Shocky1 said:
the monster back in the day repeatedly told mike williams (who remarkably didn't respond to emails from anybody including donors) & ashwin puri (who masterfully lobbied fellow floor seat mate bob melvin for a front office opportunity with the oakland a's) both in person & thru emails that coach martin & his family was gonna leave if their son joshua was not accepted by berkeley admissions...attending every cal home & away game for multiple seasons flying from north scottsdale multiple times a week during the mike montgomery & cuonzo martin years of monster domination, i often sat next to the genuinely authentic roberta martin in the 1st row behind the bench at road games...she told me that their son joshua had a 3.67 gpa & solid test scores but was wait listed for cal...i remember sitting courtside at madison square garden during the bears epic victory vs a shocked hometown syracuse crowd next to the quiet joshua as the thick rimmed glass youngster read a book during much of the game...yeah shocky loved walking onto the venerable msg floor & clapping his hands in victory (lots of dirty looks from oragenmen fans packing up their **** to go home) as my boy sammy singer dribbled out the clock during the final seconds
williams (one of the great myths about him is that he donated his athletic directory salary back to cal, that isn't true) & puri (who didn't have any relationships, kinda like jim knowlton in the last basketball coaching search, he got played by eric musselmen who used the cal interest to negotiate a better deal with nevada's largest donor, a casino magnate, musselmen got zero interest in academic achievement & would've been a horrible fit in berkeley) didn't do anything so i took this issue up with the academic support team but at the end of the day joshua was never accepted by admissions...the red flags were all there then as when discussing recruiting updates with the staff it was clear to me that the recruiting focus was shifting to guys in the midwest which suggested an interest in either the then open illinois or missouri head coaching jobs...i told my friend bishop o'down's lou richie all of this & he encouraged young ivee to sit out of the nit fiasco loss at haas when martin had already accepted the missouri job & was actively working the porter family deal...my missouri sources tell me that joshua is excelling in the classrooms of purdue
the biggest misconception about cal basketball is that coach martin (who played in the nba & was coached by gene keady plus he's a smart guy, he not a dumb azz) didn't understand offensive schemes compared to coach montgomery (which is an unfair comparison vs arguably the greatest strategist the game has ever seen, the bears ability to score after timeouts on schemed in bound plays under mike was ******* unreal)...cuonzo told me & his prospective recruits that as long as they played very physical man to man nba level d, he would let them improvise/free lance nba style on o...that's the sobering reality of today's college recruiting & failure to understand this will result in non nba level players on a roster
let's be real here, elite 5 star mcdonald all american impact future nba players (like ivan, jabari & jaylen who read cal's monster class during their high school days) wanna play in front of 10k+ crowds at a loud haas pavillon as the shockster (attired in a fuchsia, ok maybe purple, villebrequin dress shirt) leads the frenzied hometown crowd in stormin' the floor, running free with reckless abandonment with zero ******* regrets toward the center of the universe
the magic of cal basketball (clothes & censorship is for losers)#
I do not want to remotely criticize a kid who has nothing to do with the situation, especially on hearsay evidence that I have no way to verify. This is a response to you. A 3.67 at PHS coupled with "solid" test scores does not get you within 10 miles of getting accepted at Cal. Further, what you were asking of them was not only unethical and unwise, it is literally illegal. I'm sure he is a decent kid and I'm sure if he applied he was accepted at another UC.
I have no way of knowing whether that influenced Martin's decision as you claim. (I suspect the much higher salary that we were never going to match was the deciding factor) but if he expected automatic entry for all his kids into the school whether or not they are close to matching the academic profile of an admit, he can GTFO. If he was effectively recruiting for Missouri while still our coach, he can GTFO really hard.
Not that I am accepting that any of that is true, but I am saying that anyone who cites this fact pattern at Cal that needs to be changed needs to find someone else to root for. We are a public university serving the people of California, not a basketball team with a university attached. I guarantee if you put it to a vote of faculty or of students or of alums or of the taxpayers of California, the idea of admitting the basketball coach's son just to make him happy is going to lose overwhelmingly. You either need to accept that or move on to an organization that is more aligned with your principles