And let's not forget Poetl (sp?) who was supposedly all set to come here to play for Monty and was probably a better college player than Rabb. (In terms of recruiting, though, Rabb was the coup.)

Big C said:

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And let's not forget Poetl (sp?) who was supposedly all set to come here to play for Monty and was probably a better college player than Rabb. (In terms of recruiting, though, Rabb was the coup.)

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Yes - and Dirk and LeBron too! Who knows what would have happened with Poetl if Monty had stayed or if he came to Cal, what would have happened.

Rabb, however was local and word got out (not sure of its validity) that he wanted to go to Cal, except he didn't like Monty's style. But that was part of the point, I tried to make earlier. For example - Rabb's recruitment came during an era where 'word getting out' was so much more prevalent than any of the other recruits mentioned. Thinks like that didn't happen earlier in Monty's coaching career or for prior coaches at Cal.

Campanelli did OK recruiting in his time, but I can't imagine anyone tolerating his style 20 years later and playing for him at Cal in the 2010s. Where's EricBear when we need him to share some Campy stories about kicking players off the bus far from campus.

BeachedBear said:

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When comparing recruiting from Braun thru Jones, it really isn't close to an apples to apples comparison for SOOOO many reasons . . .

• Time spans - the longer a coach's tenure - the more their results at Cal impact recruiting. First two recruiting cycles are a chaotic jumble.
• The coach - some focus more on recruiting than other aspects, also style of play, personality, etc. Also much has to do with the staff, not just the head coach. Much more complicated than the grocery store portrayal of recruiting that more than a few BIers seem to believe (I'll take one 4-star, 3 stars, one 7 foot project and an occasional 5-star, please).
• The Bears - perception of Cal (and its sports programs) changes significantly over time in the minds of recruits and parents - always has, always will.
• Recruiting environment - the field of competing schools, options, desires changes very dramatically every few years (if not every season). Comparing recruiting in 2020 to 2010 or even 2015 is foolhardy. Comparing it to 2000 is Ludacris. Comparisons to anything earlier are simply insane.

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I agree with all of this. Another thing that has changed is the creation of a whole new profession of ranking recruits, and there are more individuals and services doing it, not to mention the increasing availability of mixt tapes and game films, so that recruit rankers are able to see more of a player than 20 years ago, when they may not have seen all the players they ranked, either in person or on film. And they have all kinds of statistics and metrics now, so the rankings should be getting more accurate. Still Cal has in the past landed terrific players like Anderson, Randle, and Cobbs, who were not in the composite top 100, and I think we need to not overlook the unranked recruit, because there will always be gems among them.

My earlier post was just to point out that Martin hadn't recruited at a high level, I would not have liked to see us continue to recruit at that level, but to improve it. I compared his recruiting to Montgomery's, because Montgomery was often getting bashed here for not being able to recruit well, or being disinterested. I felt he got a bit of a bad rap, because he did bring in a few players who had fine Cal careers and became big fan favorites. I know I sin by not wanting or supporting the one and done type recruiting, and not just because it is very hard to get that kind of recruiting going and sustaining it year after year, and I confess to being old-fashioned in thinking this is still school sports, and I want my players to stay in school for several years. So my bias is showing when I say I feel that players like Jorge, Crabbe, and Cobbs were better for their teams than anyone Martin signed. It is no reflection on the players that they only played a year or two at Cal, but that is the way things are now in this game. I do feel cheated as a selfish fan that I never got to see Rabb and Brown play 3 or 4 years. I'd rather have seen them develop at Cal than have them be developed somewhere else by someone else.

SFCityBear said:

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CALiforniALUM said:

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He left the cupboard empty. That was the worst part. The second worst part was his staff which translated to an offense that completely under utilized the talent we had for a very short while. Missed opportunities and misfires all around.

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Why was is Martin's staff being blamed for the performance of his offense?

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I am guessing your point is the buck stops with Martin, so why focus on his staff? Well, in my little knowledge of these things, a head coach relies on his staff for all sorts of things including game planning, and in some cases running one or the other side of the ball. Martin was all about defense, slowing the game down and reducing the other team's number of opportunities. His staff as I recall were supposed to be more offensive minded. Perhaps you are correct that Martin may have been the root cause, but the staff didn't do themselves any favors by being glorified towel boys.

CALiforniALUM said:

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SFCityBear said:

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CALiforniALUM said:

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He left the cupboard empty. That was the worst part. The second worst part was his staff which translated to an offense that completely under utilized the talent we had for a very short while. Missed opportunities and misfires all around.

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Why was is Martin's staff being blamed for the performance of his offense?

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I am guessing your point is the buck stops with Martin, so why focus on his staff? Well, in my little knowledge of these things, a head coach relies on his staff for all sorts of things including game planning, and in some cases running one or the other side of the ball. Martin was all about defense, slowing the game down and reducing the other team's number of opportunities. His staff as I recall were supposed to be more offensive minded. Perhaps you are correct that Martin may have been the root cause, but the staff didn't do themselves any favors by being glorified towel boys.

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With all due respect, I think you guessed wrong. I think there is evidence for Cal's offense being the creation of Martin, and I hadn't heard any evidence that his assistants were just yes-men or that they were responsible for designing the offense. I've heard nothing about them, but if the poster wants to assign some blame for the offense on the assistant coaches, I'd like to know why, and if he has any evidence of that I don't like to be wrong. Did the assistant coaches accept Martin's ideas, or did they push back on them, or did they originate much of the offense themselves? So I am open to new evidence, and I was asking the poster for it.

My statements about the Cal offense were based on Martin's own words, like when he told us he was going to teach all his players to take it to the rim more, and improve that skill. He made a public statement on Tyrone Wallace about how much he would miss him when he got hurt, and told us that Tyrone could make a play from anywhere on the floor, and that he was probably the only player in the PAC12 who could do that. Watching the Bears play seemed to bear out that Martin was in favor of those styles of play. Cal's offense was mostly individual effort, either shoot a three or take it to the rim, and if you are stopped at the rim, kick the ball back out to someone for a three. It looked like the last option was a pass to an open teammate. Mid-range shots were an option very seldom used. As to his statement about Wallace, I watched a preseason game from Australia, and several Cal players were getting a rebound or a steal, and then driving the length of the court to try and score at the rim, no matter how many defenders were in front of the dribbler. That is really rudimentary basketball, and can be seen in any first grade elementary school game, as the only play. We saw it at various times during the season from Wallace, Brown, Singer, and Bird. I remember Mathews trying it once.

ludacris?

smh said:

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ludacris?

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Exactly!

thanks cig, but happens i cheated; sliced the snapshot url..

michiganavemag.com/get/files/image/galleries/Ludacris-Michigan-Avenue-1.jpg

Dear Calumnus: Bingo on all your points--Especially your final point. I sometimes get the feeling that Cal deliberately goes against the grain in order to prove to everybody that , because Cal is "different." strange decisions take priority over a winning culture. As always, the buck starts and stops with the Chancellor. Get a good one, and you have a chance. Get a dud, and, it's the wilderness for the duration.

calumnus said:

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BeachedBear said:

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Big C said:

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And let's not forget Poetl (sp?) who was supposedly all set to come here to play for Monty and was probably a better college player than Rabb. (In terms of recruiting, though, Rabb was the coup.)

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Yes - and Dirk and LeBron too! Who knows what would have happened with Poetl if Monty had stayed or if he came to Cal, what would have happened.

Rabb, however was local and word got out (not sure of its validity) that he wanted to go to Cal, except he didn't like Monty's style. But that was part of the point, I tried to make earlier. For example - Rabb's recruitment came during an era where 'word getting out' was so much more prevalent than any of the other recruits mentioned. Thinks like that didn't happen earlier in Monty's coaching career or for prior coaches at Cal.

Campanelli did OK recruiting in his time, but I can't imagine anyone tolerating his style 20 years later and playing for him at Cal in the 2010s. Where's EricBear when we need him to share some Campy stories about kicking players off the bus far from campus.

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Monty developed his reputation at Stanford. He never liked recruiting (I could tell a telling anecdote). His reputation was worse locally. He had a pipeline from SoCal for awhile when he had a Final Four run and recruits soured on UCLA. He got former Cal commit Justin Davis after a misunderstanding between Davis' mother and Braun. His highest ranked recruits at Stanford and Cal were legacies. He left recruiting to the exceptional (African American) assistants he hired, but he still had to close. Monty's reputation was worsened after "the Shove." Verbal abuse is no longer tolerated from coaches and those who get physical with players, even legends like Bobby Knight, get fired from places like Indiana and Texas Tech, much less Cal and the Bay Area. The fact that it was on national TV and became a national story about coaching and race made it far worse. It just cast Monty's dry personality, in a bad light. It was really unfortunate as his reaction might have been related to health challenges he was facing (a common symptom), but other coaches were sure to use it against him and I am pretty sure it was why Monty eventually retired.

He is a great basketball mind and a great broadcast analyst. His dry humor and honest, smart analysis are fantastic. In an ideal world for Cal DeCuire would have become the coach with Monty as his senior advisor.

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Good Stuff calumnus!

Civil Bear said:

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calumnus said:

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Big C said:

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calumnus said:

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BeachedBear said:

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Martins departure has much more to do with Williams and Dierks and the dysfunction around them, then it has to do with Marting (IMHO). Did he leave the program in great shape - NO. But I see that as evidence that his decision to move on was not a long process that started when he arrived. There are also another $7 million reasons that I don't begrudge Martins departure.

Like HD, I enjoyed the program when he was coaching - I just wish his staff had focused a little more on efficient offense and recruiting to Cal's brand.

Finally, I admittedly suffer from the human condition that tends to focus more fondly as time marches on. (It makes me smile more that way).

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You can't ignore the money thrown at him by Missouri. Nobody at Cal, the admin, boosters or fans here, wanted to come close to matching it.

I thought he actually recruited to our brand very well. I also think everyone agrees about his offense. Jaylen Brown as a player and person, at Cal and in the NBA, is a great example of both points.

Think the factors were: 1) we chose him over Monty's recommended successor, a guy who would have likely been loyal and coached at Cal a long time, 2) he wasn't Monty and a lot of people really loved Monty 3) left us before he got anything really rolling 4) his successor was a coach he hired and the guy bombed 5) we had to blame someone and the guy who is gone is the easiest scapegoat.

Personally, I thought Williams' biggest mistake, the one a financial guy like him should never make, was giving Jones a guaranteed contract. Taking a chance on a lower assistant is not horrible, but realize you have the leverage and have a contract very favorable to Cal either way.

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Calumnus, I agree with much of what you wrote (as usual) except two things:

No way we or anybody else would've hired Travis DeCuire (especially then before he was a HC) when they could get Cuonzo Martin. Martin turned out not to be the savior we had hoped, but virtually everybody was delighted when he first came aboard.

I disagree that he recruited well "to our brand", or otherwise. Rabb and Brown were great gets, to be sure. Ivan was the local high school all-American and Jaylen was a recruiting coup and a guy we'll always be proud to say came to Cal, but it takes more than two guys over three years to be a successful recruiter. Martin needed to back those two up with a several additional 4-star-type guys who would fit in at Cal, but he did not succeed in that regard.

To be clear, unlike some, I have no problem with Cuonzo Martin, not even with the way he left. He could've used more support when he was here.

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I was thrilled when we got Cuonzo. I was not speaking for myself, I was "assessing the room" and attempting to explain why I thought so many people were so extremely negative towards Cuonzo.

To Brown and Rabb you need to add Lee, who was always an ideal Cal student-athlete, just a great human being, and never really fit in at Kentucky.

I think if he had stayed Cuinzo would have continued to recruit at a high level and the article shows he was figuring out out brand (Jaylen helped), but we will won't know and it doesn't matter anyway.

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If Martin was doing such a wonderful job recruiting at a high level the cupboard wouldn't have been bare by the time he left. He also spent a lot of time recruiting players that ultimately ended up not being able to get into Cal which shows he was pretty much tone-deaf to the brand.

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He did have some recruits who bailed after he left, including Oliver Sarr. It was pretty bleak afterward, no doubt, but some part of that was him leaving.

bluesaxe said:

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Civil Bear said:

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If Martin was doing such a wonderful job recruiting at a high level the cupboard wouldn't have been bare by the time he left. He also spent a lot of time recruiting players that ultimately ended up not being able to get into Cal which shows he was pretty much tone-deaf to the brand.

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He did have some recruits who bailed after he left, including Oliver Sarr. It was pretty bleak afterward, no doubt, but some part of that was him leaving.

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Sarr was offered, but I do not believe he ever committed to Cal.

Civil Bear said:

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bluesaxe said:

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Civil Bear said:

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If Martin was doing such a wonderful job recruiting at a high level the cupboard wouldn't have been bare by the time he left. He also spent a lot of time recruiting players that ultimately ended up not being able to get into Cal which shows he was pretty much tone-deaf to the brand.

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He did have some recruits who bailed after he left, including Oliver Sarr. It was pretty bleak afterward, no doubt, but some part of that was him leaving.

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Sarr was offered, but I do not believe he ever committed to Cal.

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There were some who still considering us, but I think only 4 star Jemari Baker actually decomitted. And of course 4 star Charlie Moore transfered.

I haven't missed Martin for a minute.

There was some great recruiting earlier on but that seemed to trail off and his teams were reasonably brutal to watch. The fact he was followed by an even worse HC has seemingly given Martin a pass on being quite mediocre. See Missouri since they overpaid for him...that's what we would have had here.

Civil Bear said:

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bluesaxe said:

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Civil Bear said:

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If Martin was doing such a wonderful job recruiting at a high level the cupboard wouldn't have been bare by the time he left. He also spent a lot of time recruiting players that ultimately ended up not being able to get into Cal which shows he was pretty much tone-deaf to the brand.

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He did have some recruits who bailed after he left, including Oliver Sarr. It was pretty bleak afterward, no doubt, but some part of that was him leaving.

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Sarr was offered, but I do not believe he ever committed to Cal.

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Reports were that he was a silent commit, but I don't know that from personal knowledge.

bluesaxe said:

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Civil Bear said:

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bluesaxe said:

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Civil Bear said:

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If Martin was doing such a wonderful job recruiting at a high level the cupboard wouldn't have been bare by the time he left. He also spent a lot of time recruiting players that ultimately ended up not being able to get into Cal which shows he was pretty much tone-deaf to the brand.

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He did have some recruits who bailed after he left, including Oliver Sarr. It was pretty bleak afterward, no doubt, but some part of that was him leaving.

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Sarr was offered, but I do not believe he ever committed to Cal.

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Reports were that he was a silent commit, but I don't know that from personal knowledge.

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If a public verbal commitment "is not worth the paper it was printed on" what is a secret silent verbal commitment worth?