Seeing a post about Fox haters piling on and the damage Jones did shows me that a certain element are going to try and set the bar so low you'd need a shovel to trip over it.

No one wants Jones back. No one thinks last season was anything but a bust. But let's not forget where we were EXACTLY when Jones walked out the door.

We ended on a high note. Our last 4 games we beat 15-3 Washington, 8-10 Stanford, 4-14 and took 10-8 CU to the wire in the pac12 tournament. That in no way wipes out the rest of the season, but it was too long a streak to be ignored also.

I think it is fair to say that we were a team that could compete with the bottom half of the conference. I would also say at that point we were not a team that would have expected to have it's doors blown off by USF and Santa Clara.

I don't expect a lot, but I think 5 or 6 wins in conference is reasonable to expect based on how we finished the season. If Knowlton eats $3m in buyouts and increases the salary by $600K, and we don't at least get that, the early returns are a thorough bed crapping.

As for waiting to see how recruiting goes, the number 1 recruiting job was bringing our guys back, and we painfully saw that job on video. And despite the proclamation by many here that the losses didn't matter, the results are evident.

We may very well turn this around and produce reasonable results. This is not a judgment on Fox. This is a judgment on those who seem to think the performance can't be judged this year. It can. I expect competitive games against the bottom half of the conference and WCC teams. Maybe not every night, but most. If this is a Dykes like season I firmly expect to judge it as such. We didn't chuck all that money and more importantly the years to the process to have a team that is worse than the one we had.

OaktownBear said:

---

Seeing a post about Fox haters piling on and the damage Jones did shows me that a certain element are going to try and set the bar so low you'd need a shovel to trip over it.

No one wants Jones back. No one thinks last season was anything but a bust. But let's not forget where we were EXACTLY when Jones walked out the door.

We ended on a high note. Our last 4 games we beat 15-3 Washington, 8-10 Stanford, 4-14 and took 10-8 CU to the wire in the pac12 tournament. That in no way wipes out the rest of the season, but it was too long a streak to be ignored also.

I think it is fair to say that we were a team that could compete with the bottom half of the conference. I would also say at that point we were not a team that would have expected to have it's doors blown off by USF and Santa Clara.

I don't expect a lot, but I think 5 or 6 wins in conference is reasonable to expect based on how we finished the season. If Knowlton eats $3m in buyouts and increases the salary by $600K, and we don't at least get that, the early returns are a thorough bed crapping.

As for waiting to see how recruiting goes, the number 1 recruiting job was bringing our guys back, and we painfully saw that job on video. And despite the proclamation by many here that the losses didn't matter, the results are evident.

We may very well turn this around and produce reasonable results. This is not a judgment on Fox. This is a judgment on those who seem to think the performance can't be judged this year. It can. I expect competitive games against the bottom half of the conference and WCC teams. Maybe not every night, but most. If this is a Dykes like season I firmly expect to judge it as such. We didn't chuck all that money and more importantly the years to the process to have a team that is worse than the one we had.

---

1) I don't disagree
2) This team is DEEPLY flawed
3) So it has to be solved on recruiting trail and the early results...well...suck (oh no, I used that word again).
3.5) Because for the casuals remember, we have a 6.5 wing with no other Pac -12 offers and then a 6.7 guy from NY who had offers from Tulane and Umass

So what that means, sports fans, and why I am in a debbie downer mood is Lars T IS you rim protector for the foreseeable future. That is simply No Bueno. Not good. A bad thing. Awful.

It is simply impossible for me to project more than a half dozen pac-12 wins with that kind of backline. The Guards in our conference are simply too good to be stopped, consistently, at the point of attack with just straight up 1-on-1 help. You gotta have a rotating big who can contest. And there is NOTHING in Lars game that shows me that.

We are so screwed.

socaltownie said:

---

OaktownBear said:

---

Seeing a post about Fox haters piling on and the damage Jones did shows me that a certain element are going to try and set the bar so low you'd need a shovel to trip over it.

No one wants Jones back. No one thinks last season was anything but a bust. But let's not forget where we were EXACTLY when Jones walked out the door.

We ended on a high note. Our last 4 games we beat 15-3 Washington, 8-10 Stanford, 4-14 and took 10-8 CU to the wire in the pac12 tournament. That in no way wipes out the rest of the season, but it was too long a streak to be ignored also.

I think it is fair to say that we were a team that could compete with the bottom half of the conference. I would also say at that point we were not a team that would have expected to have it's doors blown off by USF and Santa Clara.

I don't expect a lot, but I think 5 or 6 wins in conference is reasonable to expect based on how we finished the season. If Knowlton eats $3m in buyouts and increases the salary by $600K, and we don't at least get that, the early returns are a thorough bed crapping.

As for waiting to see how recruiting goes, the number 1 recruiting job was bringing our guys back, and we painfully saw that job on video. And despite the proclamation by many here that the losses didn't matter, the results are evident.

We may very well turn this around and produce reasonable results. This is not a judgment on Fox. This is a judgment on those who seem to think the performance can't be judged this year. It can. I expect competitive games against the bottom half of the conference and WCC teams. Maybe not every night, but most. If this is a Dykes like season I firmly expect to judge it as such. We didn't chuck all that money and more importantly the years to the process to have a team that is worse than the one we had.

---

1) I don't disagree
2) This team is DEEPLY flawed
3) So it has to be solved on recruiting trail and the early results...well...suck (oh no, I used that word again).
3.5) Because for the casuals remember, we have a 6.5 wing with no other Pac -12 offers and then a 6.7 guy from NY who had offers from Tulane and Umass

So what that means, sports fans, and why I am in a debbie downer mood is Lars T IS you rim protector for the foreseeable future. That is simply No Bueno. Not good. A bad thing. Awful.

It is simply impossible for me to project more than a half dozen pac-12 wins with that kind of backline. The Guards in our conference are simply too good to be stopped, consistently, at the point of attack with just straight up 1-on-1 help. You gotta have a rotating big who can contest. And there is NOTHING in Lars game that shows me that.

We are so screwed.

---

But did you ever think we would be anything other than what you describe? This season was always going to be rough - it's a total reset from the disaster from the previous seasons. Did you honestly expect to see any other coach walk in to this mess and come out with a 20 win season?

We started the season exceeding expectations because opponents didn't know how we would play. Now there's tape, and we are playing decent and experienced teams and they are breaking down our young and under talented team.

No injuries. No defections. No academic problems. No plane crashes.

AunBear89 said:

---

socaltownie said:

---

OaktownBear said:

---

Seeing a post about Fox haters piling on and the damage Jones did shows me that a certain element are going to try and set the bar so low you'd need a shovel to trip over it.

No one wants Jones back. No one thinks last season was anything but a bust. But let's not forget where we were EXACTLY when Jones walked out the door.

We ended on a high note. Our last 4 games we beat 15-3 Washington, 8-10 Stanford, 4-14 and took 10-8 CU to the wire in the pac12 tournament. That in no way wipes out the rest of the season, but it was too long a streak to be ignored also.

I think it is fair to say that we were a team that could compete with the bottom half of the conference. I would also say at that point we were not a team that would have expected to have it's doors blown off by USF and Santa Clara.

I don't expect a lot, but I think 5 or 6 wins in conference is reasonable to expect based on how we finished the season. If Knowlton eats $3m in buyouts and increases the salary by $600K, and we don't at least get that, the early returns are a thorough bed crapping.

As for waiting to see how recruiting goes, the number 1 recruiting job was bringing our guys back, and we painfully saw that job on video. And despite the proclamation by many here that the losses didn't matter, the results are evident.

We may very well turn this around and produce reasonable results. This is not a judgment on Fox. This is a judgment on those who seem to think the performance can't be judged this year. It can. I expect competitive games against the bottom half of the conference and WCC teams. Maybe not every night, but most. If this is a Dykes like season I firmly expect to judge it as such. We didn't chuck all that money and more importantly the years to the process to have a team that is worse than the one we had.

---

1) I don't disagree
2) This team is DEEPLY flawed
3) So it has to be solved on recruiting trail and the early results...well...suck (oh no, I used that word again).
3.5) Because for the casuals remember, we have a 6.5 wing with no other Pac -12 offers and then a 6.7 guy from NY who had offers from Tulane and Umass

So what that means, sports fans, and why I am in a debbie downer mood is Lars T IS you rim protector for the foreseeable future. That is simply No Bueno. Not good. A bad thing. Awful.

It is simply impossible for me to project more than a half dozen pac-12 wins with that kind of backline. The Guards in our conference are simply too good to be stopped, consistently, at the point of attack with just straight up 1-on-1 help. You gotta have a rotating big who can contest. And there is NOTHING in Lars game that shows me that.

We are so screwed.

---

But did you ever think we would be anything other than what you describe? This season was always going to be rough - it's a total reset from the disaster from the previous seasons. Did you honestly expect to see any other coach walk in to this mess and come out with a 20 win season?

We started the season exceeding expectations because opponents didn't know how we would play. Now there's tape, and we are playing decent and experienced teams and they are breaking down our young and under talented team.

---

No no. Let's not go there. No one said 20 wins.

We succeeded at the beginning because those teams suck. They are on par with teams we beat last year.

AunBear89 said:

---

socaltownie said:

---

OaktownBear said:

---

Seeing a post about Fox haters piling on and the damage Jones did shows me that a certain element are going to try and set the bar so low you'd need a shovel to trip over it.

No one wants Jones back. No one thinks last season was anything but a bust. But let's not forget where we were EXACTLY when Jones walked out the door.

We ended on a high note. Our last 4 games we beat 15-3 Washington, 8-10 Stanford, 4-14 and took 10-8 CU to the wire in the pac12 tournament. That in no way wipes out the rest of the season, but it was too long a streak to be ignored also.

I think it is fair to say that we were a team that could compete with the bottom half of the conference. I would also say at that point we were not a team that would have expected to have it's doors blown off by USF and Santa Clara.

I don't expect a lot, but I think 5 or 6 wins in conference is reasonable to expect based on how we finished the season. If Knowlton eats $3m in buyouts and increases the salary by $600K, and we don't at least get that, the early returns are a thorough bed crapping.

As for waiting to see how recruiting goes, the number 1 recruiting job was bringing our guys back, and we painfully saw that job on video. And despite the proclamation by many here that the losses didn't matter, the results are evident.

We may very well turn this around and produce reasonable results. This is not a judgment on Fox. This is a judgment on those who seem to think the performance can't be judged this year. It can. I expect competitive games against the bottom half of the conference and WCC teams. Maybe not every night, but most. If this is a Dykes like season I firmly expect to judge it as such. We didn't chuck all that money and more importantly the years to the process to have a team that is worse than the one we had.

---

1) I don't disagree
2) This team is DEEPLY flawed
3) So it has to be solved on recruiting trail and the early results...well...suck (oh no, I used that word again).
3.5) Because for the casuals remember, we have a 6.5 wing with no other Pac -12 offers and then a 6.7 guy from NY who had offers from Tulane and Umass

So what that means, sports fans, and why I am in a debbie downer mood is Lars T IS you rim protector for the foreseeable future. That is simply No Bueno. Not good. A bad thing. Awful.

It is simply impossible for me to project more than a half dozen pac-12 wins with that kind of backline. The Guards in our conference are simply too good to be stopped, consistently, at the point of attack with just straight up 1-on-1 help. You gotta have a rotating big who can contest. And there is NOTHING in Lars game that shows me that.

We are so screwed.

---

But did you ever think we would be anything other than what you describe? This season was always going to be rough - it's a total reset from the disaster from the previous seasons. Did you honestly expect to see any other coach walk in to this mess and come out with a 20 win season?

We started the season exceeding expectations because opponents didn't know how we would play. Now there's tape, and we are playing decent and experienced teams and they are breaking down our young and under talented team.

---

What I expected, honestly, is for Fox to avoid blowing all his scholarships on guys who are not Pac-12 caliber. Hold 2 (or even 3) back. Go small ball. Run. Get blown out a bunch but then, next year, go address these problems.

But that isn't what we have.

Lets break things down for the guys that Fox brought in which he hoped would contribute

1) Demitros - he has seen the floor almost for no time but in limited minutes hasn't shown that he has huge upside. Reports from practice seem generously kind

2) Kuany - not getting the kind of minutes he would need to really start to understand the game. Unclear he will see much of the court during Pac-12. Has athletic upside - MAYBE a contributor by junior year????

3) Gordon and Thorpe - again, unclear and pretty amazing that they are not getting minutes over Grant, Kelly or JDH.

That is the issue. It isn't that we are young. It is that we are young and bad....i mean have ANY of you seen any decently sustained contributions from any of the above?

Yes. Mike Williams and the guy he hired cratered the program. The defections REALLY hurt. But I am not at all optomistic about sheer TALENT level (or lack thereof). I am watching us play Santa Clara and the gap between their talent and ours and ability to create and execute feels like the gap sometimes between us and ZOna. THat makes me SHUDDER about how awful it will be when we get to conference and start seeing legitimate tournament teams.

#exmemberofteamhope

Cal fans are notorious for supporting mediocre and bad coaches (or at least a sizable %)

As bad as the Wyking hire was from the get-go, he had his supporters right up to the end. Heck, Knowelton was all set to keep him another year!

And while Fox has his "don't judge him until Year Four" crowd, there seem to be far more people ready to be very critical of him. I don't recall anyone being excited about this hire and I do recall a lot of criticism for Knowelton.

Thing is, Cal fans as a group love mediocrity. That why Wilcox was given an extension after one barely-above .500 season. I hate the low-expectations attitude of most Cal fans, but I also know that calling it out is a waste of time. The "seven win success syndrome" is etched into the Cal DNA and there's not fixing it.

If Cal cared about winning they would have never thought of hiring Wyking or Fox and Wilcox's seat would be scorching hot right now.

But Cal clearly doesn't care about winning. "C is for Cookie, That's Good Enough for Me" is the real Cal fight song. Seven wins in football, NIT in MBB, and a Cal coach can punch his ticket.

I don't know if Fox will get to punch his ticket by getting Cal to the NIT quarterfinals by his third year, but that's the bar, whether or not we wish it were higher. Cal doesn't care about winning. That's why Fox is even here.

The cancer isn't the coach, it's much higher up.

I agree with Oaktown that there ought to be a reasonable expectation of success and that 5ish conference wins roughly meets that. There are no throwaway seasons in major college basketball where coaches just get a pass for whatever happens. We seem to be on a trajectory as of now to underperform versus those expectations. But I'd quibble on a couple fronts.

First, I don't place blame on Fox for losing Vanover, McNeill and Sueing as a reflection of some kind recruiting failure. They were always gone. If anything I'm surprised the attrition wasn't worse. Vanover and Sueing both had opportunities to exit the stench of losing and elevate their standing at higher profile basketball programs. As for McNeill, after two years of losing badly, I completely understand his desire to get a new start and do so closer to home.

Second, every new basketball season is a reset. You can't look at last season and project some level of performance based on that with the kind of turnover common in college basketball. That works in football but not in basketball. Oregon only had 5 or so oster spots filled in the late spring yet added transfers and freshman to reset into a solid top 15 team. Obviously, we're not Oregon, Memphis, Duke or Kentucky, but this was always gonna be an entirely new team with unknown potential given all the new bodies And given how much non-traditional recruiting we did, that elevated the level of uncertainty and range of potential outcomes.

If there's a letdown, it's not how the returning players are performing. Bradley, JHD, Kelly, Anticevich, Austin and even South are all performing pretty consistently to what I had expected. The letdown lies with the freshman and the apparent gap between practice performance and games. Early practice reports suggested Thiemann would be one of the two best players on the team and that he was athletic and polished. Thorpe was an athletic and physically developed "man-child" with an nba ready body. Kuany was supposed to be the best defender on the team and the most explosive recruit we've had in 15 years other than Jaylen Brown. Obviously, none of those projections, made by some pretty knowledgeable people, have panned out in the slightest thus far. Fortunately, they're only 1/3 through their freshman year and will improve. How much they improve remains to be seen. I'm not in a position to explain the gap between early expectations and performance so far but wonder if injuries are a significant factor. Perhaps it's poor scouting but there's still plenty of time for it to turn around. It just likely won't be this season.

TheSouseFamily said:

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If there's a letdown, it's not how the returning players are performing. Bradley, JHD, Kelly, Anticevich, Austin and even South are all performing pretty consistently to what I had expected. The letdown lies with the freshman and the apparent gap between practice performance and games. Early practice reports suggested Thiemann would be one of the two best players on the team and that he was athletic and polished. Thorpe was an athletic and physically developed "man-child" with an nba ready body. Kuany was supposed to be the best defender on the team and the most explosive recruit we've had in 15 years other than Jaylen Brown. Obviously, none of those projections, made by some pretty knowledgeable people, have panned out in the slightest thus far. Fortunately, they're only 1/3 through their freshman year and will improve. How much they improve remains to be seen. I'm not in a position to explain the gap between early expectations and performance so far but wonder if injuries are a significant factor. Perhaps it's poor scouting but there's still plenty of time for it to turn around. It just likely won't be this season.

---

This is maybe the biggest issue I have. These gaps are wide, deep and essentially amazing. Either it is because people saw them practice against WEAK defenders OR VERY blue and gold colored glasses. What I think this does is feed a "just wait one more year" narrative that gets SO tired with Cal sports. Really almost no other institution at the D1 level would tolerate it.

What the "journalists" that cover the program should have said is simple - we do not have upper WCC talent, much less BDW Pac12.

OaktownBear said:

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AunBear89 said:

---

socaltownie said:

---

OaktownBear said:

---

Seeing a post about Fox haters piling on and the damage Jones did shows me that a certain element are going to try and set the bar so low you'd need a shovel to trip over it.

No one wants Jones back. No one thinks last season was anything but a bust. But let's not forget where we were EXACTLY when Jones walked out the door.

We ended on a high note. Our last 4 games we beat 15-3 Washington, 8-10 Stanford, 4-14 and took 10-8 CU to the wire in the pac12 tournament. That in no way wipes out the rest of the season, but it was too long a streak to be ignored also.

I think it is fair to say that we were a team that could compete with the bottom half of the conference. I would also say at that point we were not a team that would have expected to have it's doors blown off by USF and Santa Clara.

I don't expect a lot, but I think 5 or 6 wins in conference is reasonable to expect based on how we finished the season. If Knowlton eats $3m in buyouts and increases the salary by $600K, and we don't at least get that, the early returns are a thorough bed crapping.

As for waiting to see how recruiting goes, the number 1 recruiting job was bringing our guys back, and we painfully saw that job on video. And despite the proclamation by many here that the losses didn't matter, the results are evident.

We may very well turn this around and produce reasonable results. This is not a judgment on Fox. This is a judgment on those who seem to think the performance can't be judged this year. It can. I expect competitive games against the bottom half of the conference and WCC teams. Maybe not every night, but most. If this is a Dykes like season I firmly expect to judge it as such. We didn't chuck all that money and more importantly the years to the process to have a team that is worse than the one we had.

---

1) I don't disagree
2) This team is DEEPLY flawed
3) So it has to be solved on recruiting trail and the early results...well...suck (oh no, I used that word again).
3.5) Because for the casuals remember, we have a 6.5 wing with no other Pac -12 offers and then a 6.7 guy from NY who had offers from Tulane and Umass

So what that means, sports fans, and why I am in a debbie downer mood is Lars T IS you rim protector for the foreseeable future. That is simply No Bueno. Not good. A bad thing. Awful.

It is simply impossible for me to project more than a half dozen pac-12 wins with that kind of backline. The Guards in our conference are simply too good to be stopped, consistently, at the point of attack with just straight up 1-on-1 help. You gotta have a rotating big who can contest. And there is NOTHING in Lars game that shows me that.

We are so screwed.

---

But did you ever think we would be anything other than what you describe? This season was always going to be rough - it's a total reset from the disaster from the previous seasons. Did you honestly expect to see any other coach walk in to this mess and come out with a 20 win season?

We started the season exceeding expectations because opponents didn't know how we would play. Now there's tape, and we are playing decent and experienced teams and they are breaking down our young and under talented team.

---

No no. Let's not go there. No one said 20 wins.

We succeeded at the beginning because those teams suck. They are on par with teams we beat last year.

---

So how badly must Lorenzo Romar suck as a coach to be the coach of the one team that made Fox's Cal team look good?

My wish list:

1. Hold onto rebounds;

2. Make open layups;

3. Make free throws;

4. Minimize turnovers;

5. Don't shoot 3's if you are a low percentage shooter;

6. Hold onto the ball when it is passed to you;

7. Play as hard as you can on defense.

If we lose because the other team is better, so be it. We just have to stop contributing so much to our own destruction.

Cal's players are worse than last year, agreed?

So why would anybody expect a better team?

Basic logic, unless you subscribe to this theory where a coach is the only causal principle for W-L.

This year doesn't matter (figuratively). But since everyone attributed the poor season last year to WJ incompetency, they can't logically claim different anywhere else, so they're forced to be outraged at the new HC when Cal sucks again.

we might win a gome or two in the pac12, but questionable.. I was not happy with the way the change was handled.. not so much because I didn't want fox or wanted Jones to stay, but it seemed a real rush job and my experience is that rushed hirings often don't work out too well.. the two recruits we have signed up for next year are not high level, so unless our younguns really grow a lot, we are in for at least two years of being a bottom feeded.. I hope Fox is successful, but no one knows at this point if he can recruit against the big boys in the conference

Wyking Jones' win percentage was .340. He couldn't leave fast enough. Cuonzo and Wyking shredded the program. Cuonzo will do the same to Missouri's.

For fun go read the Mizzu board. It is enjoyable.

Wyking Jones' win percentage was .340. He couldn't leave fast enough. Cuonzo and Wyking shredded the program. Cuonzo will do the same to Missouri's.-

with 30 games to play, we will have to win 10-11 to match the 34% .. think that is gonna happen

all the complaining about Cuonzo, it was a bad hire, so put the blame on the hirer, not the hiree ..

bearister said:

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Wyking Jones' win percentage was .340. He couldn't leave fast enough. Cuonzo and Wyking shredded the program. Cuonzo will do the same to Missouri's.

---

No, fat*** Mike Williams shredded the program. Nobody I know even pays attention any more. The program is dead. And now, they won't even do commonsense things like hanging the banners and retired jerseys in the rafters. Good luck rebuilding.

Cuonzo knew Cal's team was going to be a disaster. Coaches do this all the time. Nobody knows that personnel is numero uno in high level team sports than coaches. He saw the players on the roster and those coming in and he saw a losing team.

Cal could just have just put their balls on the table and hired Pitino.

So it just must be a coincidence that wherever Cuonzo goes it ends up a disaster. Sh@it just falls out of the sky on that poor guy (along with truckloads of money).

I've already checked out - losses to USF and Santa Clara are unacceptable. We're gonna get pummeled by the majority of the Pac10.

Uthaithani said:

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The "seven win success syndrome" is etched into the Cal DNA and there's not fixing it.

---

Seven wins in football is one thing. Seven wins in basketball is another.

bearister said:

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So it just must be a coincidence that wherever Cuonzo goes it ends up a disaster. Sh@it just falls out of the sky on that poor guy (along with truckloads of money).

---

Dear barrister: cuonzo & Jones ( an possibly Fox) are not causes. They are symptoms. The causes off cal malaise are the regents & administrators ( and most faculty members) who decreed in the very early 1960's that Cal would no longer emphasize major sports. And, the current student body would rather study on a sat afternoon than go across the street to watch Cal play in the Rose Bowl. There is no trajectory visible to the naked eye which is going to reverse this trend. I used to walk down telegraph ave on my way to Haas and watched with dismay as thousands ( it seemed) of Cal students were walking in the opposite direction. many students have no or very little affiliation with the bay area or with the storied cal sports history of yesteryear. when you go to a game at Haas, if you look in the recreational facility, you will see hundreds of students riding bikes . Many of them are not even aware that Cal is playing. Here's something to watch for: If thge AD is nowhere to be found at most of the games this year, that will be a clue that he would rather not face questions from concerned fans. I rarely saw Mike Williams at the games. I rarely saw the Chancellor who hired him. Time to go to bed.

socaltownie said:

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For fun go read the Mizzu board. It is enjoyable.

---

I did and you're right. Thanks

They won at Temple last night 64-54, but the two teams were a combined 10 for 50 from three.

This sub-thread is definitely worthy of a read;

http://www.tigerboard.com/boards/view.php?message=16624978

Parenthetically.....(this also goes to the quality??? of our last three coaches
....sadly I have to, right now, include Fox)

helltopay1 said:

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..I used to walk down telegraph ave on my way to ...

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You didn't walk down Telegraph helltopay1, you ran, and this archival photo proves it:

TheSouseFamily said:

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" Early practice reports suggested Thiemann would be one of the two best players on the team and that he was athletic and polished."

---

Anyone who reported that Thiemann is athletic and polished should be written off henceforth as a reputable source of information.

We need a threat down low Please try Thorpe. It could not be any worse.

We certainly needed bodies to fill the roster but I thought it made sense to go the route they did by going after international players that hadn't been scouted much. High risk and potentially reward. Let's face it: we weren't going to find "typical" recruits who have played hundreds of hours of AAU and HS ball. Those waters had been pretty much fished out. My hope was (and still is) that one of Kuany/Thiemann/Thorpe would break through and give us a real producer. So far, no luck.

As for coaching, we looked a lot better coached in the first couple games of the year. The ball moved well, there was a lot more purposeful off-ball movement, screens were crisp and shot quality was excellent. Not the case now and unfortunately, Bradley now feels like he has to do it all himself. That's obviously not gonna work.

As for the evaluations of the recruiting class, I'm not gonna throw stones. Fox has largely excluded access from observers so anyone voicing opinions on these guys are doing it off of very limited practice windows and even less HS film.

They briefly tried Thorpe versus Santa Clara. Did you see him? The comment, "A fish out of water" comes to mind. When he got the opportunity to shoot a free throw it was so off line the backboard rattled (may still be) it was thrown up there so hard lacking in touch. He does have a large physique but seems completely lacking in basketball I Q, dexterity, flexibility and presence sufficient to warrant a playing time allocation ahead of either Thieman or Kelly.

The performance donut of this team is a glaring and unfortunate circumstance that dooms this California season to mediocrity.

Intuit said:

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They briefly tried Thorpe versus Santa Clara. Did you see him? The comment, "A fish out of water" comes to mind. When he got the opportunity to shoot a free throw it was so off line the backboard rattled (may still be) it was thrown up there so hard lacking in touch. He does have a large physique but seems completely lacking in basketball I Q, dexterity, flexibility and presence sufficient to warrant a playing time allocation ahead of either Thieman or Kelly.

Are you saying that Thieman has basketball I.Q, dexterity and presence? Not the guy I'm watching.

---

If hoops attains mediocrity, Fox will be hailed as the basketball version of Wilcox.

bluesaxe said:

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socaltownie said:

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TheSouseFamily said:

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If there's a letdown, it's not how the returning players are performing. Bradley, JHD, Kelly, Anticevich, Austin and even South are all performing pretty consistently to what I had expected. The letdown lies with the freshman and the apparent gap between practice performance and games. Early practice reports suggested Thiemann would be one of the two best players on the team and that he was athletic and polished. Thorpe was an athletic and physically developed "man-child" with an nba ready body. Kuany was supposed to be the best defender on the team and the most explosive recruit we've had in 15 years other than Jaylen Brown. Obviously, none of those projections, made by some pretty knowledgeable people, have panned out in the slightest thus far. Fortunately, they're only 1/3 through their freshman year and will improve. How much they improve remains to be seen. I'm not in a position to explain the gap between early expectations and performance so far but wonder if injuries are a significant factor. Perhaps it's poor scouting but there's still plenty of time for it to turn around. It just likely won't be this season.

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This is maybe the biggest issue I have. These gaps are wide, deep and essentially amazing. Either it is because people saw them practice against WEAK defenders OR VERY blue and gold colored glasses. What I think this does is feed a "just wait one more year" narrative that gets SO tired with Cal sports. Really almost no other institution at the D1 level would tolerate it.

What the "journalists" that cover the program should have said is simple - we do not have upper WCC talent, much less BDW Pac12.

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Upper WCC talent is a lot better than Pac-12 BDW, more comparable to upper Pac-12.

The recruiting for this roster was purely emergency stuff. There might be some talent that can be developed into something useful one or two years down the line, but I'm not sure why anyone expected this crop of freshmen to be ready to contribute much, which leaves very little to work with. My concern is that this year's recruiting seems to have fizzled, and while the guys who signed might become decent player they too are going to be freshmen who probably won't make much of an impact.

This team is better-coached than the last two, but that only goes so far. I guess I'm of a mind that this year was always going to be really rough, next year had better be better, and either this year's recruiting class has to pick up or next year's has to be way better for Fox to stick. But it's also unfair to expect a miracle after the ****pile that was the Wyking Jones era and it's unfair to point to a couple of anomalous victories late in last year's execrable season to argue that we shouldn't be bad this year.

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You are right that it is unfair to point to a couple wins to argue we shouldn't be bad this year. It is also unfair to misrepresent what people say. I didn't say we shouldn't be bad. I said 5 or 6 wins in conference and be competitive with the bottom half of conference most nights. That is a bad team. Not an expectation of a good team.

If you disagree with my post and think it is unfair, I'm cool with that. But this is a consistent response to anyone trying to set a standard - respond by implying they have set some much higher standard. That is why I'm clear in my first post what my standard is. So if you think I'm unfair, then you think an expectation that of 5-6 wins and competitive games against the bottom half is unfair, not 20 wins as Aun responded or "good" as you responded.

I think it is unfair to completely write off the end of last year as a couple anomalous games. The team got better and played for it well for four straight games. That does not wipe out the rest of the season. It does show improvement. I would have expected a reasonable goal for this year with that team would have been a .500 record in conference give or take a game.

I also think completely laying off commentary on recruiting is not warranted. Recruiting job one was to keep the guys we had, and if we did that we wouldn't have a third cluster season. I do not in any way think we should have gotten quality new comers. I do think it is fair to question whether we fill our roster with 4 year commitments to players that are unlikely to increase our fortunes.

My criticism here, except for recruiting, is not for Fox. It is for Knowlton. We needed to improve and quick. We have had repeated roster defections and we needed to stop that bleeding. That meant we needed to hire a coach that players would want to play for. Fox just isn't that guy.

It isn't really a matter of what it is "fair" to expect from Fox. Frankly, I don't think it is "fair" to expect him to ever turn this program around. He has a team that no one wants to play for. Somehow he has to get out on the recruiting trail and change minds. That is a tough sell and while he is certainly the right guy in some situations, I would question whether Knowlton fully picked the right guy for our situation vs. picking a "good coach". I'll be frank, being completely fair to Fox, I cannot envision how he is getting from here to there. And if we are where we were last year or worse, we will see the limitations of what his coaching can do over Jones coaching with this talent. Which is he is a much better coach but it really doesn't make a difference with our personnel deficiencies so the question is how he is addressing that. With the roster we have and the recruits coming in where are we going with this?

So yes, I think to sell this program to recruits we need to show SOME improvement. 5-6 wins would be a start. If there is no improvement, what is he going to sell. So yes, I think if we can't be competitive with the bottom half of our conference and win 5 or 6 games, Knowlton crapped the bed. Whether it is fair to expect better of Fox or not. Because Knowlton needed to hire a coach that it WOULD be fair to expect 5-6 wins out of.

TheSouseFamily said:

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We certainly needed bodies to fill the roster but I thought it made sense to go the route they did by going after international players that hadn't been scouted much. High risk and potentially reward. Let's face it: we weren't going to find "typical" recruits who have played hundreds of hours of AAU and HS ball. Those waters had been pretty much fished out. My hope was (and still is) that one of Kuany/Thiemann/Thorpe would break through and give us a real producer. So far, no luck.

As for coaching, we looked a lot better coached in the first couple games of the year. The ball moved well, there was a lot more purposeful off-ball movement, screens were crisp and shot quality was excellent. Not the case now and unfortunately, Bradley now feels like he has to do it all himself. That's obviously not gonna work.

As for the evaluations of the recruiting class, I'm not gonna throw stones. Fox has largely excluded access from observers so anyone voicing opinions on these guys are doing it off of very limited practice windows and even less HS film.

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I would not throw stones at the evaluations. I would throw stones at the evaluators thinking they could provide such proclamations on such limited information. That is the reason future evaluations should be looked at with question. But honestly all practice reports should be virtually ignored. I could build an all worst PAC-12 team with guys at Cal that practice reports said were going to kill it.