ranking than 4-star players. That was just one class, and so it is anecdotal evidence. But until someone proves different, I'll believe that recruit rankings of the star players is maybe 40-50% accurate. Looking at that 2016 roster, 5 stars Rabb and Brown lived up to their recruit rankings as to individual performance, but Bird did not, IMO. 4-star Wallace lived up to his ranking, but Domingo did not. Mathews lived up to his 3-star ranking, or even a 4 star ranking, but Singer did not live up to his 3 star ranking, except defensively, where he became a tiger, again IMO. None of those players helped Cal to any great team success.

We still have to recruit the star players, but we need to carefully evaluate them for their fit at Cal, and in our team's system, and for need, and not just sign him because has 5-stars after his name in recruit rankings.

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I linked above. One of the services went back. 5 stars have a 60% chance of being drafted; 4 stars about 20%; 3 stars 1 in 36. Data pulled from about 15 years of rating services.

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I couldn't find your link. I'll expand on the criteria in my spreadsheet for the one year, which was the class of 2009. I did the spreadsheet in 2015 or so, so it would track the full college career of all 100 players, which for some took 5 or 6 years to finish, due to injuries, redshirts, etc. I found that 60 players had had a successful career as individual players, but that only 40 players had actually helped their teams to some serious success. My criteria for a successful team would be achieving one of the following, by making a significant contribution as a member of the team's rotation (top 7 or 8 players in terms of minutes) for one of their seasons in college:

1. A 25 win season
2. A Conference Championship
3. A Conference Tournament Championship
4. Reaching the Sweet 16 in the NCAA

If a player had achieved any of those things, I felt he had helped his team and had been worth the effort to be highly recruited. I realize that getting drafted is an achievement, but I don't really give a rat's behind about what a Cal player does in the NBA. There are some fans who seem to be more excited about what a player does in the NBA after he leaves Cal, than they are excited about what he does while he is playing for Cal. I did the spreadsheet solely to find out how many top recruits help their college teams, if at all. If someone tells me a player was drafted, I'll ask, "Yes, but did he help his college team?"

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One of many problems with your methodology is that you only look at the rate of success as you define it among top players and say "gee that isn't high" based on some subjective standard you pull out of thin air. A 40% hit rate would actually be very high. You never compare your hit rate to lower ranked guys. I don't need to do a spreadsheet. The hit rate is a lot lower for guys rated lower

I really don't know what you think you have proven. No one has ever said that high star ratings guaranteed success. They increase your chance of success tremendously.

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One of the many problems you have in understanding my "methodology" is that we come from different backgrounds and have different skills. I was trained by UC Berkeley to be a research scientist and an engineer. After a successful career as a scientist doing research at Berkeley, I became an engineer, and have spent my life doing research in order to help solve problems. You are an attorney, highly skilled in arguing. I have respect for the skills you have.

I apologize if this appears condescending, but since you are not understanding the methodology, let me explain how scientific research is done. First, a scientist comes up with a hypothesis, an idea or a theory. Yes, we "pull it out of thin air" as you suggest. It is what we do. Actually, it is much more than that, as we usually do it by some sort of reasoning to come up with a conclusion and then, we do research either in the literature or data or we design experiments to prove our hypothesis. Once we have proven a hypothesis to our satisfaction, we are ready to have it tested. We do this by publishing the research in a scientific journal for others to read and either support or challenge.

It becomes necessary to define parameters and terms. I did not pull my definition of success out of thin air. I selected it based on my years of reading posts of knowledgeable posters like yourself on the Bear Insider. I read where many posters defined success as at least reaching the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament. I myself and some posters felt winning the conference was important. I also felt winning a conference tournament was important, as it is such a difficult thing to do, 4 wins in 4 nights back to back. I never saw where any fan posted that a year was successful if they reached some round in the PAC12 Tourney, so I figured only winning the tournament title would be considered a notable success. Finally, for most of my lifetime, a 20 win season was considered by most fans to be successful. Today, with teams playing more games in a season, and several teams winning 30+ games, I decided to bump my definition of success for this research up to 25 wins as being a successful season.

Who said I was trying to prove anything? You may not have read all the posts in the thread, but I was responding to socaltownie who remarked that I did not have any respect for recruit rankings. Based on my research into the data several years ago, I found that 60% of players had successful seasons, individually, for the class of 2009. Many of these were 5-star recruits. I also found that only 40% helped their teams to success as I had defined it. 40% is not a good "hit rate", when compared to flipping a coin, which has a 50% hit rate. This means that the recruit rankings, as far as helping a team goes, are a little less reliable as a predictor of team success than a guess, a coin flip. If you have lower standards of success than I did, then the rankings may be more helpful as a predictor. I was simply trying to answer socaltownie in saying I don't have respect for recruit rankings was not exactly right. I do have respect, just not as much respect as most posters have. I respect that some top 100 recruits may bring us success, but I think 50%-60% of them will not. Of course, the more loaded your roster is, the odds may go up that you will have success. Get too many however, then it takes a masterful coach to be able to satisfy the egos of all the stars, when there is only one basketball they can use in a game. I don't revere or idolize recruits for their recruit ranking. I revere them for what they have done when it is very good, not for a ranking, which just a subjective rating made by people who I suspect know little more about how successful a player will become than the fans who write on this board know.

Thank you for challenging me on this, so I could explain why I don't fully support recruit rankings. I only wish you could refrain from the personal ridicule, in which you sometimes engage. I can do without that.

OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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bluesaxe said:

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calumnus said:

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The season ended badly under extenuating circumstances, but undefeated at Haas, #4 seed despite consensus horrible coaching? That is as good a testimonial for recruiting as the primary factor for success as you can point to.

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It did, and that season is an example of recruiting as a major factor for success. Obviously landing Rabb and Brown was huge. But also keep in mind that of the top ten players by minutes on that team only three were recruited by Martin. Key players who weren't include Ty Wallace, Jabari Bird, Jordan Matthews. And then Brown left and Martin did not recruit a quality replacement. Matthews left for Gonzaga and no quality replacement. Martin recruited one decent player for the next year, Charlie Moore. And despite still having Rabb and Bird Martin couldn't even make the tourney. Which tells me that Martin had exactly one good recruiting year, not that he was a good recruiter. He didn't keep the pipeline going.

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I'd disagree a bit. Martin recruited Grant Mullins to replace Mathews, and that was a really good get. He was just as good a shot as Mathews, plus he was a complete player. He could drive, dish, shoot threes, make free throws, and play defense. Mathews was a two tool player, the three point shot and free throws. The only drawback with Mullins was he was one-and-done, and all Cuonzo had left to replace him was Coleman.

Recruiting is all important, only if you don't have a coach. If you have a coach, he can get 5-stars to play together, and he can get lesser players to develop and play beyond their abilities. If you have a good coach, he can weather losing some of the one-and-dones better than a guy who is not an accomplished coach.

We also need to remember, that to compete with the basketball schools, you will need a steady stream of 5 star players. Every year there are only about 25 recruits who will end up in the NBA one day. 15-20 will leave school early. In 4 years, a coach like Martin has to have maybe 3 of these guys on his team every year, along with some good 4 star players. With only 100 quality recruits available to him over a 4 year period and with a hundred other schools chasing the same recruits, he will be very lucky to get more than one or two a year. Martin, a good recruiter, got only 2 in three years at Cal. One was one-and-done, the other was two-and-done. They gave Cal nothing, except "We coulda, shoulda won that Hawaii game". They gave Cal nothing for the years going forward, and left two gaping holes in the roster. They gave us the right to say "Brown and Rabb once played for my school, Cal." And a lot of fans are good with that. I'm not.

I think it best to focus on getting a top coach, and hope to get one top recruit each year, while focusing on the guys in the bottom 75% of the top 100 list. Look for potential and not necessarily recruit ranking.

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If your argument against recruiting stars is that Cal should get 1 top 25 pick and the rest from the 26-100 range, then I think we have a big misunderstanding going on here. If 26-100 is not paying attention to recruiting star ratings, fine by me. I'd be thrilled if we had a class made up of guys in the 26-100 range. Cal is lucky to get one guy in that range. I think you'd find that everyone, including socaltownie, would be ecstatic if we brought in a class of prospects rated something like 26, 52, 85 and 120. I'm positive that everyone would be over the moon if we added a top 25 pick to that list.

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I don't care for you rephrasing my argument. It made sense to me, and I don't understand what you have written here. I made no "argument against recruiting stars". What I said was that I felt that we first need to focus on getting a good coach, and when it comes time to recruit, we should not just focus on landing 5-star players, one-and-done players (I personally would like ZERO one-and-and done players on our roster, after the huge hole that was created with Brown and Rabb going bye-bye. Or the hole created when Ryan Anderson left Cal for the NBA. prefer watching my Cal players in Cal jerseys, not in NBA jerseys, thank you very much). I prefer watching kids develop over time in college. That means 4 years in a Cal uniform. So I prefer 4 star, 3-star, 2 star, and the unranked. The most important thing for me is the development of character, in which basketball can play a big part. I enjoyed seeing the constant improvement of Jorge (initially an unranked player, but as soon as Cal signed him, he was given a star ranking). I enjoyed watching 3-star Randle develop into a great offensive player. Another favorite was Richard Solomon, a 3-star, who was trying to become a stretch four. He was very immature, was caught cheating, and nearly washed out, only to develop and emerge as a dominant center in the conference. Those kids all became men over a 4 year period, and that is worth more than all the one-and-dones you can sign to play for Cal. However I have to bve a ralist, and what most fans care about is winning, and hops and handles and dunks and threes, and of course loads of athleticism, so I make a concession and say OK, get yourself a 5-star and hope he pans out.

I never said that "26-100 is not paying attention to recruit rankings" You can pay attention to recruit rankings, but just take them with a grain of salt. They are not biblical truth. They are human, and therefore fallible. They don't take into account the kids who get hurt and have their careers ended, like Taylor Harrison and Sam Rayburn, or the kids like Omondi Amoke, who stole laptops, apparently, and ended his Cal career. Or the kids who are otherwise immature, like breaking school or team rules. They don't usually take defense into account, and defense is close to 50% of the game. Do rankings take into account whether a player is able to cooperate with teammates?

I think you are also rephrasing socaltownie's argument as well, and I don't believe you are accurate as to what he was writing. My posts on rankingsin this thread have been to answer socaltownie, and everything he has written in this thread and previous threads is that he would like us to go after highly ranked recruits, the higher-ranked the better. Let's let him speak for himself.

SFCityBear said:

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OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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socaltownie said:

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BeachedBear said:

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I love the passion of OTB and SCT. However, their rant against Cal fans is misguided, albeit hilarious. Reminds me of the alcoholic father who screamed about his kids being losers. Was one kid a loser? Yes. Was he one of his kids? Yes. But all of the siblings suffered. That type of misplaced venom does more damage than good - so why do they do it? They are bright enough guys to call out indivuals (I have been their target before), without resorting to irrational generalizations. Please boys - use your power for good!

Having said that, I will reinforce some of their irrational generalizations, that I wholeheartedly agree with - at least wrt Basketball:

• Has the program lost their fans? Yes. I'm one of the die hards, but it is lonely and sad. We're all that's left. The numbers don't lie - 3,000 is being generous. Most of the young alum base and students are not interested. The fair weather fans also need to be brought back. There is only one long-term proven method. Winning. That's it folks.
• The administration has been a joke forever. This unfortunately is true. It goes beyond hiring (and keeping) coaches. I don't think it is intentional or institutionally structured - simply dysfunction of the highest order. The best we have is hope. Knowlton seems like the right direction, but he did not come from a proven P5 program with a record of strong hires. He IS doing a lot to address the dysfunction - and I don't think OTB or SCT give him enough or any credit for that.
• Talent is important. I find it hard to believe anyone is still arguing this point. Pac-12 is a 4 star league in Bball. That means an occasional 5 star and a couple 3 stars. Mostly 3-stars with a 2-star and occasional 4 star won't cut it. And yes, we all agree it needs to be coached. However, even those 100 3 stars that get coached up to the NBA come from a few programs that have proven staffs that can develop players. Cal hasn't had that level of player development EVER in my memory and doesn't hire coaches to do so. Seriously, most of those 3-stars powerhouses are in mid-major conferences, where it makes sense.
• Cal can't figure out what it wants. This is sort of true, but I don't think it is a simple as they want it to be. For example, Cal can't just drop out of P12 Basketball and remain in the other sports (many of which we compete at the highest level). However, as OTB points out, if Cal wants to stay in the P12, but not be competitive in Bball, then at least do it in a pragmatic, cost-effective way. Overpaying two HC salaries for mediocrity will get you fired in the real world.

After seeing 5 games and then some (the OP starting point). Here is what I see as the best case scenario of the Knowlton/Fox experience. Fox gets the most out of current players and recruits some players to fit his program. After three years, CalmBball is playing OK and has reached it's ceiling. Knowlton and the larger Campus Community is somewhat supporting the program, but no one is really SATISFIED. However, during three years, the college basketball community recognizes three things:

• Knowlton is stable and supports the program
• It is no longer a rebuild - nor a stepping stone, but a place to really build a program.
• Knowlton has now spent enough years at the P5 level to build relationships that he has some names and connections to hire better.
• Cal has the opportunity to do better in Bball

Cal parts ways with Fox and hires a younger high-ceiling coach who proves worthy of enough money to keep around for a decade or two (that is why we want someone under about 45 yrs old).

While I would have liked that to happen with Jones replacement, I don't think the bullets were in place (and aren't yet). The best alternative provided by ANYONE was Decuire - and our next hire needs to be better than Travis D (although I think he was just as capable of being the transition coach that Fox is destined to be - and could have been had cheaper, but I guess he didn't have the interview).

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I agree with most of what you're saying, but a couple of points.

I haven't seen one argument that talent doesn't matter. I have seen arguments about realistic options for acquiring and developing that talent, and maybe what "talent" actually is. I'd also argue that it's the team that matters, not individuals, and if the talent doesn't fit together you'll have problems. Martin's best team is a good example of pieces that did not mesh well compounded by a coach who couldn't figure out how to minimize that problem. But you need talent, which we currently lack.

On who develops lower ranked recruits, I haven't seen anyone do a deep dive on that but Derrick Williams was a three-star (Arizona), Russel Westbrook was a three-star (UCLA), Wesley Johnson was a two-star (Iowa State), Ekpe Udoh was a three-star (Michigan), Joe Alexander a three-star (West Va.), Frank Kaminsky a three-star (Wisc.) All those guys were first round picks. You also obviously have guys like Gordon Hayward, Steph Curry, Dame Lillard, Paul George who were with mid-majors, but it would be interesting to test your hypothesis on that.

I'm just hoping Fox can get the program to a point where it's respectable and stable, and then we'll see if Cal can make the right decision. Your best-case scenario seems right, but it is best case and that's a bit sad.

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Again, as I pointed out. 3 star players have a less than 1 in 35 chance of being drafted. 5 stars a 60% chance. You can name the one in 35. Good for you.

But again, the problem is that it is a dangerous myth ("we just need to find that great teacher and all will be OK") No. You need, in the modern game, a guy who can RECRUIT.

And, I want to underscore this, look at Juwan Howard . Do you really want to make the argument that a guy who has never coached in college is a "great teacher?" Of COURSE NOT. You know what he is doing? KILLING it on the recruiting trail - especially with instate talent.

This is the kind of hire that you make it you want to win. Michigan gets that. Memphis gets it. GTown gets it. Cal gets Mark Fox.

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Oh JFC, get off your high horse dude. I never said anything close to "we just need to find a great teacher." I never said any of that. I'm pointing out that we aren't going to get the 5 stars, but that talent exists elsewhere that can be developed. I'm not saying that a good coach can take ****ty players and win. I'm saying that there is talent other than five stars that we need to find. I'm saying that because of WHERE THIS PROGRAM IS NOW we aren't going to be in a position to do anything but look for those gems in the rough for now. I asked if you can explain why that isn't true in another post. You didn't. I'm talking about what Fox can do right now to get THIS program into position to actually compete for some of that other talent. You don't seem to want to hear that. Again, explain why Juwan Howard at Michigan, a team that was in the national finals a couple of years ago, the Sweet 16 last year, and whose coach left for the NBA instead of being fired two of the worst years in history is particularly relevant to where we are now. Even Memphis, which has had a tourney drought, at least had winning records the last five years. And is very likely to end up in more NCAA trouble I predict.

I get that you don't like the last hire. I don't either. But I'm not talking about that.

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Fair enough. You ask about "What Fox can do right now."

1) Explain to JK that absent a practice facility the program is dead in the water and can not compete. Explain that to alumni as well. Disabuse them of the idea that with "good coaching" he can take Germans who have a vertical jump of 0.5 inches and turn them into all world Pac-12 centers.

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

2) Explain to the powers that be that Cal currently is competing with 1 arm and 2 legs tied behind back when it comes to especially the grad school transfer rules. Absent changes we will NOT do better there and that it is a critical piece of the puzzle


Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

3) Explain to the powers that be that the GPA rule is ridiculous. Cal should NOT compete lower or HIGHER than either Washington or UCLA (the other 2 decent PUBLIC R1s in our conference). If there is no GPA rule at UCLA there should not be one at Cal

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

All three of the above DEEPLY hamper our recruiting. But we have TOO many people (on this board especially) that believe

A) We don't need a practice facility cause a hoop and a black top is OK for me so it is OK for them...and they should be studying ANYWAY
B ) That we don't want to "cheapen" cal's grad schools and hey, a great teacher can "coach em up" and especially those 3 starts that are going to stay 4 years
C) Less support but still some. God forbid we take a "dumb azz".

The problem (and why I am mad) is that too many Cal "fans" buy A-C and then say "Well with a good coach that watches Newell tapes we can win titles....and lets face it...that is all that matters since I went to school before the tournament blew up so who cares anyway." I get that everyone is a stakeholder. WHat pisses me off is not recognizing that life is about trade offs and that searching for unicorns is usually a search that doesn't work. If we want to win we have to recruit. End of story.

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I'm done with this. You are venting gripes, not addressing anything I actually said and are attributing opinions to me that I don't hold and haven't expressed because apparently you're pissed at the world.

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You do realize directly above SFB just essentially argued that stars do not matter.

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I wasn't arguing that at all. Of course stars matter, talented star players matter, much more so than subjective "star" ratings assigned by judges or panels of experts. As I posted a few years back a spreadsheet detailing the accomplishments of the top 100 RCSI Composite ranked players of one year for their 4 years of eligibility, and I found that only 40% of them either lived up to their ranking as an individual star, or helped their team to some real success in their college careers. 5-star players were a little more likely to live up to their ranking than 4-star players. That was just one class, and so it is anecdotal evidence. But until someone proves different, I'll believe that recruit rankings of the star players is maybe 40-50% accurate. Looking at that 2016 roster, 5 stars Rabb and Brown lived up to their recruit rankings as to individual performance, but Bird did not, IMO. 4-star Wallace lived up to his ranking, but Domingo did not. Mathews lived up to his 3-star ranking, or even a 4 star ranking, but Singer did not live up to his 3 star ranking, except defensively, where he became a tiger, again IMO. None of those players helped Cal to any great team success.

We still have to recruit the star players, but we need to carefully evaluate them for their fit at Cal, and in our team's system, and for need, and not just sign him because has 5-stars after his name in recruit rankings.

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I linked above. One of the services went back. 5 stars have a 60% chance of being drafted; 4 stars about 20%; 3 stars 1 in 36. Data pulled from about 15 years of rating services.

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I couldn't find your link. I'll expand on the criteria in my spreadsheet for the one year, which was the class of 2009. I did the spreadsheet in 2015 or so, so it would track the full college career of all 100 players, which for some took 5 or 6 years to finish, due to injuries, redshirts, etc. I found that 60 players had had a successful career as individual players, but that only 40 players had actually helped their teams to some serious success. My criteria for a successful team would be achieving one of the following, by making a significant contribution as a member of the team's rotation (top 7 or 8 players in terms of minutes) for one of their seasons in college:

1. A 25 win season
2. A Conference Championship
3. A Conference Tournament Championship
4. Reaching the Sweet 16 in the NCAA

If a player had achieved any of those things, I felt he had helped his team and had been worth the effort to be highly recruited. I realize that getting drafted is an achievement, but I don't really give a rat's behind about what a Cal player does in the NBA. There are some fans who seem to be more excited about what a player does in the NBA after he leaves Cal, than they are excited about what he does while he is playing for Cal. I did the spreadsheet solely to find out how many top recruits help their college teams, if at all. If someone tells me a player was drafted, I'll ask, "Yes, but did he help his college team?"

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One of many problems with your methodology is that you only look at the rate of success as you define it among top players and say "gee that isn't high" based on some subjective standard you pull out of thin air. A 40% hit rate would actually be very high. You never compare your hit rate to lower ranked guys. I don't need to do a spreadsheet. The hit rate is a lot lower for guys rated lower

I really don't know what you think you have proven. No one has ever said that high star ratings guaranteed success. They increase your chance of success tremendously.

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One of the many problems you have in understanding my "methodology" is that we come from different backgrounds and have different skills. I was trained by UC Berkeley to be a research scientist and an engineer. After a successful career as a scientist doing research at Berkeley, I became an engineer, and have spent my life doing research in order to help solve problems. You are an attorney, highly skilled in arguing. I have respect for the skills you have.

I apologize if this appears condescending, but since you are not understanding the methodology, let me explain how scientific research is done. First, a scientist comes up with a hypothesis, an idea or a theory. Yes, we "pull it out of thin air" as you suggest. It is what we do. Actually, it is much more than that, as we usually do it by some sort of reasoning to come up with a conclusion and then, we do research either in the literature or data or we design experiments to prove our hypothesis. Once we have proven a hypothesis to our satisfaction, we are ready to have it tested. We do this by publishing the research in a scientific journal for others to read and either support or challenge.

It becomes necessary to define parameters and terms. I did not pull my definition of success out of thin air. I selected it based on my years of reading posts of knowledgeable posters like yourself on the Bear Insider. I read where many posters defined success as at least reaching the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament. I myself and some posters felt winning the conference was important. I also felt winning a conference tournament was important, as it is such a difficult thing to do, 4 wins in 4 nights back to back. I never saw where any fan posted that a year was successful if they reached some round in the PAC12 Tourney, so I figured only winning the tournament title would be considered a notable success. Finally, for most of my lifetime, a 20 win season was considered by most fans to be successful. Today, with teams playing more games in a season, and several teams winning 30+ games, I decided to bump my definition of success for this research up to 25 wins as being a successful season.

Who said I was trying to prove anything? You may not have read all the posts in the thread, but I was responding to socaltownie who remarked that I did not have any respect for recruit rankings. Based on my research into the data several years ago, I found that 60% of players had successful seasons, individually, for the class of 2009. Many of these were 5-star recruits. I also found that only 40% helped their teams to success as I had defined it. 40% is not a good "hit rate", when compared to flipping a coin, which has a 50% hit rate. This means that the recruit rankings, as far as helping a team goes, are a little less reliable as a predictor of team success than a guess, a coin flip. If you have lower standards of success than I did, then the rankings may be more helpful as a predictor. I was simply trying to answer socaltownie in saying I don't have respect for recruit rankings was not exactly right. I do have respect, just not as much respect as most posters have. I respect that some top 100 recruits may bring us success, but I think 50%-60% of them will not. Of course, the more loaded your roster is, the odds may go up that you will have success. Get too many however, then it takes a masterful coach to be able to satisfy the egos of all the stars, when there is only one basketball they can use in a game. I don't revere or idolize recruits for their recruit ranking. I revere them for what they have done when it is very good, not for a ranking, which just a subjective rating made by people who I suspect know little more about how successful a player will become than the fans who write on this board know.

Thank you for challenging me on this, so I could explain why I don't fully support recruit rankings. I only wish you could refrain from the personal ridicule, in which you sometimes engage. I can do without that.

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1. I did not engage in personal ridicule. It is becoming clear to me that you view disagreement or challenging your methodology as personal ridicule. I can do without the hostility in response to an honest discussion.

2. I will avoid personal ridicule in this post other than to say that WAS very condescending of you. I may not be a scientist for a living, but I have a lot of education in scientific fields. I know how the scientific method works. You may not realize this, but a legal degree is a post graduate degree and does not require any specific type of undergraduate degree, so lawyers come from all kinds of backgrounds. Mine is anthropology. I know how to make a hypothesis and engage in research. Also, most attorneys are not litigators. I do not argue for a living and that is not the primary skill they teach in law school.

3. I will apologize for using the term "methodology" as that is probably not technically where my issue is with the research project you engaged in. It is around the parameters you have set and how you have constructed the hypothesis. Let me try to explain.

My fundamental problem with your conclusion is pretty well embodied by the following statement from your post which I think is extremely faulty:

Quote:

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40% is not a good "hit rate", when compared to flipping a coin, which has a 50% hit rate. This means that the recruit rankings, as far as helping a team goes, are a little less reliable as a predictor of team success than a guess, a coin flip.

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A coin flip is not an appropriate comparison. I'll use an absurd example as an analogy. If I were some how to develop a system that predicted the winning lottery numbers 10% of the time, that would be astounding and I would be a rich man. The criticism of my system that it is only right 10% of the time compared to a coin flip of 50% of the time would be a very faulty criticism because we are not dealing with a coin flip which you could guess 50% of the time. We are dealing with lottery odds of one in several million.

My point is you have a definition of success that not nearly 40% of the teams meet. Less than 5% of the teams make the Sweet Sixteen, for instance. You say 40% is not good because it is worse than predicting a coin flip, but we are not predicting a coin flip. We are predicting something that has a much lower chance of happening than a coin flip. That is a pretty big error in your analysis. If you want your analysis to have meaning, you need to show what the overall chance of success for an average NCAA team is using your criteria and then compare THAT percentage to the success of teams with top 100 players.

And frankly, even if you did that, I still think the parameters of the research problem are faulty given the way you discuss your findings. No one thinks landing one top 100 recruit is going to lead to success as you have defined it. So, I don't see that tracking how many times individual players in the top one hundred have team "success" is a good question to get at the question of whether teams landing higher level recruits leads to "success". A team who lands one 80th ranked recruit in 4 years not having success is not surprising. A team landing 4 top 20 recruits in one year not having success would be surprising. So, I was wrong when I said your methodology was faulty. It absolutely demonstrated a 40% hit rate for one year based on your parameters of success. However, I don't think your results were unexpected. And you are using those results to imply greater conclusions than your question was designed to make.

I would argue that to draw the FURTHER conclusions you draw in your arguments, you would have to look at overall team recruiting rankings, not how many times individual recruits lead to team success. Because individual recruiting rankings are designed to predict success of the individual, not success of the team. If Jason Kidd were to join the worst team in America and move them from the #353 ranked team to the #200 ranked team, that seems to me to be a big individual success. If he were All American and went to the NBA, that would affirm the correctness of his recruiting ranking. By your criteria, he would be a miss. I fully understand that your hypothesis was how likely it was for a team getting that one guy to "succeed". Your hypothesis doesn't tell us much, though. The argument people are making is not about getting one guy as a savior. It is about OVERALL recruiting rankings. Socaltownie would not think it was good enough to get Jason Kidd and 4 years of 2 stars.

You created a hypothesis and designed a research problem that determined how likely it is for one guy to bring a team success. That is fine for how far it goes. You did a good job doing THAT. However, you are then using that to extrapolate the usefulness of recruiting rankings overall. I can do a research project that proves most people think ice cream taste good. I can't then extrapolate from that conclusion that ice cream is healthy for you.

To sum up.

1. You have proven that 40% of the individuals from that class had team success as you defined it.
2. The chance randomly guessing a coin flip is 50%
3. The chance that a player recruited to play Division 1 basketball will end up having team success as you have defined it is much lower than 50%. Therefore the random chance of guessing which individual will have team success is much lower than 50%.
4. The chance of a team having success is much lower than 50%. Therefor the random chance of guessing which team will have success is much lower than 50%.
5. Because of 3 and 4, it is not accurate to compare the effectiveness of the prediction of a successful recruit to a coin flip. The recruit does not have a 50% chance of success.
6. An accurate analysis of how effective having individuals in the top 100 is at predicting success would have to include determining how many of the 353 Division I teams had "success" and comparing that success rate to the success rate of the individual. This would be the accurate metric to use, not a coin flip.
7. My hypothesis based on basic skim of the numbers is that far fewer than 40% of the teams have success. I do not intend to do the research today to test that.
8. Using team success to judge a standard that is designed to predict individual success does not get at the issue people are arguing. Those arguing that we need to recruit "better" as judged by recruiting rankings mean that as a team our overall recruiting classes must be higher ranked. No one believes one guy would bring success at the high levels you define. To accurately judge their argument, you would need to analyze TEAM recruiting rankings.
9. You have designed a hypothesis that does not get at the central question of debate here. Therefore, you have achieved a result that is accurate but of very little import. You are then using that result to argue the central question that is being debated when that result does not bear on that central question.

OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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BeachedBear said:

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I love the passion of OTB and SCT. However, their rant against Cal fans is misguided, albeit hilarious. Reminds me of the alcoholic father who screamed about his kids being losers. Was one kid a loser? Yes. Was he one of his kids? Yes. But all of the siblings suffered. That type of misplaced venom does more damage than good - so why do they do it? They are bright enough guys to call out indivuals (I have been their target before), without resorting to irrational generalizations. Please boys - use your power for good!

Having said that, I will reinforce some of their irrational generalizations, that I wholeheartedly agree with - at least wrt Basketball:

• Has the program lost their fans? Yes. I'm one of the die hards, but it is lonely and sad. We're all that's left. The numbers don't lie - 3,000 is being generous. Most of the young alum base and students are not interested. The fair weather fans also need to be brought back. There is only one long-term proven method. Winning. That's it folks.
• The administration has been a joke forever. This unfortunately is true. It goes beyond hiring (and keeping) coaches. I don't think it is intentional or institutionally structured - simply dysfunction of the highest order. The best we have is hope. Knowlton seems like the right direction, but he did not come from a proven P5 program with a record of strong hires. He IS doing a lot to address the dysfunction - and I don't think OTB or SCT give him enough or any credit for that.
• Talent is important. I find it hard to believe anyone is still arguing this point. Pac-12 is a 4 star league in Bball. That means an occasional 5 star and a couple 3 stars. Mostly 3-stars with a 2-star and occasional 4 star won't cut it. And yes, we all agree it needs to be coached. However, even those 100 3 stars that get coached up to the NBA come from a few programs that have proven staffs that can develop players. Cal hasn't had that level of player development EVER in my memory and doesn't hire coaches to do so. Seriously, most of those 3-stars powerhouses are in mid-major conferences, where it makes sense.
• Cal can't figure out what it wants. This is sort of true, but I don't think it is a simple as they want it to be. For example, Cal can't just drop out of P12 Basketball and remain in the other sports (many of which we compete at the highest level). However, as OTB points out, if Cal wants to stay in the P12, but not be competitive in Bball, then at least do it in a pragmatic, cost-effective way. Overpaying two HC salaries for mediocrity will get you fired in the real world.

After seeing 5 games and then some (the OP starting point). Here is what I see as the best case scenario of the Knowlton/Fox experience. Fox gets the most out of current players and recruits some players to fit his program. After three years, CalmBball is playing OK and has reached it's ceiling. Knowlton and the larger Campus Community is somewhat supporting the program, but no one is really SATISFIED. However, during three years, the college basketball community recognizes three things:

• Knowlton is stable and supports the program
• It is no longer a rebuild - nor a stepping stone, but a place to really build a program.
• Knowlton has now spent enough years at the P5 level to build relationships that he has some names and connections to hire better.
• Cal has the opportunity to do better in Bball

Cal parts ways with Fox and hires a younger high-ceiling coach who proves worthy of enough money to keep around for a decade or two (that is why we want someone under about 45 yrs old).

While I would have liked that to happen with Jones replacement, I don't think the bullets were in place (and aren't yet). The best alternative provided by ANYONE was Decuire - and our next hire needs to be better than Travis D (although I think he was just as capable of being the transition coach that Fox is destined to be - and could have been had cheaper, but I guess he didn't have the interview).

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I agree with most of what you're saying, but a couple of points.

I haven't seen one argument that talent doesn't matter. I have seen arguments about realistic options for acquiring and developing that talent, and maybe what "talent" actually is. I'd also argue that it's the team that matters, not individuals, and if the talent doesn't fit together you'll have problems. Martin's best team is a good example of pieces that did not mesh well compounded by a coach who couldn't figure out how to minimize that problem. But you need talent, which we currently lack.

On who develops lower ranked recruits, I haven't seen anyone do a deep dive on that but Derrick Williams was a three-star (Arizona), Russel Westbrook was a three-star (UCLA), Wesley Johnson was a two-star (Iowa State), Ekpe Udoh was a three-star (Michigan), Joe Alexander a three-star (West Va.), Frank Kaminsky a three-star (Wisc.) All those guys were first round picks. You also obviously have guys like Gordon Hayward, Steph Curry, Dame Lillard, Paul George who were with mid-majors, but it would be interesting to test your hypothesis on that.

I'm just hoping Fox can get the program to a point where it's respectable and stable, and then we'll see if Cal can make the right decision. Your best-case scenario seems right, but it is best case and that's a bit sad.

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Again, as I pointed out. 3 star players have a less than 1 in 35 chance of being drafted. 5 stars a 60% chance. You can name the one in 35. Good for you.

But again, the problem is that it is a dangerous myth ("we just need to find that great teacher and all will be OK") No. You need, in the modern game, a guy who can RECRUIT.

And, I want to underscore this, look at Juwan Howard . Do you really want to make the argument that a guy who has never coached in college is a "great teacher?" Of COURSE NOT. You know what he is doing? KILLING it on the recruiting trail - especially with instate talent.

This is the kind of hire that you make it you want to win. Michigan gets that. Memphis gets it. GTown gets it. Cal gets Mark Fox.

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Oh JFC, get off your high horse dude. I never said anything close to "we just need to find a great teacher." I never said any of that. I'm pointing out that we aren't going to get the 5 stars, but that talent exists elsewhere that can be developed. I'm not saying that a good coach can take ****ty players and win. I'm saying that there is talent other than five stars that we need to find. I'm saying that because of WHERE THIS PROGRAM IS NOW we aren't going to be in a position to do anything but look for those gems in the rough for now. I asked if you can explain why that isn't true in another post. You didn't. I'm talking about what Fox can do right now to get THIS program into position to actually compete for some of that other talent. You don't seem to want to hear that. Again, explain why Juwan Howard at Michigan, a team that was in the national finals a couple of years ago, the Sweet 16 last year, and whose coach left for the NBA instead of being fired two of the worst years in history is particularly relevant to where we are now. Even Memphis, which has had a tourney drought, at least had winning records the last five years. And is very likely to end up in more NCAA trouble I predict.

I get that you don't like the last hire. I don't either. But I'm not talking about that.

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Fair enough. You ask about "What Fox can do right now."

1) Explain to JK that absent a practice facility the program is dead in the water and can not compete. Explain that to alumni as well. Disabuse them of the idea that with "good coaching" he can take Germans who have a vertical jump of 0.5 inches and turn them into all world Pac-12 centers.

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

2) Explain to the powers that be that Cal currently is competing with 1 arm and 2 legs tied behind back when it comes to especially the grad school transfer rules. Absent changes we will NOT do better there and that it is a critical piece of the puzzle


Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

3) Explain to the powers that be that the GPA rule is ridiculous. Cal should NOT compete lower or HIGHER than either Washington or UCLA (the other 2 decent PUBLIC R1s in our conference). If there is no GPA rule at UCLA there should not be one at Cal

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

All three of the above DEEPLY hamper our recruiting. But we have TOO many people (on this board especially) that believe

A) We don't need a practice facility cause a hoop and a black top is OK for me so it is OK for them...and they should be studying ANYWAY
B ) That we don't want to "cheapen" cal's grad schools and hey, a great teacher can "coach em up" and especially those 3 starts that are going to stay 4 years
C) Less support but still some. God forbid we take a "dumb azz".

The problem (and why I am mad) is that too many Cal "fans" buy A-C and then say "Well with a good coach that watches Newell tapes we can win titles....and lets face it...that is all that matters since I went to school before the tournament blew up so who cares anyway." I get that everyone is a stakeholder. WHat pisses me off is not recognizing that life is about trade offs and that searching for unicorns is usually a search that doesn't work. If we want to win we have to recruit. End of story.

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can we get a raise of hands, who thinks all three (A, B and C)?

let's just say everyone on this board agrees with you. how about you make the first $10M donation to pay for part of the practice facility? I'll support that!

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I have seen PLENTY of support for those three propositions by posters on this board who then go on to suggest that "diamond in the rough" and "coaching" will solve all ills and 4 starts aint great cause look at Mr. Fuji Water and losing to Hawaii.

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Speaking of 4 stars (I think you meant that instead of "4 starts"), there are a number of posters here who feel the main reason the water guy and Cal lost to Hawaii was the fact that both 4-star Ty Wallace and 5 star Jabari Bird missed the game with injuries. Cal played the game with 5 stars Brown and Rabb, 4 star (by some recruiting services but not in RCSI Composite rankings) Stephen Domingo. Wallace was "great" in the eyes of those fans, because had he played they felt Cal would likely have won. Many believed that without the injuries, Cal would have gone deep in the tournament. I am not one of those.

For those who think 5 stars are the great hope, I'd point out that 5-star Jalen Brown had the worst game of his college career against Hawaii. 5-star Rabb played well as expected, but without the fine play of 3 stars Mathews and Singer, that game would have been a blowout for Hawaii (which was basically a team of 2-stars and the unranked). 4-star Domingo played 14 minutes, but did not score.

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For those who think 5 stars aren't the great hope I'd point out that 1 star, 5 foot 3 Joe Bloggs didn't make the tournament. Because one game of anecdotal evidence proves a point.

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If you would like more than one game, let's look at Cal's teams with the most top recruits. Recruit rankings have only been around for less than 30 years, so I'll add my own guesses for some of the rankings:

2016: Brown 5*, Rabb 5*, Bird 5*, Wallace 4*, Domingo 4*, Mathews 4* or 3* Record 23-11, 3rd in PAC12

2014: Bird 5*, Wallace 4* Mathews 4* or 3* Record 21-14, 3rd in PAC12 Record 21-14, 3rd in PAC12

2009: Powe 5*, McGuire 4*, Ubaka 4*, Kately 4*or 3* , Tamir 4*, Midgley 4* Record 13-15, 4th place PAC10

1997: Gray 5*, Marks 5*, Grigsby 4*, Stewart 4* or 3*, Duck 4* or 3* Record 23-9, 3rd in PAC10, Sweet 16

1993: Kidd 5*, Murray 5*, Grigsby 4*, Hendrick 4* Record 21-9, 2nd in PAC10, Sweet 16

1971: Ridgle 5*, Chenier 5*, Charles Johnson 5*, Truitt 5*, Coughran 4* Record 16-9, 3rd in PAC8

1955: Mckeen 5*, Friend 5* Record 9-16, 4th in PCC Southern Division

So if 3rd place conference finishes and 2 sweet 16s for these 7 teams, some with good coaching and some without, is our objective, then highly-rated recruits are the way to go. Personally, I'd rather start with a coach I could trust. A good coach should be a steadying influence in an ever-changing roster, replete with many injuries, transfers and players leaving early for the NBA. And let the coach recruit the best players for the needs he has. I'd like Cal to have better results than any of these teams had, much better results.

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And where did we finish when we didn't have those recruits?

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Sometimes higher, sometimes lower. Some highs: Elite 8s in 1957 and 1958, NCAA Champ in 1959, and NCAA Runnerup in 1960. Friend (a JC transfer) was the only player who might have been highly rated on the 1957 team, IMO. '58, '59, '60 had none, IMO.

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The teams of the 50's are very relevant to a lot of issues, but they are not relevant to this one because the recruiting services were barely existent. I would not claim at all that recruiting rankings from the 50's were accurate. How about we leave this to 2000 or later when recruiting services had a financial model that allowed national networks and when the internet allowed many more kids to be seen? To clarify, I am talking about the effectiveness of current recruiting rankings not ones from 60 years ago.

However, if you want to go back that far, you are talking about maybe 5 better teams vs. 50 worse ones.

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I beg to differ. The teams of the '50s might not be so relevant if we were Duke or Kentucky, but we are Cal, and it is the only period where Cal ever won anything of note, except the conference championship of 2010 (which has been pooh-poohed by many here as having happened in a down year for the conference.)

There were no recruiting services in the '50s. Somehow, by word of mouth, or connections, or magic, the good coaches always seemed to know who the best high school players were. There were no recruit rankings for several of the teams in my post, because recruit rankings did not begin until the 1990s, I think I have heard. The RCSI composite rankings began in 1998.

So the recruit rankings for the Cal teams older than the RCSI which I showed in my post are my guess, maybe wild guess, or hopefully an educated guess. As socaltownie once said, it is the eye test. There were no rankings in 1971, but my eye test tells me that it was the most talented team ever assembled. Ansley Truitt would have blown Rooks or Okoroh off the court. John Coughran and Rabb would have been even, IMO. Charlie Johnson a, much better all around player than Wallace, and Phil Chenier would have scored 45 off Mathews, and held him to about 10. The battle between Jack Ridgle and Jalen Brown would have been fun to watch. That '71 team was so loaded, and they were perhaps the most disappointing Cal team for me. It is exactly why I feel the coach is so important.

So you say you are talking only about the effectiveness of the current recruit rankings. I just gave you the conclusions from the current rankings covering the recruiting class of 2009, and the success or failure of those players over a 6 year period to 2015. Isn't that recent enough? I brought up the '50s, along with several other teams up to the present. to continue to make my point that the rankings for 2009 were only 60% accurate in predicting how the player will perform individually, and 40% accurate as to whether he will help his team. I am using examples of how Newell as a good coach with few or no highly sought after recruits won conference championships and an NCAA championship, whereas Jim Padgett with some of the best recruits in Cal history goes 16-9 and wins nothing. There are more examples, like Campy and Bozeman, loaded with Jason Kidd, Murray, Grigsby and more got to a sweet 16 and turned around the next season and lost to lowly, but well-coached Green Bay in the NCAA , or there was Ben Braun and all the great recruits he landed, including in the Powe era, and he could win nothing with them. Braun did reach a sweet 16 with Bozeman's recruits. And of course Montgomery taking some of Braun's good recruits and adding Jorge winning the conference. But the best players on that team were 3-star recruits: Randle, Theo, and Jorge. One of the most useless players on that team was DJ Seely, a 4 star recruit, who sulked on the bench. So I think current rankings should be discussed in context. I'm not sure they are any better today.

As to your last sentence, where you are re-stating my argument and saying I am "talking about 5 better teams and 50 worse ones" , I can not understand the sentence at all.

SFCityBear said:

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OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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bluesaxe said:

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calumnus said:

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The season ended badly under extenuating circumstances, but undefeated at Haas, #4 seed despite consensus horrible coaching? That is as good a testimonial for recruiting as the primary factor for success as you can point to.

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It did, and that season is an example of recruiting as a major factor for success. Obviously landing Rabb and Brown was huge. But also keep in mind that of the top ten players by minutes on that team only three were recruited by Martin. Key players who weren't include Ty Wallace, Jabari Bird, Jordan Matthews. And then Brown left and Martin did not recruit a quality replacement. Matthews left for Gonzaga and no quality replacement. Martin recruited one decent player for the next year, Charlie Moore. And despite still having Rabb and Bird Martin couldn't even make the tourney. Which tells me that Martin had exactly one good recruiting year, not that he was a good recruiter. He didn't keep the pipeline going.

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I'd disagree a bit. Martin recruited Grant Mullins to replace Mathews, and that was a really good get. He was just as good a shot as Mathews, plus he was a complete player. He could drive, dish, shoot threes, make free throws, and play defense. Mathews was a two tool player, the three point shot and free throws. The only drawback with Mullins was he was one-and-done, and all Cuonzo had left to replace him was Coleman.

Recruiting is all important, only if you don't have a coach. If you have a coach, he can get 5-stars to play together, and he can get lesser players to develop and play beyond their abilities. If you have a good coach, he can weather losing some of the one-and-dones better than a guy who is not an accomplished coach.

We also need to remember, that to compete with the basketball schools, you will need a steady stream of 5 star players. Every year there are only about 25 recruits who will end up in the NBA one day. 15-20 will leave school early. In 4 years, a coach like Martin has to have maybe 3 of these guys on his team every year, along with some good 4 star players. With only 100 quality recruits available to him over a 4 year period and with a hundred other schools chasing the same recruits, he will be very lucky to get more than one or two a year. Martin, a good recruiter, got only 2 in three years at Cal. One was one-and-done, the other was two-and-done. They gave Cal nothing, except "We coulda, shoulda won that Hawaii game". They gave Cal nothing for the years going forward, and left two gaping holes in the roster. They gave us the right to say "Brown and Rabb once played for my school, Cal." And a lot of fans are good with that. I'm not.

I think it best to focus on getting a top coach, and hope to get one top recruit each year, while focusing on the guys in the bottom 75% of the top 100 list. Look for potential and not necessarily recruit ranking.

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If your argument against recruiting stars is that Cal should get 1 top 25 pick and the rest from the 26-100 range, then I think we have a big misunderstanding going on here. If 26-100 is not paying attention to recruiting star ratings, fine by me. I'd be thrilled if we had a class made up of guys in the 26-100 range. Cal is lucky to get one guy in that range. I think you'd find that everyone, including socaltownie, would be ecstatic if we brought in a class of prospects rated something like 26, 52, 85 and 120. I'm positive that everyone would be over the moon if we added a top 25 pick to that list.

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I don't care for you rephrasing my argument. It made sense to me, and I don't understand what you have written here. I made no "argument against recruiting stars". What I said was that I felt that we first need to focus on getting a good coach, and when it comes time to recruit, we should not just focus on landing 5-star players, one-and-done players (I personally would like ZERO one-and-and done players on our roster, after the huge hole that was created with Brown and Rabb going bye-bye. Or the hole created when Ryan Anderson left Cal for the NBA. prefer watching my Cal players in Cal jerseys, not in NBA jerseys, thank you very much). I prefer watching kids develop over time in college. That means 4 years in a Cal uniform. So I prefer 4 star, 3-star, 2 star, and the unranked. The most important thing for me is the development of character, in which basketball can play a big part. I enjoyed seeing the constant improvement of Jorge (initially an unranked player, but as soon as Cal signed him, he was given a star ranking). I enjoyed watching 3-star Randle develop into a great offensive player. Another favorite was Richard Solomon, a 3-star, who was trying to become a stretch four. He was very immature, was caught cheating, and nearly washed out, only to develop and emerge as a dominant center in the conference. Those kids all became men over a 4 year period, and that is worth more than all the one-and-dones you can sign to play for Cal. However I have to bve a ralist, and what most fans care about is winning, and hops and handles and dunks and threes, and of course loads of athleticism, so I make a concession and say OK, get yourself a 5-star and hope he pans out.

I never said that "26-100 is not paying attention to recruit rankings" You can pay attention to recruit rankings, but just take them with a grain of salt. They are not biblical truth. They are human, and therefore fallible. They don't take into account the kids who get hurt and have their careers ended, like Taylor Harrison and Sam Rayburn, or the kids like Omondi Amoke, who stole laptops, apparently, and ended his Cal career. Or the kids who are otherwise immature, like breaking school or team rules. They don't usually take defense into account, and defense is close to 50% of the game. Do rankings take into account whether a player is able to cooperate with teammates?

I think you are also rephrasing socaltownie's argument as well, and I don't believe you are accurate as to what he was writing. My posts on rankingsin this thread have been to answer socaltownie, and everything he has written in this thread and previous threads is that he would like us to go after highly ranked recruits, the higher-ranked the better. Let's let him speak for himself.

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1. Yes, socaltownie wants the highest ranked recruits. What I was saying is that you argued that Cal should get 1 top 25 pick and focus on 26-100. I think if Cal got 1 top 25 pick and filled the rest of the class with 26-100, socaltownie would be a very happy man. Maybe not as happy as if we signed the top 5 picks, but very very happy.

2. I have to point out that Andersen was not close to a top 25 pick.

3. You then went on to list a lot of guys you like who were not close to top 100 picks. I think your reference to focusing on 26-100 is not really what you want.

4. I have argued this many times before. Cal has never chosen a one and done, top 25 pick over a 26-100 pick. Most of the time Cal landed one and done type picks, they didn't give out all of their scholarships, so the other option was nobody. Every other time they gave scholarships to low ranked project players who didn't pan out. So Cal giving out one and dones has never left a hole in the roster. There would have been a bigger hole without them.

5. If Cal were dealing with an ideal situation where it could actually choose how it designs its program, I agree with you. I would want a good coach. I would want a recruiting class of one Jason Kidd quality player, and 4 Theo quality players. Long ago one of the west coast recruiting writers used to join this website for discussions and I had a running argument with him that their ranking of a player like Dominic McGuire vs. Theo was faulty, that Theo was a much more valuable recruit to a college. He said their criteria was top end potential. I argued that if the top end potential took 4 years to reach or wasn't reached in college, it wasn't much good and that 4 years of Theo was much better than 1 crappy year, 2 subpar years, and 1 really good year. I'd argue that for a team like Cal, 4 years of Theo is better than a SECOND Jason Kidd for one year. 1 Freshman Jason Kidd teamed up with 4 upperclassmen Theo's is potential Final Four stuff.

The problem is, that is an ideal situation Cal has not come close to in 60 years and does not seem close to sustaining. So if Cal has 3 Theos in a recruiting class, one schollie to give and the choice between another Theo or a Kidd, I think we can have that debate. That has literally not happened in my lifetime. As long as Cal has a class of one theo, three open schollies, and a Saulius Kuzminskas and a Jason Kidd and no one else on the table, I don't think there is a debate to be had. There is no argument for not taking the one and done in that situation.

SFCityBear said:

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OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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BeachedBear said:

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I love the passion of OTB and SCT. However, their rant against Cal fans is misguided, albeit hilarious. Reminds me of the alcoholic father who screamed about his kids being losers. Was one kid a loser? Yes. Was he one of his kids? Yes. But all of the siblings suffered. That type of misplaced venom does more damage than good - so why do they do it? They are bright enough guys to call out indivuals (I have been their target before), without resorting to irrational generalizations. Please boys - use your power for good!

Having said that, I will reinforce some of their irrational generalizations, that I wholeheartedly agree with - at least wrt Basketball:

• Has the program lost their fans? Yes. I'm one of the die hards, but it is lonely and sad. We're all that's left. The numbers don't lie - 3,000 is being generous. Most of the young alum base and students are not interested. The fair weather fans also need to be brought back. There is only one long-term proven method. Winning. That's it folks.
• The administration has been a joke forever. This unfortunately is true. It goes beyond hiring (and keeping) coaches. I don't think it is intentional or institutionally structured - simply dysfunction of the highest order. The best we have is hope. Knowlton seems like the right direction, but he did not come from a proven P5 program with a record of strong hires. He IS doing a lot to address the dysfunction - and I don't think OTB or SCT give him enough or any credit for that.
• Talent is important. I find it hard to believe anyone is still arguing this point. Pac-12 is a 4 star league in Bball. That means an occasional 5 star and a couple 3 stars. Mostly 3-stars with a 2-star and occasional 4 star won't cut it. And yes, we all agree it needs to be coached. However, even those 100 3 stars that get coached up to the NBA come from a few programs that have proven staffs that can develop players. Cal hasn't had that level of player development EVER in my memory and doesn't hire coaches to do so. Seriously, most of those 3-stars powerhouses are in mid-major conferences, where it makes sense.
• Cal can't figure out what it wants. This is sort of true, but I don't think it is a simple as they want it to be. For example, Cal can't just drop out of P12 Basketball and remain in the other sports (many of which we compete at the highest level). However, as OTB points out, if Cal wants to stay in the P12, but not be competitive in Bball, then at least do it in a pragmatic, cost-effective way. Overpaying two HC salaries for mediocrity will get you fired in the real world.

After seeing 5 games and then some (the OP starting point). Here is what I see as the best case scenario of the Knowlton/Fox experience. Fox gets the most out of current players and recruits some players to fit his program. After three years, CalmBball is playing OK and has reached it's ceiling. Knowlton and the larger Campus Community is somewhat supporting the program, but no one is really SATISFIED. However, during three years, the college basketball community recognizes three things:

• Knowlton is stable and supports the program
• It is no longer a rebuild - nor a stepping stone, but a place to really build a program.
• Knowlton has now spent enough years at the P5 level to build relationships that he has some names and connections to hire better.
• Cal has the opportunity to do better in Bball

Cal parts ways with Fox and hires a younger high-ceiling coach who proves worthy of enough money to keep around for a decade or two (that is why we want someone under about 45 yrs old).

While I would have liked that to happen with Jones replacement, I don't think the bullets were in place (and aren't yet). The best alternative provided by ANYONE was Decuire - and our next hire needs to be better than Travis D (although I think he was just as capable of being the transition coach that Fox is destined to be - and could have been had cheaper, but I guess he didn't have the interview).

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I agree with most of what you're saying, but a couple of points.

I haven't seen one argument that talent doesn't matter. I have seen arguments about realistic options for acquiring and developing that talent, and maybe what "talent" actually is. I'd also argue that it's the team that matters, not individuals, and if the talent doesn't fit together you'll have problems. Martin's best team is a good example of pieces that did not mesh well compounded by a coach who couldn't figure out how to minimize that problem. But you need talent, which we currently lack.

On who develops lower ranked recruits, I haven't seen anyone do a deep dive on that but Derrick Williams was a three-star (Arizona), Russel Westbrook was a three-star (UCLA), Wesley Johnson was a two-star (Iowa State), Ekpe Udoh was a three-star (Michigan), Joe Alexander a three-star (West Va.), Frank Kaminsky a three-star (Wisc.) All those guys were first round picks. You also obviously have guys like Gordon Hayward, Steph Curry, Dame Lillard, Paul George who were with mid-majors, but it would be interesting to test your hypothesis on that.

I'm just hoping Fox can get the program to a point where it's respectable and stable, and then we'll see if Cal can make the right decision. Your best-case scenario seems right, but it is best case and that's a bit sad.

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Again, as I pointed out. 3 star players have a less than 1 in 35 chance of being drafted. 5 stars a 60% chance. You can name the one in 35. Good for you.

But again, the problem is that it is a dangerous myth ("we just need to find that great teacher and all will be OK") No. You need, in the modern game, a guy who can RECRUIT.

And, I want to underscore this, look at Juwan Howard . Do you really want to make the argument that a guy who has never coached in college is a "great teacher?" Of COURSE NOT. You know what he is doing? KILLING it on the recruiting trail - especially with instate talent.

This is the kind of hire that you make it you want to win. Michigan gets that. Memphis gets it. GTown gets it. Cal gets Mark Fox.

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Oh JFC, get off your high horse dude. I never said anything close to "we just need to find a great teacher." I never said any of that. I'm pointing out that we aren't going to get the 5 stars, but that talent exists elsewhere that can be developed. I'm not saying that a good coach can take ****ty players and win. I'm saying that there is talent other than five stars that we need to find. I'm saying that because of WHERE THIS PROGRAM IS NOW we aren't going to be in a position to do anything but look for those gems in the rough for now. I asked if you can explain why that isn't true in another post. You didn't. I'm talking about what Fox can do right now to get THIS program into position to actually compete for some of that other talent. You don't seem to want to hear that. Again, explain why Juwan Howard at Michigan, a team that was in the national finals a couple of years ago, the Sweet 16 last year, and whose coach left for the NBA instead of being fired two of the worst years in history is particularly relevant to where we are now. Even Memphis, which has had a tourney drought, at least had winning records the last five years. And is very likely to end up in more NCAA trouble I predict.

I get that you don't like the last hire. I don't either. But I'm not talking about that.

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Fair enough. You ask about "What Fox can do right now."

1) Explain to JK that absent a practice facility the program is dead in the water and can not compete. Explain that to alumni as well. Disabuse them of the idea that with "good coaching" he can take Germans who have a vertical jump of 0.5 inches and turn them into all world Pac-12 centers.

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

2) Explain to the powers that be that Cal currently is competing with 1 arm and 2 legs tied behind back when it comes to especially the grad school transfer rules. Absent changes we will NOT do better there and that it is a critical piece of the puzzle


Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

3) Explain to the powers that be that the GPA rule is ridiculous. Cal should NOT compete lower or HIGHER than either Washington or UCLA (the other 2 decent PUBLIC R1s in our conference). If there is no GPA rule at UCLA there should not be one at Cal

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

All three of the above DEEPLY hamper our recruiting. But we have TOO many people (on this board especially) that believe

A) We don't need a practice facility cause a hoop and a black top is OK for me so it is OK for them...and they should be studying ANYWAY
B ) That we don't want to "cheapen" cal's grad schools and hey, a great teacher can "coach em up" and especially those 3 starts that are going to stay 4 years
C) Less support but still some. God forbid we take a "dumb azz".

The problem (and why I am mad) is that too many Cal "fans" buy A-C and then say "Well with a good coach that watches Newell tapes we can win titles....and lets face it...that is all that matters since I went to school before the tournament blew up so who cares anyway." I get that everyone is a stakeholder. WHat pisses me off is not recognizing that life is about trade offs and that searching for unicorns is usually a search that doesn't work. If we want to win we have to recruit. End of story.

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can we get a raise of hands, who thinks all three (A, B and C)?

let's just say everyone on this board agrees with you. how about you make the first $10M donation to pay for part of the practice facility? I'll support that!

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I have seen PLENTY of support for those three propositions by posters on this board who then go on to suggest that "diamond in the rough" and "coaching" will solve all ills and 4 starts aint great cause look at Mr. Fuji Water and losing to Hawaii.

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Speaking of 4 stars (I think you meant that instead of "4 starts"), there are a number of posters here who feel the main reason the water guy and Cal lost to Hawaii was the fact that both 4-star Ty Wallace and 5 star Jabari Bird missed the game with injuries. Cal played the game with 5 stars Brown and Rabb, 4 star (by some recruiting services but not in RCSI Composite rankings) Stephen Domingo. Wallace was "great" in the eyes of those fans, because had he played they felt Cal would likely have won. Many believed that without the injuries, Cal would have gone deep in the tournament. I am not one of those.

For those who think 5 stars are the great hope, I'd point out that 5-star Jalen Brown had the worst game of his college career against Hawaii. 5-star Rabb played well as expected, but without the fine play of 3 stars Mathews and Singer, that game would have been a blowout for Hawaii (which was basically a team of 2-stars and the unranked). 4-star Domingo played 14 minutes, but did not score.

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For those who think 5 stars aren't the great hope I'd point out that 1 star, 5 foot 3 Joe Bloggs didn't make the tournament. Because one game of anecdotal evidence proves a point.

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If you would like more than one game, let's look at Cal's teams with the most top recruits. Recruit rankings have only been around for less than 30 years, so I'll add my own guesses for some of the rankings:

2016: Brown 5*, Rabb 5*, Bird 5*, Wallace 4*, Domingo 4*, Mathews 4* or 3* Record 23-11, 3rd in PAC12

2014: Bird 5*, Wallace 4* Mathews 4* or 3* Record 21-14, 3rd in PAC12 Record 21-14, 3rd in PAC12

2009: Powe 5*, McGuire 4*, Ubaka 4*, Kately 4*or 3* , Tamir 4*, Midgley 4* Record 13-15, 4th place PAC10

1997: Gray 5*, Marks 5*, Grigsby 4*, Stewart 4* or 3*, Duck 4* or 3* Record 23-9, 3rd in PAC10, Sweet 16

1993: Kidd 5*, Murray 5*, Grigsby 4*, Hendrick 4* Record 21-9, 2nd in PAC10, Sweet 16

1971: Ridgle 5*, Chenier 5*, Charles Johnson 5*, Truitt 5*, Coughran 4* Record 16-9, 3rd in PAC8

1955: Mckeen 5*, Friend 5* Record 9-16, 4th in PCC Southern Division

So if 3rd place conference finishes and 2 sweet 16s for these 7 teams, some with good coaching and some without, is our objective, then highly-rated recruits are the way to go. Personally, I'd rather start with a coach I could trust. A good coach should be a steadying influence in an ever-changing roster, replete with many injuries, transfers and players leaving early for the NBA. And let the coach recruit the best players for the needs he has. I'd like Cal to have better results than any of these teams had, much better results.

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And where did we finish when we didn't have those recruits?

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Sometimes higher, sometimes lower. Some highs: Elite 8s in 1957 and 1958, NCAA Champ in 1959, and NCAA Runnerup in 1960. Friend (a JC transfer) was the only player who might have been highly rated on the 1957 team, IMO. '58, '59, '60 had none, IMO.

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The teams of the 50's are very relevant to a lot of issues, but they are not relevant to this one because the recruiting services were barely existent. I would not claim at all that recruiting rankings from the 50's were accurate. How about we leave this to 2000 or later when recruiting services had a financial model that allowed national networks and when the internet allowed many more kids to be seen? To clarify, I am talking about the effectiveness of current recruiting rankings not ones from 60 years ago.

However, if you want to go back that far, you are talking about maybe 5 better teams vs. 50 worse ones.

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I beg to differ. The teams of the '50s might not be so relevant if we were Duke or Kentucky, but we are Cal, and it is the only period where Cal ever won anything of note, except the conference championship of 2010 (which has been pooh-poohed by many here as having happened in a down year for the conference.)

There were no recruiting services in the '50s. Somehow, by word of mouth, or connections, or magic, the good coaches always seemed to know who the best high school players were. There were no recruit rankings for several of the teams in my post, because recruit rankings did not begin until the 1990s, I think I have heard. The RCSI composite rankings began in 1998.

So the recruit rankings for the Cal teams older than the RCSI which I showed in my post are my guess, maybe wild guess, or hopefully an educated guess. As socaltownie once said, it is the eye test. There were no rankings in 1971, but my eye test tells me that it was the most talented team ever assembled. Ansley Truitt would have blown Rooks or Okoroh off the court. John Coughran and Rabb would have been even, IMO. Charlie Johnson a, much better all around player than Wallace, and Phil Chenier would have scored 45 off Mathews, and held him to about 10. The battle between Jack Ridgle and Jalen Brown would have been fun to watch. That '71 team was so loaded, and they were perhaps the most disappointing Cal team for me. It is exactly why I feel the coach is so important.

So you say you are talking only about the effectiveness of the current recruit rankings. I just gave you the conclusions from the current rankings covering the recruiting class of 2009, and the success or failure of those players over a 6 year period to 2015. Isn't that recent enough? I brought up the '50s, along with several other teams up to the present. to continue to make my point that the rankings for 2009 were only 60% accurate in predicting how the player will perform individually, and 40% accurate as to whether he will help his team. I am using examples of how Newell as a good coach with few or no highly sought after recruits won conference championships and an NCAA championship, whereas Jim Padgett with some of the best recruits in Cal history goes 16-9 and wins nothing. There are more examples, like Campy and Bozeman, loaded with Jason Kidd, Murray, Grigsby and more got to a sweet 16 and turned around the next season and lost to lowly, but well-coached Green Bay in the NCAA , or there was Ben Braun and all the great recruits he landed, including in the Powe era, and he could win nothing with them. Braun did reach a sweet 16 with Bozeman's recruits. And of course Montgomery taking some of Braun's good recruits and adding Jorge winning the conference. But the best players on that team were 3-star recruits: Randle, Theo, and Jorge. One of the most useless players on that team was DJ Seely, a 4 star recruit, who sulked on the bench. So I think current rankings should be discussed in context. I'm not sure they are any better today.

As to your last sentence, where you are re-stating my argument and saying I am "talking about 5 teams and 50 worse ones" , I can not understand the sentence at all.

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Regardless of your "eye test", two of your teams had a future 12 year NBA player in the lineup at a time when there were only 9 NBA teams.

We will just have to disagree on whether your eye test of past teams equates to modern recruiting rankings.

Already said a ton about the analysis of the 2009 class and why I think your conclusions are faulty.

Regarding my last sentence. You downgraded the results of a couple of specific Cal teams that had highly ranked recruits. My response was to ask how many Cal teams that did not have highly ranked recruits did better than those teams. You mentioned several teams from the 50's. My point is that even if I accepted those teams as relevant, over the period of 1955-2019, how many teams actually had better results than the teams you were scoffing at? 5? Maybe 6 or 7? As opposed to over 50 teams that had worse results. Point being that the Cal teams with the highest ranked recruiting classes were among the most successful Cal teams.

OaktownBear said:

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... I'd be thrilled if we had a class made up of guys in the 26-100 range. Cal is lucky to get one guy in that range. I think you'd find that everyone, including socaltownie, would be ecstatic if we brought in a class of prospects rated something like 26, 52, 85 and 120. I'm positive that everyone would be over the moon if we added a top 25 pick to that list.

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Since 2005 our women's team has had a few classes like that and many other classes with comparable ratings but fewer players. Even though some of those players departed early the result has been NCAA Tournament invitations in all but 3 of those years and one Final Four appearance.

SFCityBear said:

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OaktownBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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socaltownie said:

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bluesaxe said:

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BeachedBear said:

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I love the passion of OTB and SCT. However, their rant against Cal fans is misguided, albeit hilarious. Reminds me of the alcoholic father who screamed about his kids being losers. Was one kid a loser? Yes. Was he one of his kids? Yes. But all of the siblings suffered. That type of misplaced venom does more damage than good - so why do they do it? They are bright enough guys to call out indivuals (I have been their target before), without resorting to irrational generalizations. Please boys - use your power for good!

Having said that, I will reinforce some of their irrational generalizations, that I wholeheartedly agree with - at least wrt Basketball:

• Has the program lost their fans? Yes. I'm one of the die hards, but it is lonely and sad. We're all that's left. The numbers don't lie - 3,000 is being generous. Most of the young alum base and students are not interested. The fair weather fans also need to be brought back. There is only one long-term proven method. Winning. That's it folks.
• The administration has been a joke forever. This unfortunately is true. It goes beyond hiring (and keeping) coaches. I don't think it is intentional or institutionally structured - simply dysfunction of the highest order. The best we have is hope. Knowlton seems like the right direction, but he did not come from a proven P5 program with a record of strong hires. He IS doing a lot to address the dysfunction - and I don't think OTB or SCT give him enough or any credit for that.
• Talent is important. I find it hard to believe anyone is still arguing this point. Pac-12 is a 4 star league in Bball. That means an occasional 5 star and a couple 3 stars. Mostly 3-stars with a 2-star and occasional 4 star won't cut it. And yes, we all agree it needs to be coached. However, even those 100 3 stars that get coached up to the NBA come from a few programs that have proven staffs that can develop players. Cal hasn't had that level of player development EVER in my memory and doesn't hire coaches to do so. Seriously, most of those 3-stars powerhouses are in mid-major conferences, where it makes sense.
• Cal can't figure out what it wants. This is sort of true, but I don't think it is a simple as they want it to be. For example, Cal can't just drop out of P12 Basketball and remain in the other sports (many of which we compete at the highest level). However, as OTB points out, if Cal wants to stay in the P12, but not be competitive in Bball, then at least do it in a pragmatic, cost-effective way. Overpaying two HC salaries for mediocrity will get you fired in the real world.

After seeing 5 games and then some (the OP starting point). Here is what I see as the best case scenario of the Knowlton/Fox experience. Fox gets the most out of current players and recruits some players to fit his program. After three years, CalmBball is playing OK and has reached it's ceiling. Knowlton and the larger Campus Community is somewhat supporting the program, but no one is really SATISFIED. However, during three years, the college basketball community recognizes three things:

• Knowlton is stable and supports the program
• It is no longer a rebuild - nor a stepping stone, but a place to really build a program.
• Knowlton has now spent enough years at the P5 level to build relationships that he has some names and connections to hire better.
• Cal has the opportunity to do better in Bball

Cal parts ways with Fox and hires a younger high-ceiling coach who proves worthy of enough money to keep around for a decade or two (that is why we want someone under about 45 yrs old).

While I would have liked that to happen with Jones replacement, I don't think the bullets were in place (and aren't yet). The best alternative provided by ANYONE was Decuire - and our next hire needs to be better than Travis D (although I think he was just as capable of being the transition coach that Fox is destined to be - and could have been had cheaper, but I guess he didn't have the interview).

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I agree with most of what you're saying, but a couple of points.

I haven't seen one argument that talent doesn't matter. I have seen arguments about realistic options for acquiring and developing that talent, and maybe what "talent" actually is. I'd also argue that it's the team that matters, not individuals, and if the talent doesn't fit together you'll have problems. Martin's best team is a good example of pieces that did not mesh well compounded by a coach who couldn't figure out how to minimize that problem. But you need talent, which we currently lack.

On who develops lower ranked recruits, I haven't seen anyone do a deep dive on that but Derrick Williams was a three-star (Arizona), Russel Westbrook was a three-star (UCLA), Wesley Johnson was a two-star (Iowa State), Ekpe Udoh was a three-star (Michigan), Joe Alexander a three-star (West Va.), Frank Kaminsky a three-star (Wisc.) All those guys were first round picks. You also obviously have guys like Gordon Hayward, Steph Curry, Dame Lillard, Paul George who were with mid-majors, but it would be interesting to test your hypothesis on that.

I'm just hoping Fox can get the program to a point where it's respectable and stable, and then we'll see if Cal can make the right decision. Your best-case scenario seems right, but it is best case and that's a bit sad.

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Again, as I pointed out. 3 star players have a less than 1 in 35 chance of being drafted. 5 stars a 60% chance. You can name the one in 35. Good for you.

But again, the problem is that it is a dangerous myth ("we just need to find that great teacher and all will be OK") No. You need, in the modern game, a guy who can RECRUIT.

And, I want to underscore this, look at Juwan Howard . Do you really want to make the argument that a guy who has never coached in college is a "great teacher?" Of COURSE NOT. You know what he is doing? KILLING it on the recruiting trail - especially with instate talent.

This is the kind of hire that you make it you want to win. Michigan gets that. Memphis gets it. GTown gets it. Cal gets Mark Fox.

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Oh JFC, get off your high horse dude. I never said anything close to "we just need to find a great teacher." I never said any of that. I'm pointing out that we aren't going to get the 5 stars, but that talent exists elsewhere that can be developed. I'm not saying that a good coach can take ****ty players and win. I'm saying that there is talent other than five stars that we need to find. I'm saying that because of WHERE THIS PROGRAM IS NOW we aren't going to be in a position to do anything but look for those gems in the rough for now. I asked if you can explain why that isn't true in another post. You didn't. I'm talking about what Fox can do right now to get THIS program into position to actually compete for some of that other talent. You don't seem to want to hear that. Again, explain why Juwan Howard at Michigan, a team that was in the national finals a couple of years ago, the Sweet 16 last year, and whose coach left for the NBA instead of being fired two of the worst years in history is particularly relevant to where we are now. Even Memphis, which has had a tourney drought, at least had winning records the last five years. And is very likely to end up in more NCAA trouble I predict.

I get that you don't like the last hire. I don't either. But I'm not talking about that.

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Fair enough. You ask about "What Fox can do right now."

1) Explain to JK that absent a practice facility the program is dead in the water and can not compete. Explain that to alumni as well. Disabuse them of the idea that with "good coaching" he can take Germans who have a vertical jump of 0.5 inches and turn them into all world Pac-12 centers.

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

2) Explain to the powers that be that Cal currently is competing with 1 arm and 2 legs tied behind back when it comes to especially the grad school transfer rules. Absent changes we will NOT do better there and that it is a critical piece of the puzzle


Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

3) Explain to the powers that be that the GPA rule is ridiculous. Cal should NOT compete lower or HIGHER than either Washington or UCLA (the other 2 decent PUBLIC R1s in our conference). If there is no GPA rule at UCLA there should not be one at Cal

Now I don't expect him to do that but a boy can dream a week before xmas

All three of the above DEEPLY hamper our recruiting. But we have TOO many people (on this board especially) that believe

A) We don't need a practice facility cause a hoop and a black top is OK for me so it is OK for them...and they should be studying ANYWAY
B ) That we don't want to "cheapen" cal's grad schools and hey, a great teacher can "coach em up" and especially those 3 starts that are going to stay 4 years
C) Less support but still some. God forbid we take a "dumb azz".

The problem (and why I am mad) is that too many Cal "fans" buy A-C and then say "Well with a good coach that watches Newell tapes we can win titles....and lets face it...that is all that matters since I went to school before the tournament blew up so who cares anyway." I get that everyone is a stakeholder. WHat pisses me off is not recognizing that life is about trade offs and that searching for unicorns is usually a search that doesn't work. If we want to win we have to recruit. End of story.

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I'm done with this. You are venting gripes, not addressing anything I actually said and are attributing opinions to me that I don't hold and haven't expressed because apparently you're pissed at the world.

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You do realize directly above SFB just essentially argued that stars do not matter.

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I wasn't arguing that at all. Of course stars matter, talented star players matter, much more so than subjective "star" ratings assigned by judges or panels of experts. As I posted a few years back a spreadsheet detailing the accomplishments of the top 100 RCSI Composite ranked players of one year for their 4 years of eligibility, and I found that only 40% of them either lived up to their ranking as an individual star, or helped their team to some real success in their college careers. 5-star players were a little more likely to live up to their ranking than 4-star players. That was just one class, and so it is anecdotal evidence. But until someone proves different, I'll believe that recruit rankings of the star players is maybe 40-50% accurate. Looking at that 2016 roster, 5 stars Rabb and Brown lived up to their recruit rankings as to individual performance, but Bird did not, IMO. 4-star Wallace lived up to his ranking, but Domingo did not. Mathews lived up to his 3-star ranking, or even a 4 star ranking, but Singer did not live up to his 3 star ranking, except defensively, where he became a tiger, again IMO. None of those players helped Cal to any great team success.

We still have to recruit the star players, but we need to carefully evaluate them for their fit at Cal, and in our team's system, and for need, and not just sign him because has 5-stars after his name in recruit rankings.

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I linked above. One of the services went back. 5 stars have a 60% chance of being drafted; 4 stars about 20%; 3 stars 1 in 36. Data pulled from about 15 years of rating services.

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I couldn't find your link. I'll expand on the criteria in my spreadsheet for the one year, which was the class of 2009. I did the spreadsheet in 2015 or so, so it would track the full college career of all 100 players, which for some took 5 or 6 years to finish, due to injuries, redshirts, etc. I found that 60 players had had a successful career as individual players, but that only 40 players had actually helped their teams to some serious success. My criteria for a successful team would be achieving one of the following, by making a significant contribution as a member of the team's rotation (top 7 or 8 players in terms of minutes) for one of their seasons in college:

1. A 25 win season
2. A Conference Championship
3. A Conference Tournament Championship
4. Reaching the Sweet 16 in the NCAA

If a player had achieved any of those things, I felt he had helped his team and had been worth the effort to be highly recruited. I realize that getting drafted is an achievement, but I don't really give a rat's behind about what a Cal player does in the NBA. There are some fans who seem to be more excited about what a player does in the NBA after he leaves Cal, than they are excited about what he does while he is playing for Cal. I did the spreadsheet solely to find out how many top recruits help their college teams, if at all. If someone tells me a player was drafted, I'll ask, "Yes, but did he help his college team?"

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One of many problems with your methodology is that you only look at the rate of success as you define it among top players and say "gee that isn't high" based on some subjective standard you pull out of thin air. A 40% hit rate would actually be very high. You never compare your hit rate to lower ranked guys. I don't need to do a spreadsheet. The hit rate is a lot lower for guys rated lower

I really don't know what you think you have proven. No one has ever said that high star ratings guaranteed success. They increase your chance of success tremendously.

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One of the many problems you have in understanding my "methodology" is that we come from different backgrounds and have different skills. I was trained by UC Berkeley to be a research scientist and an engineer. After a successful career as a scientist doing research at Berkeley, I became an engineer, and have spent my life doing research in order to help solve problems. You are an attorney, highly skilled in arguing. I have respect for the skills you have.

I apologize if this appears condescending, but since you are not understanding the methodology, let me explain how scientific research is done. First, a scientist comes up with a hypothesis, an idea or a theory. Yes, we "pull it out of thin air" as you suggest. It is what we do. Actually, it is much more than that, as we usually do it by some sort of reasoning to come up with a conclusion and then, we do research either in the literature or data or we design experiments to prove our hypothesis. Once we have proven a hypothesis to our satisfaction, we are ready to have it tested. We do this by publishing the research in a scientific journal for others to read and either support or challenge.

It becomes necessary to define parameters and terms. I did not pull my definition of success out of thin air. I selected it based on my years of reading posts of knowledgeable posters like yourself on the Bear Insider. I read where many posters defined success as at least reaching the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament. I myself and some posters felt winning the conference was important. I also felt winning a conference tournament was important, as it is such a difficult thing to do, 4 wins in 4 nights back to back. I never saw where any fan posted that a year was successful if they reached some round in the PAC12 Tourney, so I figured only winning the tournament title would be considered a notable success. Finally, for most of my lifetime, a 20 win season was considered by most fans to be successful. Today, with teams playing more games in a season, and several teams winning 30+ games, I decided to bump my definition of success for this research up to 25 wins as being a successful season.

Who said I was trying to prove anything? You may not have read all the posts in the thread, but I was responding to socaltownie who remarked that I did not have any respect for recruit rankings. Based on my research into the data several years ago, I found that 60% of players had successful seasons, individually, for the class of 2009. Many of these were 5-star recruits. I also found that only 40% helped their teams to success as I had defined it. 40% is not a good "hit rate", when compared to flipping a coin, which has a 50% hit rate. This means that the recruit rankings, as far as helping a team goes, are a little less reliable as a predictor of team success than a guess, a coin flip. If you have lower standards of success than I did, then the rankings may be more helpful as a predictor. I was simply trying to answer socaltownie in saying I don't have respect for recruit rankings was not exactly right. I do have respect, just not as much respect as most posters have. I respect that some top 100 recruits may bring us success, but I think 50%-60% of them will not. Of course, the more loaded your roster is, the odds may go up that you will have success. Get too many however, then it takes a masterful coach to be able to satisfy the egos of all the stars, when there is only one basketball they can use in a game. I don't revere or idolize recruits for their recruit ranking. I revere them for what they have done when it is very good, not for a ranking, which just a subjective rating made by people who I suspect know little more about how successful a player will become than the fans who write on this board know.

Thank you for challenging me on this, so I could explain why I don't fully support recruit rankings. I only wish you could refrain from the personal ridicule, in which you sometimes engage. I can do without that.

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Maybe I'm just one of those unscientific attorneys who thinks experience applying logical analysis to the interactions of the law of various jurisdictions and highly variant fact patterns in multiple industries might actually be more difficult than parsing out the methodology underlying a post about basketball, but that post was very condescending. Do you think legal arguments are weaved together with smoke and emotion or something? Or that it's hard to follow the reasoning behind a simple spreadsheet? What was condescending was your assumption that someone's disagreement with your argument must automatically mean it was misunderstood.

And more generally, your arguments are not any more objective than other arguments made here, no matter how much you'd like to think they are. I agree with some of your arguments, disagree with others, but I remember that spreadsheet. A worthy endeavor in terms of intentions but my recollection is that it clearly had some logical flaws. Probably wouldn't hold up in court, actually, because it was an insufficient sample size, focused solely on individual players and ignored factors such as strength of schedule and conference, whether a team has veteran players or other highly ranked players, whether the team improved during the player's tenure, coaching changes, all things you've probably pointed to as part of building a team in other conversations. So, from my point of view, your your methodology fits your argument because of its flaws, not in spite of them. That's fine, but it's just another argument by a sports fan and you should admit it.