My Apologies, Mark Fox

oskidunker said:

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Did you know Jack Citrin? Had him when I was there. He was still teaching until a few years ago.

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Since this has devolved into a PoliSci thread, I loved thinking along with Waltz... but nothing beat listening to Jowitt.

socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Today, Stanfurd signed the #7 player in the country.

I wonder what Mark Fox has planned to keep Cal competitive.

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Yeah I saw this. But remember - the apology crowd doesn't like one and dones, pines about Pete newell, and thinks that Hawaii exposed the fallacy of getting mcDonald all Americans so everything will be A OK.

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who are these apology people who don't want to sign one-and-dones?

you keep making arguments against a false narrative

when I read posts from others, I don't hear that ... most would be ok would becoming the Duke of the West Coast, with 3 one-and-done each year, with the rest of the roster full of 5 and 4 star players

the issue, is we can't just snap our fingers and say yeah, I agree .... let's do that

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Do you read SFBear?

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so the 'crowd' is one?

socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Today, Stanfurd signed the #7 player in the country.

I wonder what Mark Fox has planned to keep Cal competitive.

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Yeah I saw this. But remember - the apology crowd doesn't like one and dones, pines about Pete newell, and thinks that Hawaii exposed the fallacy of getting mcDonald all Americans so everything will be A OK.

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who are these apology people who don't want to sign one-and-dones?

you keep making arguments against a false narrative

when I read posts from others, I don't hear that ... most would be ok would becoming the Duke of the West Coast, with 3 one-and-done each year, with the rest of the roster full of 5 and 4 star players

the issue, is we can't just snap our fingers and say yeah, I agree .... let's do that

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Do you read SFBear?

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Not only do you distort what I write, now you've taken to distorting my screen name as well. I guess you feel you need to do all this to make your argument, so go ahead, distort all you want.

Stay safe and be well,

SFCityBear

HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Today, Stanfurd signed the #7 player in the country.

I wonder what Mark Fox has planned to keep Cal competitive.

---

Yeah I saw this. But remember - the apology crowd doesn't like one and dones, pines about Pete newell, and thinks that Hawaii exposed the fallacy of getting mcDonald all Americans so everything will be A OK.

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who are these apology people who don't want to sign one-and-dones?

you keep making arguments against a false narrative

when I read posts from others, I don't hear that ... most would be ok would becoming the Duke of the West Coast, with 3 one-and-done each year, with the rest of the roster full of 5 and 4 star players

the issue, is we can't just snap our fingers and say yeah, I agree .... let's do that

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Do you read SFBear?

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so the 'crowd' is one?

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There are a number of posts by others that question one and done vs. coach em up talent - variants being essentially "Cal will never be able to get one and dones (even though it has in the past) and thus it is a fools quest to recruit that kind of talent." Jesus - read the board - and no crowds because there are about a dozen people who actually CARE enough about the program to post

HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Today, Stanfurd signed the #7 player in the country.

I wonder what Mark Fox has planned to keep Cal competitive.

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Yeah I saw this. But remember - the apology crowd doesn't like one and dones, pines about Pete newell, and thinks that Hawaii exposed the fallacy of getting mcDonald all Americans so everything will be A OK.

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who are these apology people who don't want to sign one-and-dones?

you keep making arguments against a false narrative

when I read posts from others, I don't hear that ... most would be ok would becoming the Duke of the West Coast, with 3 one-and-done each year, with the rest of the roster full of 5 and 4 star players

the issue, is we can't just snap our fingers and say yeah, I agree .... let's do that

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You are exactly right.

The reason I rail against one and dones is that it is, in my opinion, a bad thing to do if you only get one or two of them. That can be a recipe for disaster, long term, and even short term, which the Bears proved under Cuonzo and Wyking. First of all, this type of player leaves, and you must IMMEDIATELY replace him with the following recruiting class, or your roster suffers a downgrade in talent at his position at least for one year and maybe more. Secondly, there are only a handful of programs in the country who are good at continually able to replace their one and dones who leave. Not to mention their transfers who leave. They are Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, UConn, UCLA for a while, Florida for a while. Arizona isn't bad at it, but they seldom have a great deal of team success. And those teams are not as successful as one would think. They get to the NCAA every year, but often get knocked off. They win or reach the final maybe once every 7 years, which is the bar to shoot for in their case. DUKE, KENTUCKY, KANSAS ALL HAVE 10 OR 11 TOP 100 RANKED PLAYERS ON THE ROSTER EVERY YEAR. To think that Cal can suddenly find the dream coach and recruiter who will take Cal from the cellar, the ashes of division one, and leapfrog 350 teams and get to the upper echelon overnight, or even over said coach's career, is in a word, dreaming.

In the short term, we all saw what happened in 2016, and that is with only 2 or 3 one and dones (I include Bird, because many felt he would leave early, but injuries made that impossible), and only one 4-star, and one highly ranked 3-star, that was not enough to sustain the quality of the team when two of them got hurt, a coincidence, but not unheard of. Duke, Kentucky, or Kansas just plugs in a couple of other 5-star players and hardly skips a beat. The other factor was a one and done Cal player, Jaylen Brown, had 7 turnovers (none while playing point guard) and 5 fouls. When a player has a bad game, the Dukes and Kentuckys of the world just plug in another 5-star, and may not skip a beat. Cal did not have that luxury. One fallacy I heard was when Jabari Bird was signed, that his signing would draw more 5-stars to Cal. Maybe it helped to land Rabb, and Rabb helped to land Brown. But there it ended, because all three left the school, Brown after one year, Rabb after 2, and Bird graduated.

I seriously doubt whether Cal has the stomach or the passion to become Duke or Kentucky. The fan base just isn't there. Do we have enough big money donors to pay a great coach, and is the University willing to skirt the rules and buy players like Arizona does, and risk years of probation? We don't even have the student fan base of these schools.

The other problem is with players leaving after a year, you need a coach who can get a roster full of prima donnas to play together, with the rosters going through extensive changes every year. The approach that seems more sensible in this environment, with maybe winning the NCAA title game or final four less often, but at least being very competitive is that of Tony Bennett at Virginia or Bo Ryan of Wisconsin. Looking at these teams' rosters over time, they had some things in common: Virginia did win the title, and Wisconsin did not, but both coaches sent plenty of players to the NBA, WITH NEARLY ALL OF THOSE BEING 4 YEAR PLAYERS. Very Good players, but not one or two and done. Virginia had maybe a half dozen players who left after 3 seasons. Wisconsin had only one or two players who left after 3 seasons. The highest ranked recruit Tony Bennett landed was #32 Kyle Guy, who played 3 years. Bo Ryan had #7 Brian Butch who played 4 years, #28 Joe Krabbenhoft, (4 years), and #19 Sam Dekker (3 years).

What these coaches also did is fill their roster with non-top 100 ranked recruits, most of whom stayed for 4 years. Outstanding players like Frank Kaminsky of Wisconsin and London Perrantes of Virginia. When you have teams with players who play together for 2 or 3 years, you can teach them a lot more team play, and they usually get much better at it. And surprise, the better these teams played, the better their recruiting got, as they began to land better players FOR THEIR SYSTEM.

One difference between the two coaches is that Virginia has had several more transfers, both in and out than Wisconsin had under Ryan. But these coaches had similar rosters. They are adept at identifying player talent, and presumably identifying the best players who are likely to stay in school 3 or 4 years, and signing them.

Finally, SoCaltownie has made many snide remarks about my mentioning Pete Newell. Newell coached in different times, in a different game. But his approach was very much the same as Bo Ryan or Tony Bennett, in terms of identifying the best players he could find and signing as many as he could. In those days, Cal had a Frosh team and a Junior Varsity team, and a Varsity, about 40 scholarships total, where Newell could stockpile players, and usually a player did not start for Newell until he was a junior or senior. His staff taught them his system, and brought them along slowly. The difference was that there was no recruit ranking in those days, and players did not leave for the NBA. They often quit to avoid flunking out. So he looked for players he could coach, and who could pass their courses, not for players who already were superstars. I think Newell's recruiting philosophy was similar to Ryan's and Bennett's in that he recruited the players that best fit his idea of the system he wanted to play. In fact, there is not that much difference, in what Calipari or coach K want to do, and that is recruit players who would fit their system, a different system.

I just think that there are too many obstacles to overcome in trying to be the West Coast Duke or Kentucky (especially when we already have UCLA and AZ using this model, snapping up most of the west coast superstars), so I'd vote for the Ryan or Bennett approach, which would help Cal bring back competitive basketball. 3-year or 4-year players, but good ones, and 8-12 of them on each roster, playing in an effective system on offense and defense.

SFCityBear said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Today, Stanfurd signed the #7 player in the country.

I wonder what Mark Fox has planned to keep Cal competitive.

---

Yeah I saw this. But remember - the apology crowd doesn't like one and dones, pines about Pete newell, and thinks that Hawaii exposed the fallacy of getting mcDonald all Americans so everything will be A OK.

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who are these apology people who don't want to sign one-and-dones?

you keep making arguments against a false narrative

when I read posts from others, I don't hear that ... most would be ok would becoming the Duke of the West Coast, with 3 one-and-done each year, with the rest of the roster full of 5 and 4 star players

the issue, is we can't just snap our fingers and say yeah, I agree .... let's do that

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You are exactly right.

The reason I rail against one and dones is that it is, in my opinion, a bad thing to do if you only get one or two of them. That can be a recipe for disaster, long term, and even short term, which the Bears proved under Cuonzo and Wyking. First of all, this type of player leaves, and you must IMMEDIATELY replace him with the following recruiting class, or your roster suffers a downgrade in talent at his position at least for one year and maybe more. Secondly, there are only a handful of programs in the country who are good at continually able to replace their one and dones who leave. Not to mention their transfers who leave. They are Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, UConn, UCLA for a while, Florida for a while. Arizona isn't bad at it, but they seldom have a great deal of team success. And those teams are not as successful as one would think. They get to the NCAA every year, but often get knocked off. They win or reach the final maybe once every 7 years, which is the bar to shoot for in their case. To think that Cal can suddenly find the dream coach and recruiter who will take Cal from the cellar, the ashes of division one, and leapfrog 350 teams and get to the upper echelon overnight, or even over said coach's career, is in a word, dreaming.

In the short term, we all saw what happened in 2016, and that is with only 2 or 3 one and dones (I include Bird, because many felt he would leave early, but injuries made that impossible), and only one 4-star, and one highly ranked 3-star, that was not enough to sustain the quality of the team when two of them got hurt, a coincidence, but not unheard of. Duke, Kentucky, or Kansas just plugs in a couple of other 5-star players and hardly skips a beat. The other factor was a one and done Cal player, Jaylen Brown, had 7 turnovers (none while playing point guard) and 5 fouls. When a player has a bad game, the Dukes and Kentuckys of the world just plug in another 5-star, and may not skip a beat. Cal did not have that luxury. One fallacy I heard was when Jabari Bird was signed, that his signing would draw more 5-stars to Cal. Maybe it helped to land Rabb, and Rabb helped to land Brown. But there it ended, because all three left the school, Brown after one year, Rabb after 2, and Bird graduated.

I seriously doubt whether Cal has the stomach or the passion to become Duke or Kentucky. The fan base just isn't there. Do we have enough big money donors to pay a great coach, and is the University willing to skirt the rules and buy players like Arizona does, and risk years of probation? We don't even have the student fan base of these schools.

The other problem is with players leaving after a year, you need a coach who can get a roster full of prima donnas to play together, with the rosters going through extensive changes every year. The approach that seems more sensible in this environment, with maybe winning the NCAA title game or final four less often, but at least being very competitive is that of Tony Bennett at Virginia or Bo Ryan of Wisconsin. Looking at these teams' rosters over time, they had some things in common: Virginia did win the title, and Wisconsin did not, but both coaches sent plenty of players to the NBA, WITH NEARLY ALL OF THOSE BEING 4 YEAR PLAYERS. Very Good players, but not one or two and done. Virginia had maybe a half dozen players who left after 3 seasons. Wisconsin had only one or two players who left after 3 seasons. The highest ranked recruit Tony Bennett landed was #32 Kyle Guy, who played 3 years. Bo Ryan had #7 Brian Butch who played 4 years, #28 Joe Krabbenhoft, (4 years), and #19 Sam Dekker (3 years).

What these coaches also did is fill their roster with non-top 100 ranked recruits, most of whom stayed for 4 years. Outstanding players like Frank Kaminsky of Wisconsin and London Perrantes of Virginia. When you have teams with players who play together for 2 or 3 years, you can teach them a lot more team play, and they usually get much better at it. And surprise, the better these teams played, the better their recruiting got, as they began to land better players FOR THEIR SYSTEM.

One difference between the two coaches is that Virginia has had several more transfers, both in and out than Wisconsin had under Ryan. But these coaches had similar rosters. They are adept at identifying player talent, and presumably identifying the best players who are likely to stay in school 3 or 4 years, and signing them.

Finally, SoCaltownie has made many snide remarks about my mentioning Pete Newell. Newell coached in different times, in a different game. But his approach was very much the same as Bo Ryan or Tony Bennett, in terms of identifying the best players he could find and signing as many as he could. In those days, Cal had a Frosh team and a Junior Varsity team, and a Varsity, about 40 scholarships total, where Newell could stockpile players, and usually a player did not start for Newell until he was a junior or senior. His staff taught them his system, and brought them along slowly. The difference was that there was no recruit ranking in those days, and players did not leave for the NBA. They often quit to avoid flunking out. So he looked for players he could coach, and who could pass their courses, not for players who already were superstars. I think Newell's recruiting philosophy was similar to Ryan's and Bennett's in that he recruited the players that best fit his idea of the system he wanted to play. In fact, there is not that much difference, in what Calipari or coach K want to do, and that is recruit players who would fit their system, a different system.

I just think that there are too many obstacles to overcome in trying to be the West Coast Duke or Kentucky (especially when we already have UCLA and AZ using this model, snapping up most of the west coast superstars), so I'd vote for the Ryan or Bennett approach, which would help Cal bring back competitive basketball. 3-year or 4-year players, but good ones, and 8-12 of them on each roster, playing in an effective system on offense and defense.

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So - right now - just on paper - you would not want Zaire? You are crazy.

https://goldengatesports.com/2020/04/13/stanford-basketball-cardinal-commit-ziaire-williams/

calumnus said:

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HoopDreams said:

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SFCityBear said:

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HoopDreams said:

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IssyBear 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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socaltownie said:

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Let me say something controversial - I think the reason that the Wisky strategy DOESN"T work in the Pac-12

1) Bo is a once in a generation coach. You really should read up on how he built that program and the VERY long and deep success he had at lower levels with that approach.
2) I am not convinced that anyone in the Big10 recruits at the level that UCLA, Arizona and Oregon do on a year in-year out basis.

I love this site.

https://basketball.realgm.com/ncaa/conferences/Big-Ten-Conference/2/nba-players

40 Big 10 players in the NBA. 62 Pac12 players in the NBA

Again, repeat after me.

Many (most?) years Cal has to play UCLA, Zona, and Oregon 6 games. Sometimes we only have to play them 5. A very few only 4. To get off the seed of death Cal either has to run the table on a BRUTAL OOC schedule (when they have no drawing power and thus few invites to the made for TV tournies and home/aways in December) OR split those games. If you are on the seed of death (7 through 10) it means, in the current Pod system, you are almost guaranteed a brutal second game should you be able to win the first (essentially a 1 or a 2 getting a near home game where they may not have had to fly and usually have 90% of the fans in the stands - sometimes in a stadium they know and have played in (see Greenville)

Now can the scrappy team from hickory high beat, on any given night, a team of wildcats stuffed with 2 or 3 first round picks? Sure. Why sports are great. But you need more than 1 win. You gotta have 3 or 4 or else...again....seed of death.

I just am at a loss as to why people on this site do not get this. Blue and gold glasses? Pete Newell nostalgia? Forgetting that our conference championship came at a VERY down time for both Zona and UCLA and prior to the true emergence of Nike U.

Now maybe it could be cause some posters are FINE with getting in as an 8. Honestly I find that nearly as depressing as missing the entire tournie cause it isn't fun to watch cal get stripped in the backcourt 3 successive possessions by UCON in a game that essentially was at UCON.

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Bo Ryan hasn't coached that team for the last four years and they're still doing fine. And the Big Ten is a far better conference than the Pac-12 and has been for a while so I don't get the brutal schedule argument.

Drop the hickory high bull**** for a minute. Ask yourself, can Cal legitimately expect to build a program on top level recruits when we have tougher academics to deal with and don't have the amenities to offer that the competition does? And when we've outright sucked the last few years? How much are donors willing to put up for a new practice facility, another coach buyout, probably another AD?

Yeah, building a program like Wisconsin takes time, takes a good ability to spot talent to develop outside the usual top-100 list, takes a good coaching staff able to develop players, and a strong regional recruiting program. And it isn't clear Fox is a guy who can do that. But this discussion seems totally binary in your mind. Either magically grab top 50 recruits all the time or be an 8 seed at best. But look at last year's results. Purdue had the 34th ranked class in 2017 and 49th in 2018 and was a final four team. Texas Tech was 39th and 33rd. Virginia Tech 18th and 54th. Obviously all those teams had talent. They also had good coaching. And it would be better to get more top ranked players in the mix, which they are doing now. But you have to have a base to build on and we do not. So instead of assuming everyone who favors a longer-term build wants to be scrappy underdogs forever, maybe you should consider if your premise is even relevant right now.

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The numbers say otherwise. 62 current NBA players from the PAC 12 while 40 from the FOURTEEN team big 10. Big 10 has done better in tournament time - but I think a pretty clear argument that the raw TALENT at the Pac12 has been, based on who is getting paid serious money to play by the best talent evaluaters on the planet, a more talented conference.

Again, we can ALWAYS find a team in any particular year or even a couple of years that does well. Talent develops, a kid is undervalued, a player doesn't play AAU, he grows 6 inches and suddenly is a monster. These are all good stories.

But you are not building a PROGRAM over a set of years because to get off the seed of death (because it is a really hard truth to lean into) that you have to split against.....

A) A team which clearly is a criminal enterprise in Arizona with a leadership who doesn't give a rats ass and which is not a selective (in any stretch of the imagination) R1 institution
2) A team which is an extension of a multi Billion dollar shoe company whose mission is not to educate its players but to promote a brand by winning at any price necessary
3) A school which is frankly in its twilight but which is the preeminent school in a major metro area of 10 million and which has a legacy of NBA stars that are deeply committed to the institution and willing to encourage recruits to put on Bruin Blue

And finally a conference, because it is on the west coast, is somewhat "cheap" and which doesn't travel strongly doesn't get as a strong a November and December schedule as the Big 10, Big 12 or ACC (and increasingly SEC)

These are not facts I am particularly happy about. But they are facts. You don't get to choose the ground you fight on. Simply put - unless Cal has a pathway to having talent ABOUT as good as the top 3 there really isn't a path forward than seeds of death every 3-4 years.

BTW - One of the reasons I mistakenly thought Martin was the guy (and I think could have been the guy except for Williams & Dirks cutting his knees off) was NOT because he recruited Ivan and Brown - it was the guys that got nixed by the admin - hard nosed kids that wanted to play in the East Bay. Think a multitude of Jason Kidds.

And btw - in case you want to have fun. Here is a great piece about an "All Oakland" team. Funny that only ONE of those kids went to Cal.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/35724-what-if-the-nba-all-oakland-team

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I'm not sure which local kids you think Martin would have landed with administration support. There are not a multitude of Jason Kidds in any town in this universe, but I don't recall East Bay kids who would have gone to Cal absent administration issues. Oscar Frayer? Ben Kone?

That BR list was interesting if you like history, but c'mon. Hook Mitchell? What does he have to do with this discussion? And none of them are even playing any more.

On the bigger issue, you seem to think that I'm advocating not having talent. That's not the case, as I've said repeatedly. But I wouldn't use NBA players as a measure of success. I'd use winning teams as the measure. I really don't care what players do after they leave college for the purpose of this discussion. But more to the point, you don't say how you would get that NBA talent to Cal. You've also argued that such talent predominantly comes from top-50 recruiting targets. They aren't coming here without the investment I mentioned, and even then only after that takes hold. So what's YOUR pathway to talent acquisition? I can't recall you ever describing it. I've named a lot of programs that started by building over time, became successful and now can reload each year. You have not named a single program that has a model you think Cal could use right now, given where Cal is. So how does this magic happen?

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Lets unpack.

First - I want to be VERY clear (and I have been but I think sometimes you disregard this). It isn't about TEAMS....it is about PROGRAMS. What do I mean by that distinction? Anyone (really) can find lightening in a bottle every now in then. Case in point...DAVIDSON. They went to the Elite 8 in 2008. They haven't won a tournament game sense and have make 4 appearances in 12 years. Yeah - we know who played point for them. What I want is a PROGRAM that does well - over a consistent number of YEARS.

Second - you really haven't give us PROGRAMS. We either hear about Newell or a mistaken data free analysis of Wisconsin. I have tried to show you why the program Bo Ryan built (and now Gard - who was Assistant under Bo for FOURTEEN YEARS) has some very unique qualities rather than just "well coached" (which they are).

Third - Lets be clear since you like twisting words. Martin had 3 years to see if he would work. Arguably really 2 and a case could be made for 1.5 since the first year is tough and he had checked out by about January 15th the last. Again, we heard of at least FIVE kids that martin wanted that the admin nixed. Maybe they should have. I don't know. But I do know that it is a hard measure to judge him against when Williams/Dirks wanted him to recruit "their way" (and sometimes I think yours).

Fourth - you rightly ask me my pathway. It is owning the East Bay - and lets make a VERY fine point of it since apparently I have to hit you over the head with a 2 by 4 - that means being an attractive school and program to African American kids from Northern California that sadly sometimes are NOT made to feel welcome on Cal's campus when compared to UCLA, Arizona and USC. Sad but very true. But that is the pathway and it needs to be leaned into hard if you wish to compete. I put that list to show that unlike a lot of schools (UCLA being a prime example) that own their backyard for the best talent Cal has rarely done so. Lets imagine what the program would have looked like if, for example, Monty hadn't been a putz and gotten Aaron Gordon - a kid from a family of ****ing engineers of all things - to consider Cal and then paired Gordon with Raab and Brown. My heart goes pitter pat.

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I don't think you get my point or what I wish for. Your first sentence is exactly what I've been saying. What I wish for is a coach to build a program that is sustainably successful. I mentioned winning teams as a measure of success as a point of disagreement with you defining success as players sent to the NBA. I did not say a winning year or two is enough. My point was I don't give a damn if individual players go to the NBA - I care if they win here. I want a winning program here. The question is how to make that happen given where we are now, which as you've admitted has problems.

I have never brought up Pete Newell. Not once. Ever. Other than to say his teams would be demolished by any modern team. I used Wisconsin as one example of five or six different schools, because they are PROGRAMS who began by building a foundation, because they recruit to the culture they've instilled and the style they play. Because it took time and none were originally built on highly ranked recruiting classes. Because they had coaches who were given enough leeway to do that. Because they started at a place where they couldn't necessarily compete for the top 50 or top 100 players and still managed to have success. Don't get fixated on the one coach you seem to think is unique. He's not.

I've also said we should own the East Bay, and for that matter the Bay Area. But to do that we need to be in a place where those players should even want to consider Cal. As nice an idea as "owning" the local area is, the kids who can come to Cal, deal with academics and make an impact are not numerous (true of any area you name). And for those that do exist, why would they want to come to Cal? We are a sub-par program with sub-par facilities, tough academics and a tough admissions process. So we're probably not going to be high on the lists of the players you want unless we've changed those things. How do you do that?

My view is that you have to start by identifying players who are more diamonds in the rough and develop them, and those kids have to buy into the culture you're trying to instill. Do that, have some success, and players will have more reason to consider coming here. Once again, I'm not saying Fox is the right guy to do that, but I think the program needs to be on better footing with some continuity before there's something to sell to those kids.

Now, I'd rather have a bunch of money come flowing in, we build great facilities, we get awesome administrative support, have a huge budget for assistants, travel, recruiting, and all the stuff the schools you mentioned earlier already have. Then you might be able to jump straight to playing against the big boys. But I don't see that happening, which is why I'm looking at it the way I do.

Aaron Gordon would have been a great get. Monty was not a good recruiter. I don't think anyone is arguing over that one.

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I couldn't agree more. Udub just had their prized 10 star freshmen declare for the NBA draft and is expected to go early in the first round. Udub finished last in the PAC-12. Sports journalists in Seattle are asking if Udub should finally abandon the one-and-done approach they have been following in recent years.

Just a few years ago, we had a team with 4 players that went on to play some in the NBA. We lost in the 1st round of the NCAA tournament.

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our team with the 4 nba players got us a 4 seed. our team that lost in the 1st round of the NCAA tournament only had 2 nba players

but I get your point

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What you said is true, but that team also had Jordan Mathews who transferred to Gonzaga and started for the Zags as they won the WCC, won the WCC tournament, and finished as NCAA Runnerup. losing only to UNC in the final.

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if your point is that we should have beat hawaii anyway, then I agree. the problem was at PG. Singer did well, but he got in early foul trouble and sat. Coach then tried Chauca who could not compete, and even tried Brown at PG, and we know how that went.

in addition, the lack of having wallace and bird forced coach to play role players domingo and roger more. Of the 3 lightly used players to play to fill the gap of the starters going down, here was their stats:

Roger 26 minutes - 0-5 shooting, 3-6 FT, 2 RB, 2 ASSTs, 1 TO, 2 FLs - 3 pts
Domingo 14 minutes - 0-4 shooting, 2 RB, 1 TO, 1 FL - 0 pts
Chauca 8 minutes - 0-2 shooting, 1 RB, 1 ASST, 1 TO, 1 FL - 0 pts

That's 48 minutes going 0-11 shooting - 3 pts

Mathews who you mentioned played 31 minutes - 9-15, including 3-8 from 3, 2-2 FT, 4 RBs, 1 ASST, 1 Steal, 1 TO, 3 fouls - 23 pts

Singer 30 minutes - 5-9, 5 RBs, 0 ASSTs, 2 Steal, 5 fouls

King/Rooks combo 36 minutes - 3-4, 5-9 FTs, 5 RBs, 1 BLK, 2 TOs, 4 fouls - 11 pts

Rabb 38 minutes - 5-11, 3-4 FTs, 12 RBs, 2 ASSTs, 1 BLK, 1 TO, 3 fouls - 13 pts

Brown 17 minutes - 1-6, 2-2 FTs, 2 RBs, 7 TOs, 5 fouls - 4 pts

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Hawaii

G Smith 6-8, 7-8 FTs - 19 pts
G Bobbitt 7-16, 2-4 FTs, 7 RBs, 4 ASSTs - 17 pts
F Jankovic 5-9, 6-6 FTs, 5 RBs, 16 pts

1. So their senior PG outplayed our senior backup guard and our two rarely used PGs (Chauca and Brown)
2. Jankovic played Rabb even
3. Mathews was the only one who really showed up
4. Our bench played horribly
5. Brown played the worst game of his college career (and only 17 minutes)

AND our coach did a terrible job

I still believe that we win going away if we had Wallace for the game. If we had both Wallace and Bird, we would have gone to the sweet sixteen

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Yeah, the people that continually point to the Hawaii loss as somehow showing that having McDonald's All Americans like Brown, Rabb and Bird is not a viable path ignore what actually happened.

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Let's leave aside the Hawaii game for a moment. The reason that the pathway to glory is not a team of stars like Cal had in 2016, is because Cal did not have nearly enough of them. They had only two players of a caliber that the NBA would take them early (early on, Bird was of that group, but injuries made that impossible.) Cal had only 4 top 100 ranked players, when Wallace is added to those three. I guess you could count Domingo as a 4-star player on paper, but he never played even close to that level at Georgetown or Cal. Mathews was a high-ranked 3-star, but not a top 100 player. Cal had no one else even close to top 100 status. This is not enough of a roster to have big success in the NCAA. The best programs need 10 top 100 players to sustain success.

Looking at the top teams, Duke, Kentucky, UNC, Kansas, and a couple more, what their rosters have in common is they are loaded with highly ranked recruits. Each year they have players leaving for the NBA, and they have 10 or 11 top 100 ranked recruits on the roster. And each of those teams has a very good coach with a very good coaching staff. Even with all that, if you look at the last 20 years, the best of these teams only wins a title maybe once every 7 years, and maybe gets to another Final Four slightly more often.

Top teams stockpile all these players because some stars get injured, or get sick before a game, or are inconsistent, or fail to live up to their ranking, or leave school early, or get suspended for violations, or transfer to another school. When Bird and Wallace went down to injuries, and Brown had a horrible game, that was not unusual for a season. What was unusual was that these events happened close together in time, the injuries right before a big game, and Brown laying an egg during the game itself. A program like Duke or Kentucky would shrug their shoulders and plug 3 more stars into the game. Cal didn't have 3 extra stars waiting to go into the game. What they had on the bench were misfits and projects, like Chauca, RMB, Rooks, and Okoroh. Except for Chauca perhaps, all these players had been improving, but none were ready to contribute star power to fill the void left by Wallace, Bird, and Brown for the Hawaii game. People tell me I shouldn't write about Pete Newell, but Newell used the same formula: He stockpiled players, not what you could call stars, but players he and his staff trained to fit his system, and play it nearly as well as his starters. John Wooden used the same formula, until he began to attract major stars Like Kareem. Then his teams looked more like the top teams of today with many stars on the rosters. Newell handed out 17 scholarships to freshmen, and had 40-45 scholarship players in the program every year. And those were days when there were far fewer injuries and hardly ever any transfers. The biggest thing he had to worry about was perhaps players flunking out, or quitting the team to study, and sometimes an individual matchup that was hard to contain, like Chamberlain of Kansas, Elgin Baylor, or Bill Russell of USF. Newell's teams lost all those games.

One and done players are fun for fans, and maybe can help a good team become a great one, but they are no lock to come on to a chopped liver roster, or even an average roster, and take them to great success in your NCAA tourney. I don't think all the great programs became great by running out and signing one and dones in their coach's first or second season. Wasn't it more common for them to begin by recruiting very good 4-year players, eventually becoming a winning team, and then begin to attract one and dones to improve their roster a little further?

SFCityBear said:

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calumnus said:

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HoopDreams said:

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SFCityBear said:

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HoopDreams said:

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IssyBear 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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socaltownie said:

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Let me say something controversial - I think the reason that the Wisky strategy DOESN"T work in the Pac-12

1) Bo is a once in a generation coach. You really should read up on how he built that program and the VERY long and deep success he had at lower levels with that approach.
2) I am not convinced that anyone in the Big10 recruits at the level that UCLA, Arizona and Oregon do on a year in-year out basis.

I love this site.

https://basketball.realgm.com/ncaa/conferences/Big-Ten-Conference/2/nba-players

40 Big 10 players in the NBA. 62 Pac12 players in the NBA

Again, repeat after me.

Many (most?) years Cal has to play UCLA, Zona, and Oregon 6 games. Sometimes we only have to play them 5. A very few only 4. To get off the seed of death Cal either has to run the table on a BRUTAL OOC schedule (when they have no drawing power and thus few invites to the made for TV tournies and home/aways in December) OR split those games. If you are on the seed of death (7 through 10) it means, in the current Pod system, you are almost guaranteed a brutal second game should you be able to win the first (essentially a 1 or a 2 getting a near home game where they may not have had to fly and usually have 90% of the fans in the stands - sometimes in a stadium they know and have played in (see Greenville)

Now can the scrappy team from hickory high beat, on any given night, a team of wildcats stuffed with 2 or 3 first round picks? Sure. Why sports are great. But you need more than 1 win. You gotta have 3 or 4 or else...again....seed of death.

I just am at a loss as to why people on this site do not get this. Blue and gold glasses? Pete Newell nostalgia? Forgetting that our conference championship came at a VERY down time for both Zona and UCLA and prior to the true emergence of Nike U.

Now maybe it could be cause some posters are FINE with getting in as an 8. Honestly I find that nearly as depressing as missing the entire tournie cause it isn't fun to watch cal get stripped in the backcourt 3 successive possessions by UCON in a game that essentially was at UCON.

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Bo Ryan hasn't coached that team for the last four years and they're still doing fine. And the Big Ten is a far better conference than the Pac-12 and has been for a while so I don't get the brutal schedule argument.

Drop the hickory high bull**** for a minute. Ask yourself, can Cal legitimately expect to build a program on top level recruits when we have tougher academics to deal with and don't have the amenities to offer that the competition does? And when we've outright sucked the last few years? How much are donors willing to put up for a new practice facility, another coach buyout, probably another AD?

Yeah, building a program like Wisconsin takes time, takes a good ability to spot talent to develop outside the usual top-100 list, takes a good coaching staff able to develop players, and a strong regional recruiting program. And it isn't clear Fox is a guy who can do that. But this discussion seems totally binary in your mind. Either magically grab top 50 recruits all the time or be an 8 seed at best. But look at last year's results. Purdue had the 34th ranked class in 2017 and 49th in 2018 and was a final four team. Texas Tech was 39th and 33rd. Virginia Tech 18th and 54th. Obviously all those teams had talent. They also had good coaching. And it would be better to get more top ranked players in the mix, which they are doing now. But you have to have a base to build on and we do not. So instead of assuming everyone who favors a longer-term build wants to be scrappy underdogs forever, maybe you should consider if your premise is even relevant right now.

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The numbers say otherwise. 62 current NBA players from the PAC 12 while 40 from the FOURTEEN team big 10. Big 10 has done better in tournament time - but I think a pretty clear argument that the raw TALENT at the Pac12 has been, based on who is getting paid serious money to play by the best talent evaluaters on the planet, a more talented conference.

Again, we can ALWAYS find a team in any particular year or even a couple of years that does well. Talent develops, a kid is undervalued, a player doesn't play AAU, he grows 6 inches and suddenly is a monster. These are all good stories.

But you are not building a PROGRAM over a set of years because to get off the seed of death (because it is a really hard truth to lean into) that you have to split against.....

A) A team which clearly is a criminal enterprise in Arizona with a leadership who doesn't give a rats ass and which is not a selective (in any stretch of the imagination) R1 institution
2) A team which is an extension of a multi Billion dollar shoe company whose mission is not to educate its players but to promote a brand by winning at any price necessary
3) A school which is frankly in its twilight but which is the preeminent school in a major metro area of 10 million and which has a legacy of NBA stars that are deeply committed to the institution and willing to encourage recruits to put on Bruin Blue

And finally a conference, because it is on the west coast, is somewhat "cheap" and which doesn't travel strongly doesn't get as a strong a November and December schedule as the Big 10, Big 12 or ACC (and increasingly SEC)

These are not facts I am particularly happy about. But they are facts. You don't get to choose the ground you fight on. Simply put - unless Cal has a pathway to having talent ABOUT as good as the top 3 there really isn't a path forward than seeds of death every 3-4 years.

BTW - One of the reasons I mistakenly thought Martin was the guy (and I think could have been the guy except for Williams & Dirks cutting his knees off) was NOT because he recruited Ivan and Brown - it was the guys that got nixed by the admin - hard nosed kids that wanted to play in the East Bay. Think a multitude of Jason Kidds.

And btw - in case you want to have fun. Here is a great piece about an "All Oakland" team. Funny that only ONE of those kids went to Cal.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/35724-what-if-the-nba-all-oakland-team

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I'm not sure which local kids you think Martin would have landed with administration support. There are not a multitude of Jason Kidds in any town in this universe, but I don't recall East Bay kids who would have gone to Cal absent administration issues. Oscar Frayer? Ben Kone?

That BR list was interesting if you like history, but c'mon. Hook Mitchell? What does he have to do with this discussion? And none of them are even playing any more.

On the bigger issue, you seem to think that I'm advocating not having talent. That's not the case, as I've said repeatedly. But I wouldn't use NBA players as a measure of success. I'd use winning teams as the measure. I really don't care what players do after they leave college for the purpose of this discussion. But more to the point, you don't say how you would get that NBA talent to Cal. You've also argued that such talent predominantly comes from top-50 recruiting targets. They aren't coming here without the investment I mentioned, and even then only after that takes hold. So what's YOUR pathway to talent acquisition? I can't recall you ever describing it. I've named a lot of programs that started by building over time, became successful and now can reload each year. You have not named a single program that has a model you think Cal could use right now, given where Cal is. So how does this magic happen?

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Lets unpack.

First - I want to be VERY clear (and I have been but I think sometimes you disregard this). It isn't about TEAMS....it is about PROGRAMS. What do I mean by that distinction? Anyone (really) can find lightening in a bottle every now in then. Case in point...DAVIDSON. They went to the Elite 8 in 2008. They haven't won a tournament game sense and have make 4 appearances in 12 years. Yeah - we know who played point for them. What I want is a PROGRAM that does well - over a consistent number of YEARS.

Second - you really haven't give us PROGRAMS. We either hear about Newell or a mistaken data free analysis of Wisconsin. I have tried to show you why the program Bo Ryan built (and now Gard - who was Assistant under Bo for FOURTEEN YEARS) has some very unique qualities rather than just "well coached" (which they are).

Third - Lets be clear since you like twisting words. Martin had 3 years to see if he would work. Arguably really 2 and a case could be made for 1.5 since the first year is tough and he had checked out by about January 15th the last. Again, we heard of at least FIVE kids that martin wanted that the admin nixed. Maybe they should have. I don't know. But I do know that it is a hard measure to judge him against when Williams/Dirks wanted him to recruit "their way" (and sometimes I think yours).

Fourth - you rightly ask me my pathway. It is owning the East Bay - and lets make a VERY fine point of it since apparently I have to hit you over the head with a 2 by 4 - that means being an attractive school and program to African American kids from Northern California that sadly sometimes are NOT made to feel welcome on Cal's campus when compared to UCLA, Arizona and USC. Sad but very true. But that is the pathway and it needs to be leaned into hard if you wish to compete. I put that list to show that unlike a lot of schools (UCLA being a prime example) that own their backyard for the best talent Cal has rarely done so. Lets imagine what the program would have looked like if, for example, Monty hadn't been a putz and gotten Aaron Gordon - a kid from a family of ****ing engineers of all things - to consider Cal and then paired Gordon with Raab and Brown. My heart goes pitter pat.

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I don't think you get my point or what I wish for. Your first sentence is exactly what I've been saying. What I wish for is a coach to build a program that is sustainably successful. I mentioned winning teams as a measure of success as a point of disagreement with you defining success as players sent to the NBA. I did not say a winning year or two is enough. My point was I don't give a damn if individual players go to the NBA - I care if they win here. I want a winning program here. The question is how to make that happen given where we are now, which as you've admitted has problems.

I have never brought up Pete Newell. Not once. Ever. Other than to say his teams would be demolished by any modern team. I used Wisconsin as one example of five or six different schools, because they are PROGRAMS who began by building a foundation, because they recruit to the culture they've instilled and the style they play. Because it took time and none were originally built on highly ranked recruiting classes. Because they had coaches who were given enough leeway to do that. Because they started at a place where they couldn't necessarily compete for the top 50 or top 100 players and still managed to have success. Don't get fixated on the one coach you seem to think is unique. He's not.

I've also said we should own the East Bay, and for that matter the Bay Area. But to do that we need to be in a place where those players should even want to consider Cal. As nice an idea as "owning" the local area is, the kids who can come to Cal, deal with academics and make an impact are not numerous (true of any area you name). And for those that do exist, why would they want to come to Cal? We are a sub-par program with sub-par facilities, tough academics and a tough admissions process. So we're probably not going to be high on the lists of the players you want unless we've changed those things. How do you do that?

My view is that you have to start by identifying players who are more diamonds in the rough and develop them, and those kids have to buy into the culture you're trying to instill. Do that, have some success, and players will have more reason to consider coming here. Once again, I'm not saying Fox is the right guy to do that, but I think the program needs to be on better footing with some continuity before there's something to sell to those kids.

Now, I'd rather have a bunch of money come flowing in, we build great facilities, we get awesome administrative support, have a huge budget for assistants, travel, recruiting, and all the stuff the schools you mentioned earlier already have. Then you might be able to jump straight to playing against the big boys. But I don't see that happening, which is why I'm looking at it the way I do.

Aaron Gordon would have been a great get. Monty was not a good recruiter. I don't think anyone is arguing over that one.

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I couldn't agree more. Udub just had their prized 10 star freshmen declare for the NBA draft and is expected to go early in the first round. Udub finished last in the PAC-12. Sports journalists in Seattle are asking if Udub should finally abandon the one-and-done approach they have been following in recent years.

Just a few years ago, we had a team with 4 players that went on to play some in the NBA. We lost in the 1st round of the NCAA tournament.

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our team with the 4 nba players got us a 4 seed. our team that lost in the 1st round of the NCAA tournament only had 2 nba players

but I get your point

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What you said is true, but that team also had Jordan Mathews who transferred to Gonzaga and started for the Zags as they won the WCC, won the WCC tournament, and finished as NCAA Runnerup. losing only to UNC in the final.

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if your point is that we should have beat hawaii anyway, then I agree. the problem was at PG. Singer did well, but he got in early foul trouble and sat. Coach then tried Chauca who could not compete, and even tried Brown at PG, and we know how that went.

in addition, the lack of having wallace and bird forced coach to play role players domingo and roger more. Of the 3 lightly used players to play to fill the gap of the starters going down, here was their stats:

Roger 26 minutes - 0-5 shooting, 3-6 FT, 2 RB, 2 ASSTs, 1 TO, 2 FLs - 3 pts
Domingo 14 minutes - 0-4 shooting, 2 RB, 1 TO, 1 FL - 0 pts
Chauca 8 minutes - 0-2 shooting, 1 RB, 1 ASST, 1 TO, 1 FL - 0 pts

That's 48 minutes going 0-11 shooting - 3 pts

Mathews who you mentioned played 31 minutes - 9-15, including 3-8 from 3, 2-2 FT, 4 RBs, 1 ASST, 1 Steal, 1 TO, 3 fouls - 23 pts

Singer 30 minutes - 5-9, 5 RBs, 0 ASSTs, 2 Steal, 5 fouls

King/Rooks combo 36 minutes - 3-4, 5-9 FTs, 5 RBs, 1 BLK, 2 TOs, 4 fouls - 11 pts

Rabb 38 minutes - 5-11, 3-4 FTs, 12 RBs, 2 ASSTs, 1 BLK, 1 TO, 3 fouls - 13 pts

Brown 17 minutes - 1-6, 2-2 FTs, 2 RBs, 7 TOs, 5 fouls - 4 pts

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Hawaii

G Smith 6-8, 7-8 FTs - 19 pts
G Bobbitt 7-16, 2-4 FTs, 7 RBs, 4 ASSTs - 17 pts
F Jankovic 5-9, 6-6 FTs, 5 RBs, 16 pts

1. So their senior PG outplayed our senior backup guard and our two rarely used PGs (Chauca and Brown)
2. Jankovic played Rabb even
3. Mathews was the only one who really showed up
4. Our bench played horribly
5. Brown played the worst game of his college career (and only 17 minutes)

AND our coach did a terrible job

I still believe that we win going away if we had Wallace for the game. If we had both Wallace and Bird, we would have gone to the sweet sixteen

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Yeah, the people that continually point to the Hawaii loss as somehow showing that having McDonald's All Americans like Brown, Rabb and Bird is not a viable path ignore what actually happened.

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Let's leave aside the Hawaii game for a moment. The reason that the pathway to glory is not a team of stars like Cal had in 2016, is because Cal did not have nearly enough of them. They had only two players of a caliber that the NBA would take them early (early on, Bird was of that group, but injuries made that impossible.) Cal had only 4 top 100 ranked players, when Wallace is added to those three. I guess you could count Domingo as a 4-star player on paper, but he never played even close to that level at Georgetown or Cal. Mathews was a high-ranked 3-star, but not a top 100 player. Cal had no one else even close to top 100 status. This is not enough of a roster to have big success in the NCAA. The best programs need 10 top 100 players to sustain success.

Looking at the top teams, Duke, Kentucky, UNC, Kansas, and a couple more, what their rosters have in common is they are loaded with highly ranked recruits. Each year they have players leaving for the NBA, and they have 10 or 11 top 100 ranked recruits on the roster. And each of those teams has a very good coach with a very good coaching staff. Even with all that, if you look at the last 20 years, the best of these teams only wins a title maybe once every 7 years, and maybe gets to another Final Four slightly more often.

Top teams stockpile all these players because some stars get injured, or get sick before a game, or are inconsistent, or fail to live up to their ranking, or leave school early, or get suspended for violations, or transfer to another school. When Bird and Wallace went down to injuries, and Brown had a horrible game, that was not unusual for a season. What was unusual was that these events happened close together in time, the injuries right before a big game, and Brown laying an egg during the game itself. A program like Duke or Kentucky would shrug their shoulders and plug 3 more stars into the game. Cal didn't have 3 extra stars waiting to go into the game. What they had on the bench were misfits and projects, like Chauca, RMB, Rooks, and Okoroh. Except for Chauca perhaps, all these players had been improving, but none were ready to contribute star power to fill the void left by Wallace, Bird, and Brown for the Hawaii game. People tell me I shouldn't write about Pete Newell, but Newell used the same formula: He stockpiled players, not what you could call stars, but players he and his staff trained to fit his system, and play it nearly as well as his starters. John Wooden used the same formula, until he began to attract major stars Like Kareem. Then his teams looked more like the top teams of today with many stars on the rosters. Newell handed out 17 scholarships to freshmen, and had 40-45 scholarship players in the program every year. And those were days when there were far fewer injuries and hardly ever any transfers. The biggest thing he had to worry about was perhaps players flunking out, or quitting the team to study, and sometimes an individual matchup that was hard to contain, like Chamberlain of Kansas, Elgin Baylor, or Bill Russell of USF. Newell's teams lost all those games.

One and done players are fun for fans, and maybe can help a good team become a great one, but they are no lock to come on to a chopped liver roster, or even an average roster, and take them to great success in your NCAA tourney. I don't think all the great programs became great by running out and signing one and dones in their coach's first or second season. Wasn't it more common for them to begin by recruiting very good 4-year players, eventually becoming a winning team, and then begin to attract one and dones to improve their roster a little further?

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This is so binary it isn't even funny. Again, I can show you team after team that has ridden great player for a LONG run in the tournament. You don't need 10....you need ideally 2-3 and then complementary role players.

Your failure to understand the modern game but ramble statistics makes me wonder if you even watch or just study box scores. Again, the value of a talent player is accentuated in the modern game. I just take you back to the Oregon game this year. If you watched Cal played decent team and individual defense. Did most of the right things. And then, with 10 seconds left on the clock Prichard did what skilled players in the modern game do - went iso and beat his man over and over again. Happens every game? No. But in a league like the Pac 12 you NEED that capability because the conference generally has the talent and coaching to defend. You need players, in the language of color guys all over the nation, who can "make shots"

Now we might even agree that the above iso game isn't the greatest BB to watch. Indeed, I HATE watching Hardin play who sorta is the uber of alltime for iso players. But it is what it is.

Finally, You continue to put up these straw-men. Cal WILL NOT be Duke. No one is calling for it to be Duke (or Kentucky). But you know what - we SHOULD aspire to the same f;ing talent at UCLA. It has been F;ing 50 years since Wooden. They won the Herrick Championship on a fluke. The fact that they outrecruit us by miles (and fire their coaches for levels of accomplishment that would leave many Bears giddy) means they care. We don't. And no. We shouldn't outrecruit UCLA THIS year. But it should be our stretch goal. We are so far from meeting it the mind boggles.

(BTW - what is funny is that I think it is reversed in football. We have higher standards than they do in football because they have had some AWFUL football coaches that have lasted a long time)

HoopDreams said:

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SFCityBear said:

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HoopDreams said:

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IssyBear 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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socaltownie said:

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Let me say something controversial - I think the reason that the Wisky strategy DOESN"T work in the Pac-12

1) Bo is a once in a generation coach. You really should read up on how he built that program and the VERY long and deep success he had at lower levels with that approach.
2) I am not convinced that anyone in the Big10 recruits at the level that UCLA, Arizona and Oregon do on a year in-year out basis.

I love this site.

https://basketball.realgm.com/ncaa/conferences/Big-Ten-Conference/2/nba-players

40 Big 10 players in the NBA. 62 Pac12 players in the NBA

Again, repeat after me.

Many (most?) years Cal has to play UCLA, Zona, and Oregon 6 games. Sometimes we only have to play them 5. A very few only 4. To get off the seed of death Cal either has to run the table on a BRUTAL OOC schedule (when they have no drawing power and thus few invites to the made for TV tournies and home/aways in December) OR split those games. If you are on the seed of death (7 through 10) it means, in the current Pod system, you are almost guaranteed a brutal second game should you be able to win the first (essentially a 1 or a 2 getting a near home game where they may not have had to fly and usually have 90% of the fans in the stands - sometimes in a stadium they know and have played in (see Greenville)

Now can the scrappy team from hickory high beat, on any given night, a team of wildcats stuffed with 2 or 3 first round picks? Sure. Why sports are great. But you need more than 1 win. You gotta have 3 or 4 or else...again....seed of death.

I just am at a loss as to why people on this site do not get this. Blue and gold glasses? Pete Newell nostalgia? Forgetting that our conference championship came at a VERY down time for both Zona and UCLA and prior to the true emergence of Nike U.

Now maybe it could be cause some posters are FINE with getting in as an 8. Honestly I find that nearly as depressing as missing the entire tournie cause it isn't fun to watch cal get stripped in the backcourt 3 successive possessions by UCON in a game that essentially was at UCON.

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Bo Ryan hasn't coached that team for the last four years and they're still doing fine. And the Big Ten is a far better conference than the Pac-12 and has been for a while so I don't get the brutal schedule argument.

Drop the hickory high bull**** for a minute. Ask yourself, can Cal legitimately expect to build a program on top level recruits when we have tougher academics to deal with and don't have the amenities to offer that the competition does? And when we've outright sucked the last few years? How much are donors willing to put up for a new practice facility, another coach buyout, probably another AD?

Yeah, building a program like Wisconsin takes time, takes a good ability to spot talent to develop outside the usual top-100 list, takes a good coaching staff able to develop players, and a strong regional recruiting program. And it isn't clear Fox is a guy who can do that. But this discussion seems totally binary in your mind. Either magically grab top 50 recruits all the time or be an 8 seed at best. But look at last year's results. Purdue had the 34th ranked class in 2017 and 49th in 2018 and was a final four team. Texas Tech was 39th and 33rd. Virginia Tech 18th and 54th. Obviously all those teams had talent. They also had good coaching. And it would be better to get more top ranked players in the mix, which they are doing now. But you have to have a base to build on and we do not. So instead of assuming everyone who favors a longer-term build wants to be scrappy underdogs forever, maybe you should consider if your premise is even relevant right now.

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The numbers say otherwise. 62 current NBA players from the PAC 12 while 40 from the FOURTEEN team big 10. Big 10 has done better in tournament time - but I think a pretty clear argument that the raw TALENT at the Pac12 has been, based on who is getting paid serious money to play by the best talent evaluaters on the planet, a more talented conference.

Again, we can ALWAYS find a team in any particular year or even a couple of years that does well. Talent develops, a kid is undervalued, a player doesn't play AAU, he grows 6 inches and suddenly is a monster. These are all good stories.

But you are not building a PROGRAM over a set of years because to get off the seed of death (because it is a really hard truth to lean into) that you have to split against.....

A) A team which clearly is a criminal enterprise in Arizona with a leadership who doesn't give a rats ass and which is not a selective (in any stretch of the imagination) R1 institution
2) A team which is an extension of a multi Billion dollar shoe company whose mission is not to educate its players but to promote a brand by winning at any price necessary
3) A school which is frankly in its twilight but which is the preeminent school in a major metro area of 10 million and which has a legacy of NBA stars that are deeply committed to the institution and willing to encourage recruits to put on Bruin Blue

And finally a conference, because it is on the west coast, is somewhat "cheap" and which doesn't travel strongly doesn't get as a strong a November and December schedule as the Big 10, Big 12 or ACC (and increasingly SEC)

These are not facts I am particularly happy about. But they are facts. You don't get to choose the ground you fight on. Simply put - unless Cal has a pathway to having talent ABOUT as good as the top 3 there really isn't a path forward than seeds of death every 3-4 years.

BTW - One of the reasons I mistakenly thought Martin was the guy (and I think could have been the guy except for Williams & Dirks cutting his knees off) was NOT because he recruited Ivan and Brown - it was the guys that got nixed by the admin - hard nosed kids that wanted to play in the East Bay. Think a multitude of Jason Kidds.

And btw - in case you want to have fun. Here is a great piece about an "All Oakland" team. Funny that only ONE of those kids went to Cal.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/35724-what-if-the-nba-all-oakland-team

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I'm not sure which local kids you think Martin would have landed with administration support. There are not a multitude of Jason Kidds in any town in this universe, but I don't recall East Bay kids who would have gone to Cal absent administration issues. Oscar Frayer? Ben Kone?

That BR list was interesting if you like history, but c'mon. Hook Mitchell? What does he have to do with this discussion? And none of them are even playing any more.

On the bigger issue, you seem to think that I'm advocating not having talent. That's not the case, as I've said repeatedly. But I wouldn't use NBA players as a measure of success. I'd use winning teams as the measure. I really don't care what players do after they leave college for the purpose of this discussion. But more to the point, you don't say how you would get that NBA talent to Cal. You've also argued that such talent predominantly comes from top-50 recruiting targets. They aren't coming here without the investment I mentioned, and even then only after that takes hold. So what's YOUR pathway to talent acquisition? I can't recall you ever describing it. I've named a lot of programs that started by building over time, became successful and now can reload each year. You have not named a single program that has a model you think Cal could use right now, given where Cal is. So how does this magic happen?

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Lets unpack.

First - I want to be VERY clear (and I have been but I think sometimes you disregard this). It isn't about TEAMS....it is about PROGRAMS. What do I mean by that distinction? Anyone (really) can find lightening in a bottle every now in then. Case in point...DAVIDSON. They went to the Elite 8 in 2008. They haven't won a tournament game sense and have make 4 appearances in 12 years. Yeah - we know who played point for them. What I want is a PROGRAM that does well - over a consistent number of YEARS.

Second - you really haven't give us PROGRAMS. We either hear about Newell or a mistaken data free analysis of Wisconsin. I have tried to show you why the program Bo Ryan built (and now Gard - who was Assistant under Bo for FOURTEEN YEARS) has some very unique qualities rather than just "well coached" (which they are).

Third - Lets be clear since you like twisting words. Martin had 3 years to see if he would work. Arguably really 2 and a case could be made for 1.5 since the first year is tough and he had checked out by about January 15th the last. Again, we heard of at least FIVE kids that martin wanted that the admin nixed. Maybe they should have. I don't know. But I do know that it is a hard measure to judge him against when Williams/Dirks wanted him to recruit "their way" (and sometimes I think yours).

Fourth - you rightly ask me my pathway. It is owning the East Bay - and lets make a VERY fine point of it since apparently I have to hit you over the head with a 2 by 4 - that means being an attractive school and program to African American kids from Northern California that sadly sometimes are NOT made to feel welcome on Cal's campus when compared to UCLA, Arizona and USC. Sad but very true. But that is the pathway and it needs to be leaned into hard if you wish to compete. I put that list to show that unlike a lot of schools (UCLA being a prime example) that own their backyard for the best talent Cal has rarely done so. Lets imagine what the program would have looked like if, for example, Monty hadn't been a putz and gotten Aaron Gordon - a kid from a family of ****ing engineers of all things - to consider Cal and then paired Gordon with Raab and Brown. My heart goes pitter pat.

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I don't think you get my point or what I wish for. Your first sentence is exactly what I've been saying. What I wish for is a coach to build a program that is sustainably successful. I mentioned winning teams as a measure of success as a point of disagreement with you defining success as players sent to the NBA. I did not say a winning year or two is enough. My point was I don't give a damn if individual players go to the NBA - I care if they win here. I want a winning program here. The question is how to make that happen given where we are now, which as you've admitted has problems.

I have never brought up Pete Newell. Not once. Ever. Other than to say his teams would be demolished by any modern team. I used Wisconsin as one example of five or six different schools, because they are PROGRAMS who began by building a foundation, because they recruit to the culture they've instilled and the style they play. Because it took time and none were originally built on highly ranked recruiting classes. Because they had coaches who were given enough leeway to do that. Because they started at a place where they couldn't necessarily compete for the top 50 or top 100 players and still managed to have success. Don't get fixated on the one coach you seem to think is unique. He's not.

I've also said we should own the East Bay, and for that matter the Bay Area. But to do that we need to be in a place where those players should even want to consider Cal. As nice an idea as "owning" the local area is, the kids who can come to Cal, deal with academics and make an impact are not numerous (true of any area you name). And for those that do exist, why would they want to come to Cal? We are a sub-par program with sub-par facilities, tough academics and a tough admissions process. So we're probably not going to be high on the lists of the players you want unless we've changed those things. How do you do that?

My view is that you have to start by identifying players who are more diamonds in the rough and develop them, and those kids have to buy into the culture you're trying to instill. Do that, have some success, and players will have more reason to consider coming here. Once again, I'm not saying Fox is the right guy to do that, but I think the program needs to be on better footing with some continuity before there's something to sell to those kids.

Now, I'd rather have a bunch of money come flowing in, we build great facilities, we get awesome administrative support, have a huge budget for assistants, travel, recruiting, and all the stuff the schools you mentioned earlier already have. Then you might be able to jump straight to playing against the big boys. But I don't see that happening, which is why I'm looking at it the way I do.

Aaron Gordon would have been a great get. Monty was not a good recruiter. I don't think anyone is arguing over that one.

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I couldn't agree more. Udub just had their prized 10 star freshmen declare for the NBA draft and is expected to go early in the first round. Udub finished last in the PAC-12. Sports journalists in Seattle are asking if Udub should finally abandon the one-and-done approach they have been following in recent years.

Just a few years ago, we had a team with 4 players that went on to play some in the NBA. We lost in the 1st round of the NCAA tournament.

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our team with the 4 nba players got us a 4 seed. our team that lost in the 1st round of the NCAA tournament only had 2 nba players

but I get your point

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What you said is true, but that team also had Jordan Mathews who transferred to Gonzaga and started for the Zags as they won the WCC, won the WCC tournament, and finished as NCAA Runnerup. losing only to UNC in the final.

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if your point is that we should have beat hawaii anyway, then I agree. the problem was at PG. Singer did well, but he got in early foul trouble and sat. Coach then tried Chauca who could not compete, and even tried Brown at PG, and we know how that went.

in addition, the lack of having wallace and bird forced coach to play role players domingo and roger more. Of the 3 lightly used players to play to fill the gap of the starters going down, here was their stats:

Roger 26 minutes - 0-5 shooting, 3-6 FT, 2 RB, 2 ASSTs, 1 TO, 2 FLs - 3 pts
Domingo 14 minutes - 0-4 shooting, 2 RB, 1 TO, 1 FL - 0 pts
Chauca 8 minutes - 0-2 shooting, 1 RB, 1 ASST, 1 TO, 1 FL - 0 pts

That's 48 minutes going 0-11 shooting - 3 pts

Mathews who you mentioned played 31 minutes - 9-15, including 3-8 from 3, 2-2 FT, 4 RBs, 1 ASST, 1 Steal, 1 TO, 3 fouls - 23 pts

Singer 30 minutes - 5-9, 5 RBs, 0 ASSTs, 2 Steal, 5 fouls

King/Rooks combo 36 minutes - 3-4, 5-9 FTs, 5 RBs, 1 BLK, 2 TOs, 4 fouls - 11 pts

Rabb 38 minutes - 5-11, 3-4 FTs, 12 RBs, 2 ASSTs, 1 BLK, 1 TO, 3 fouls - 13 pts

Brown 17 minutes - 1-6, 2-2 FTs, 2 RBs, 7 TOs, 5 fouls - 4 pts

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Hawaii

G Smith 6-8, 7-8 FTs - 19 pts
G Bobbitt 7-16, 2-4 FTs, 7 RBs, 4 ASSTs - 17 pts
F Jankovic 5-9, 6-6 FTs, 5 RBs, 16 pts

1. So their senior PG outplayed our senior backup guard and our two rarely used PGs (Chauca and Brown)
2. Jankovic played Rabb even
3. Mathews was the only one who really showed up
4. Our bench played horribly
5. Brown played the worst game of his college career (and only 17 minutes)

AND our coach did a terrible job

I still believe that we win going away if we had Wallace for the game. If we had both Wallace and Bird, we would have gone to the sweet sixteen

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I respect much of what you are saying. Look, I suffered along with everyone else here over the sports tragedy of all the injuries to Cal's 2016 team. I would have liked to have seen them play better with the team they put on the floor, however. The team Cal put on the floor was still loaded with talent on paper, much higher ranked recruits than Hawaii, but the team was not very deep, and one player Jaylen Brown, was asked to play out of position at point guard for a minute and a half. It was not as though he had not done that before, as he took over the point guard position in the second half against Arizona, when Wallace was hurt, I think, and when Singer had faltered a bit, and he did a very good job playing PG in that game, getting a career high 7 assists.

The play by play record on calbears.com tells us a little more about the game, and the much maligned Brandon Chauca. First, Singer got his first foul at 17:39 left in first half, but Chauca did not enter the game until 14:54 to go, indicating that Chauca did not first play in the game because Singer got in foul trouble. It appears it may have been the plan all along to have Chauca play meaningful minutes in the game, because one foul is not foul trouble. Chauca played 43 seconds and was replaced by Singer. Chauca came back in at 11:59, and presumably gave up a 2-point jumper to Bobbitt, Hawaii's point guard, and Singer replaced him at 11:16. Sam committed his 2nd foul at 10:15, and got in a little foul trouble. He was replaced by Brown. Bobbitt did not score off Brown, but he did get an assist, and Jaylen was replaced at 9:22 by Chauca. At 8:12, Chauca made an Assist pass to Mathews. At 7:50, Chauca committed a foul and a turnover. The Hawaii player missed the free throw. Singer replaced Chauca at 7:50. Singer picked up his 3rd foul at 3:26, and was replaced by Chauca who played the final minutes of the half. At 0:11 to go, Bobbitt hit a 2-point jumper, presumably over Chauca.

Chauca played 5:52 minutes in the first half. During that time, his man Bobbitt scored 4 points, and Chauca made an assist. Chauca made a TO, but Hawaii did not score off it. I would grade Chauca as having given up a net of 2 points to Hawaii. Cal was behind by 6 at halftime, and 2 of those points were the responsibility of Brandon Chauca.

Chauca would not re-enter the game until near the end of the game, with 0:56 to go with Cal down by 13 points. Neither Chauca nor Bobbitt would score in that final 0:56. Cal ended up losing by 11 points and 2 of those points were the responsibility of Brandon Chauca. Bobbitt scored 17 points in that game, 4 against Chauca, and 13 against Singer. So in my mind, Chauca had some responsibility for the loss, but not more than 2 of the 11 point spread at the end. Bobbitt, an unranked recruit, averaged 13 points during the season, so he played an above average game for him vs Cal. The Hawaii shooting guard, Quincy Smith, who averaged 8 points for the season went off for 19, presumably mostly against Jordan Mathews. Those two Hawaii guards were killing our guards all game long. That season, Singer was Cal's best perimeter defender, at point of attack. He was disappointing defensively vs Hawaii. Cal's bench (Rooks, RMB, Domingo, Chauca) with 11 pts, 8 rebs, 3 assists, did outplay Hawaii's bench with 8 pts, 4 rebs, and 2 assists.

Brown played a minute and 33 seconds at point guard, and in that time he gave up an assist, and committed a foul that resulted in two free throws made. He committed none of his 7 turnovers while he was playing point guard. His turnovers resulted in a layup and two jump shots made by Hawaii, a total of 6 points.

Your prediction that if Wallace played, Cal would have won and reached the sweet 16 may be right. I try not to make predictions, and I had hopes for that team, but felt they could easily stumble. They were a poor road team, prior to the Hawaii game, going 5-10 on the road, and only 1-3 on neutral floors. The NCAA is usually all played on neutral floors. To reach and lose a sweet 16, Cal would have to go 2-1 away from Haas on neutral floors, which would not be likely, based on their road performance that season. Singer was our best perimeter defender, IMO, and if Wallace, who was a much weaker defender, had played, then Sam would have been on the bench mostly, and Hawaii perhaps could have scored a few more points over Wallace. Obviously, Wallace was our team leader, and our point guard, and so Cal would likely have scored more on offense with him in the game. Of the perimeter defenders, I'd rank Singer first, Brown second, Bird and Wallace tied for third, and Mathews fifth.

Bird was a 5-star recruit, ranked #23 and Wallace a low ranked 4-star recruit, ranked #94. I didn't read anyone saying Cal would have won if Bird had played. Maybe I missed it. Wallace seems to me to be the kind of recruit I'd want to shoot for, in the sense that he was a very good player who would stay 3 or 4 years and likely get better with each year, rather than the obvious NBA bound players who are not quite ready to dominate in college, and will do their improving in the NBA or D-league. These kids leave, and they leave a huge hole to fill. Brown and Rabb left and all we really got to replace their talent was Marcus Lee and Charlie Moore, but then he left too, and we know the rest of the story.

I would say that the coach is very important, because that game against Hawaii showed how badly Cal needed a point guard in that game, because without him, Cuonzo's offensive philosophy of "Take it to the rim, or shoot a three" was not enough to overcome a well-coached team with no highly ranked talent. Cuonzo was a good teacher and coach of a defense, and he made most of his players better defenders. He had his players trained to help each other on defense. If only he had imparted that mind set or attitude to his players on offense as well.

socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Today, Stanfurd signed the #7 player in the country.

I wonder what Mark Fox has planned to keep Cal competitive.

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Yeah I saw this. But remember - the apology crowd doesn't like one and dones, pines about Pete newell, and thinks that Hawaii exposed the fallacy of getting mcDonald all Americans so everything will be A OK.

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who are these apology people who don't want to sign one-and-dones?

you keep making arguments against a false narrative

when I read posts from others, I don't hear that ... most would be ok would becoming the Duke of the West Coast, with 3 one-and-done each year, with the rest of the roster full of 5 and 4 star players

the issue, is we can't just snap our fingers and say yeah, I agree .... let's do that

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Do you read SFBear?

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so the 'crowd' is one?

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There are a number of posts by others that question one and done vs. coach em up talent - variants being essentially "Cal will never be able to get one and dones (even though it has in the past) and thus it is a fools quest to recruit that kind of talent." Jesus - read the board - and no crowds because there are about a dozen people who actually CARE enough about the program to post

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Thank you.

Here's where I come down on this debate. I have no problem getting one-and-dones, if the coach can get them dealing with the Cal administration. It makes no sense to me to hire a coach who is then going to go after players that can't get admitted, then ***** and moan and quit because he can't get them in, which I understand is partly why Cuonzo left. Going way back, Monty's predecessor at Furd, Dr. Tom Davis, quit to go to Iowa State, I believe, because he said he couldn't be competitive because of the academic restrictions on who he could recruit. I don't know if they relaxed that for Monty or not.

Based on the above, my guess is that one-and-dones at Cal will probably always be final pieces to the puzzle, guys who can win the games Socaltownie is talking about where we need someone to take over a game in the stretch, but who are still working within a system that has complementary players.

As to the two comparison schools that always come up. I think SCT may be right about the unique situation at Wisconsin, with coaches who have been ultra-plugged-in to the local talent and a nearby market in Chicago that hasn't had any college basketball tradition since the Ray Meyer era at DePaul. Could something like that happen here. Maybe, but you would have to have a coach who was really a Bay Area guy, and I'm not sure at this point who that would be. Maybe the ex Cal guy who is now at CCSF? I don't know.

As for Virginia, let's look at the record. Dick had one fluke Final Four at Wisconsin, with a team that finished sixth in the Big 10 that year. He did little at Washington State.

Tony has done better, but he didn't get to the Sweet 16 until year 5 at Virginia, with a team that won the ACC that year. The question is going to be how long people will be patient with Fox, depending on the progress that he makes.

Things might have been different had 2016 not turned out the way it did, although I think Cuonzo would be gone by now regardless. I see him as someone who goes into programs that are in transition, or in chaos, and uses those situations to get paid more money than his actual coaching accomplishments justify, which is why I don't like him. I still view the Martin/Jones tenure as a giant sidetrack that ended up with the basketball program in worse shape than when it started.

socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Today, Stanfurd signed the #7 player in the country.

I wonder what Mark Fox has planned to keep Cal competitive.

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Yeah I saw this. But remember - the apology crowd doesn't like one and dones, pines about Pete newell, and thinks that Hawaii exposed the fallacy of getting mcDonald all Americans so everything will be A OK.

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who are these apology people who don't want to sign one-and-dones?

you keep making arguments against a false narrative

when I read posts from others, I don't hear that ... most would be ok would becoming the Duke of the West Coast, with 3 one-and-done each year, with the rest of the roster full of 5 and 4 star players

the issue, is we can't just snap our fingers and say yeah, I agree .... let's do that

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Do you read SFBear?

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so the 'crowd' is one?

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There are a number of posts by others that question one and done vs. coach em up talent - variants being essentially "Cal will never be able to get one and dones (even though it has in the past) and thus it is a fools quest to recruit that kind of talent." Jesus - read the board - and no crowds because there are about a dozen people who actually CARE enough about the program to post

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Well, you are right about one thing: Cal has recruited one and dones in the past. THREE of them in FIFTY YEARS, since the 1971 court decision to allow players to leave college early for the NBA. The one and dones are Shareef Abdul-Raheem, Jamal Sampson, and Jaylen Brown. Out of over 650 players recruited and signed by Cal in fifty years we have landed exactly three one and dones. So you are right, we have done it, once every 16 years or so.

And what did these one and dones of ours do for Cal?

Shareef Abdul-Raheem: His team went 17-11, finished 10th in the PAC10 (no fault of his, as Cal's record was reduced to 2-25 due to recruiting violations of the coach), and lost in the 1st round of the NCAA.

Jamal Sampson: His team went 23-9, finished 2nd in the PAC10, and lost in the 2nd round of the NCAA.

Jaylen Brown: His team went 23-11, finished 3rd in the PAC12, and lost in the 1st round of the NCAA.

Their teams have been better than many Cal teams, but not as good as some Cal teams who had no one and dones.

My point has been that even though we have had these three one and dones, they alone have brought us no glory. If Duke or Kentucky is your model, you need TEN top 100 players on your roster, including several one and dones. Cal has never done that, and I for one, don't think Cal can do that. Nor do I want that. I want three to four year players to start with, and as we begin to have success, then add some one and dones, if you wish, to make the team better. Think Tony Bennett or Bo Ryan. Isn't that more doable, starting from the basement of Division One? As a Cal fan, I enjoyed seeing Lamond Murray and Allen Crabbe and their teams for three years. And I really enjoyed Jerome Randle and Jorge Gutierrez for 4 years. I can barely remember Jamal Sampson, or his team.

SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Today, Stanfurd signed the #7 player in the country.

I wonder what Mark Fox has planned to keep Cal competitive.

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Yeah I saw this. But remember - the apology crowd doesn't like one and dones, pines about Pete newell, and thinks that Hawaii exposed the fallacy of getting mcDonald all Americans so everything will be A OK.

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who are these apology people who don't want to sign one-and-dones?

you keep making arguments against a false narrative

when I read posts from others, I don't hear that ... most would be ok would becoming the Duke of the West Coast, with 3 one-and-done each year, with the rest of the roster full of 5 and 4 star players

the issue, is we can't just snap our fingers and say yeah, I agree .... let's do that

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Do you read SFBear?

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so the 'crowd' is one?

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There are a number of posts by others that question one and done vs. coach em up talent - variants being essentially "Cal will never be able to get one and dones (even though it has in the past) and thus it is a fools quest to recruit that kind of talent." Jesus - read the board - and no crowds because there are about a dozen people who actually CARE enough about the program to post

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Well, you are right about one thing: Cal has recruited one and dones in the past. THREE of them in FIFTY YEARS, since the 1971 court decision to allow players to leave college early for the NBA. The one and dones are Shareef Abdul-Raheem, Jamal Sampson, and Jaylen Brown. Out of over 650 players recruited and signed by Cal in fifty years we have landed exactly three one and dones. So you are right, we have done it, once every 16 years or so.

And what did these one and dones of ours do for Cal?

Shareef Abdul-Raheem: His team went 17-11, finished 10th in the PAC10 (no fault of his, as Cal's record was reduced to 2-25 due to recruiting violations of the coach), and lost in the 1st round of the NCAA.

Jamal Sampson: His team went 23-9, finished 2nd in the PAC10, and lost in the 2nd round of the NCAA.

Jaylen Brown: His team went 23-11, finished 3rd in the PAC12, and lost in the 1st round of the NCAA.

Their teams have been better than many Cal teams, but not as good as some Cal teams who had no one and dones.

My point has been that even though we have had these three one and dones, they alone have brought us no glory. If Duke or Kentucky is your model, you need TEN top 100 players on your roster, including several one and dones. Cal has never done that, and I for one, don't think Cal can do that. Nor do I want that. I want three to four year players to start with, and as we begin to have success, then add some one and dones, if you wish, to make the team better. Think Tony Bennett or Bo Ryan. Isn't that more doable, starting from the basement of Division One? As a Cal fan, I enjoyed seeing Lamond Murray and Allen Crabbe and their teams for three years. And I really enjoyed Jerome Randle and Jorge Gutierrez for 4 years. I can barely remember Jamal Sampson, or his team.

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Going to simply leave it at this.

UCLA is able to do it.
Why not Cal.

SFCityBear said:

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calumnus said:

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HoopDreams said:

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SFCityBear said:

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HoopDreams said:

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IssyBear 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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socaltownie said:

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Let me say something controversial - I think the reason that the Wisky strategy DOESN"T work in the Pac-12

1) Bo is a once in a generation coach. You really should read up on how he built that program and the VERY long and deep success he had at lower levels with that approach.
2) I am not convinced that anyone in the Big10 recruits at the level that UCLA, Arizona and Oregon do on a year in-year out basis.

I love this site.

https://basketball.realgm.com/ncaa/conferences/Big-Ten-Conference/2/nba-players

40 Big 10 players in the NBA. 62 Pac12 players in the NBA

Again, repeat after me.

Many (most?) years Cal has to play UCLA, Zona, and Oregon 6 games. Sometimes we only have to play them 5. A very few only 4. To get off the seed of death Cal either has to run the table on a BRUTAL OOC schedule (when they have no drawing power and thus few invites to the made for TV tournies and home/aways in December) OR split those games. If you are on the seed of death (7 through 10) it means, in the current Pod system, you are almost guaranteed a brutal second game should you be able to win the first (essentially a 1 or a 2 getting a near home game where they may not have had to fly and usually have 90% of the fans in the stands - sometimes in a stadium they know and have played in (see Greenville)

Now can the scrappy team from hickory high beat, on any given night, a team of wildcats stuffed with 2 or 3 first round picks? Sure. Why sports are great. But you need more than 1 win. You gotta have 3 or 4 or else...again....seed of death.

I just am at a loss as to why people on this site do not get this. Blue and gold glasses? Pete Newell nostalgia? Forgetting that our conference championship came at a VERY down time for both Zona and UCLA and prior to the true emergence of Nike U.

Now maybe it could be cause some posters are FINE with getting in as an 8. Honestly I find that nearly as depressing as missing the entire tournie cause it isn't fun to watch cal get stripped in the backcourt 3 successive possessions by UCON in a game that essentially was at UCON.

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Bo Ryan hasn't coached that team for the last four years and they're still doing fine. And the Big Ten is a far better conference than the Pac-12 and has been for a while so I don't get the brutal schedule argument.

Drop the hickory high bull**** for a minute. Ask yourself, can Cal legitimately expect to build a program on top level recruits when we have tougher academics to deal with and don't have the amenities to offer that the competition does? And when we've outright sucked the last few years? How much are donors willing to put up for a new practice facility, another coach buyout, probably another AD?

Yeah, building a program like Wisconsin takes time, takes a good ability to spot talent to develop outside the usual top-100 list, takes a good coaching staff able to develop players, and a strong regional recruiting program. And it isn't clear Fox is a guy who can do that. But this discussion seems totally binary in your mind. Either magically grab top 50 recruits all the time or be an 8 seed at best. But look at last year's results. Purdue had the 34th ranked class in 2017 and 49th in 2018 and was a final four team. Texas Tech was 39th and 33rd. Virginia Tech 18th and 54th. Obviously all those teams had talent. They also had good coaching. And it would be better to get more top ranked players in the mix, which they are doing now. But you have to have a base to build on and we do not. So instead of assuming everyone who favors a longer-term build wants to be scrappy underdogs forever, maybe you should consider if your premise is even relevant right now.

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The numbers say otherwise. 62 current NBA players from the PAC 12 while 40 from the FOURTEEN team big 10. Big 10 has done better in tournament time - but I think a pretty clear argument that the raw TALENT at the Pac12 has been, based on who is getting paid serious money to play by the best talent evaluaters on the planet, a more talented conference.

Again, we can ALWAYS find a team in any particular year or even a couple of years that does well. Talent develops, a kid is undervalued, a player doesn't play AAU, he grows 6 inches and suddenly is a monster. These are all good stories.

But you are not building a PROGRAM over a set of years because to get off the seed of death (because it is a really hard truth to lean into) that you have to split against.....

A) A team which clearly is a criminal enterprise in Arizona with a leadership who doesn't give a rats ass and which is not a selective (in any stretch of the imagination) R1 institution
2) A team which is an extension of a multi Billion dollar shoe company whose mission is not to educate its players but to promote a brand by winning at any price necessary
3) A school which is frankly in its twilight but which is the preeminent school in a major metro area of 10 million and which has a legacy of NBA stars that are deeply committed to the institution and willing to encourage recruits to put on Bruin Blue

And finally a conference, because it is on the west coast, is somewhat "cheap" and which doesn't travel strongly doesn't get as a strong a November and December schedule as the Big 10, Big 12 or ACC (and increasingly SEC)

These are not facts I am particularly happy about. But they are facts. You don't get to choose the ground you fight on. Simply put - unless Cal has a pathway to having talent ABOUT as good as the top 3 there really isn't a path forward than seeds of death every 3-4 years.

BTW - One of the reasons I mistakenly thought Martin was the guy (and I think could have been the guy except for Williams & Dirks cutting his knees off) was NOT because he recruited Ivan and Brown - it was the guys that got nixed by the admin - hard nosed kids that wanted to play in the East Bay. Think a multitude of Jason Kidds.

And btw - in case you want to have fun. Here is a great piece about an "All Oakland" team. Funny that only ONE of those kids went to Cal.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/35724-what-if-the-nba-all-oakland-team

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I'm not sure which local kids you think Martin would have landed with administration support. There are not a multitude of Jason Kidds in any town in this universe, but I don't recall East Bay kids who would have gone to Cal absent administration issues. Oscar Frayer? Ben Kone?

That BR list was interesting if you like history, but c'mon. Hook Mitchell? What does he have to do with this discussion? And none of them are even playing any more.

On the bigger issue, you seem to think that I'm advocating not having talent. That's not the case, as I've said repeatedly. But I wouldn't use NBA players as a measure of success. I'd use winning teams as the measure. I really don't care what players do after they leave college for the purpose of this discussion. But more to the point, you don't say how you would get that NBA talent to Cal. You've also argued that such talent predominantly comes from top-50 recruiting targets. They aren't coming here without the investment I mentioned, and even then only after that takes hold. So what's YOUR pathway to talent acquisition? I can't recall you ever describing it. I've named a lot of programs that started by building over time, became successful and now can reload each year. You have not named a single program that has a model you think Cal could use right now, given where Cal is. So how does this magic happen?

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Lets unpack.

First - I want to be VERY clear (and I have been but I think sometimes you disregard this). It isn't about TEAMS....it is about PROGRAMS. What do I mean by that distinction? Anyone (really) can find lightening in a bottle every now in then. Case in point...DAVIDSON. They went to the Elite 8 in 2008. They haven't won a tournament game sense and have make 4 appearances in 12 years. Yeah - we know who played point for them. What I want is a PROGRAM that does well - over a consistent number of YEARS.

Second - you really haven't give us PROGRAMS. We either hear about Newell or a mistaken data free analysis of Wisconsin. I have tried to show you why the program Bo Ryan built (and now Gard - who was Assistant under Bo for FOURTEEN YEARS) has some very unique qualities rather than just "well coached" (which they are).

Third - Lets be clear since you like twisting words. Martin had 3 years to see if he would work. Arguably really 2 and a case could be made for 1.5 since the first year is tough and he had checked out by about January 15th the last. Again, we heard of at least FIVE kids that martin wanted that the admin nixed. Maybe they should have. I don't know. But I do know that it is a hard measure to judge him against when Williams/Dirks wanted him to recruit "their way" (and sometimes I think yours).

Fourth - you rightly ask me my pathway. It is owning the East Bay - and lets make a VERY fine point of it since apparently I have to hit you over the head with a 2 by 4 - that means being an attractive school and program to African American kids from Northern California that sadly sometimes are NOT made to feel welcome on Cal's campus when compared to UCLA, Arizona and USC. Sad but very true. But that is the pathway and it needs to be leaned into hard if you wish to compete. I put that list to show that unlike a lot of schools (UCLA being a prime example) that own their backyard for the best talent Cal has rarely done so. Lets imagine what the program would have looked like if, for example, Monty hadn't been a putz and gotten Aaron Gordon - a kid from a family of ****ing engineers of all things - to consider Cal and then paired Gordon with Raab and Brown. My heart goes pitter pat.

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I don't think you get my point or what I wish for. Your first sentence is exactly what I've been saying. What I wish for is a coach to build a program that is sustainably successful. I mentioned winning teams as a measure of success as a point of disagreement with you defining success as players sent to the NBA. I did not say a winning year or two is enough. My point was I don't give a damn if individual players go to the NBA - I care if they win here. I want a winning program here. The question is how to make that happen given where we are now, which as you've admitted has problems.

I have never brought up Pete Newell. Not once. Ever. Other than to say his teams would be demolished by any modern team. I used Wisconsin as one example of five or six different schools, because they are PROGRAMS who began by building a foundation, because they recruit to the culture they've instilled and the style they play. Because it took time and none were originally built on highly ranked recruiting classes. Because they had coaches who were given enough leeway to do that. Because they started at a place where they couldn't necessarily compete for the top 50 or top 100 players and still managed to have success. Don't get fixated on the one coach you seem to think is unique. He's not.

I've also said we should own the East Bay, and for that matter the Bay Area. But to do that we need to be in a place where those players should even want to consider Cal. As nice an idea as "owning" the local area is, the kids who can come to Cal, deal with academics and make an impact are not numerous (true of any area you name). And for those that do exist, why would they want to come to Cal? We are a sub-par program with sub-par facilities, tough academics and a tough admissions process. So we're probably not going to be high on the lists of the players you want unless we've changed those things. How do you do that?

My view is that you have to start by identifying players who are more diamonds in the rough and develop them, and those kids have to buy into the culture you're trying to instill. Do that, have some success, and players will have more reason to consider coming here. Once again, I'm not saying Fox is the right guy to do that, but I think the program needs to be on better footing with some continuity before there's something to sell to those kids.

Now, I'd rather have a bunch of money come flowing in, we build great facilities, we get awesome administrative support, have a huge budget for assistants, travel, recruiting, and all the stuff the schools you mentioned earlier already have. Then you might be able to jump straight to playing against the big boys. But I don't see that happening, which is why I'm looking at it the way I do.

Aaron Gordon would have been a great get. Monty was not a good recruiter. I don't think anyone is arguing over that one.

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I couldn't agree more. Udub just had their prized 10 star freshmen declare for the NBA draft and is expected to go early in the first round. Udub finished last in the PAC-12. Sports journalists in Seattle are asking if Udub should finally abandon the one-and-done approach they have been following in recent years.

Just a few years ago, we had a team with 4 players that went on to play some in the NBA. We lost in the 1st round of the NCAA tournament.

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our team with the 4 nba players got us a 4 seed. our team that lost in the 1st round of the NCAA tournament only had 2 nba players

but I get your point

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What you said is true, but that team also had Jordan Mathews who transferred to Gonzaga and started for the Zags as they won the WCC, won the WCC tournament, and finished as NCAA Runnerup. losing only to UNC in the final.

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if your point is that we should have beat hawaii anyway, then I agree. the problem was at PG. Singer did well, but he got in early foul trouble and sat. Coach then tried Chauca who could not compete, and even tried Brown at PG, and we know how that went.

in addition, the lack of having wallace and bird forced coach to play role players domingo and roger more. Of the 3 lightly used players to play to fill the gap of the starters going down, here was their stats:

Roger 26 minutes - 0-5 shooting, 3-6 FT, 2 RB, 2 ASSTs, 1 TO, 2 FLs - 3 pts
Domingo 14 minutes - 0-4 shooting, 2 RB, 1 TO, 1 FL - 0 pts
Chauca 8 minutes - 0-2 shooting, 1 RB, 1 ASST, 1 TO, 1 FL - 0 pts

That's 48 minutes going 0-11 shooting - 3 pts

Mathews who you mentioned played 31 minutes - 9-15, including 3-8 from 3, 2-2 FT, 4 RBs, 1 ASST, 1 Steal, 1 TO, 3 fouls - 23 pts

Singer 30 minutes - 5-9, 5 RBs, 0 ASSTs, 2 Steal, 5 fouls

King/Rooks combo 36 minutes - 3-4, 5-9 FTs, 5 RBs, 1 BLK, 2 TOs, 4 fouls - 11 pts

Rabb 38 minutes - 5-11, 3-4 FTs, 12 RBs, 2 ASSTs, 1 BLK, 1 TO, 3 fouls - 13 pts

Brown 17 minutes - 1-6, 2-2 FTs, 2 RBs, 7 TOs, 5 fouls - 4 pts

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Hawaii

G Smith 6-8, 7-8 FTs - 19 pts
G Bobbitt 7-16, 2-4 FTs, 7 RBs, 4 ASSTs - 17 pts
F Jankovic 5-9, 6-6 FTs, 5 RBs, 16 pts

1. So their senior PG outplayed our senior backup guard and our two rarely used PGs (Chauca and Brown)
2. Jankovic played Rabb even
3. Mathews was the only one who really showed up
4. Our bench played horribly
5. Brown played the worst game of his college career (and only 17 minutes)

AND our coach did a terrible job

I still believe that we win going away if we had Wallace for the game. If we had both Wallace and Bird, we would have gone to the sweet sixteen

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Yeah, the people that continually point to the Hawaii loss as somehow showing that having McDonald's All Americans like Brown, Rabb and Bird is not a viable path ignore what actually happened.

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Let's leave aside the Hawaii game for a moment. The reason that the pathway to glory is not a team of stars like Cal had in 2016, is because Cal did not have nearly enough of them. They had only two players of a caliber that the NBA would take them early (early on, Bird was of that group, but injuries made that impossible.) Cal had only 4 top 100 ranked players, when Wallace is added to those three. I guess you could count Domingo as a 4-star player on paper, but he never played even close to that level at Georgetown or Cal. Mathews was a high-ranked 3-star, but not a top 100 player. Cal had no one else even close to top 100 status. This is not enough of a roster to have big success in the NCAA. The best programs need 10 top 100 players to sustain success.

Looking at the top teams, Duke, Kentucky, UNC, Kansas, and a couple more, what their rosters have in common is they are loaded with highly ranked recruits. Each year they have players leaving for the NBA, and they have 10 or 11 top 100 ranked recruits on the roster. And each of those teams has a very good coach with a very good coaching staff. Even with all that, if you look at the last 20 years, the best of these teams only wins a title maybe once every 7 years, and maybe gets to another Final Four slightly more often.

Top teams stockpile all these players because some stars get injured, or get sick before a game, or are inconsistent, or fail to live up to their ranking, or leave school early, or get suspended for violations, or transfer to another school. When Bird and Wallace went down to injuries, and Brown had a horrible game, that was not unusual for a season. What was unusual was that these events happened close together in time, the injuries right before a big game, and Brown laying an egg during the game itself. A program like Duke or Kentucky would shrug their shoulders and plug 3 more stars into the game. Cal didn't have 3 extra stars waiting to go into the game. What they had on the bench were misfits and projects, like Chauca, RMB, Rooks, and Okoroh. Except for Chauca perhaps, all these players had been improving, but none were ready to contribute star power to fill the void left by Wallace, Bird, and Brown for the Hawaii game. People tell me I shouldn't write about Pete Newell, but Newell used the same formula: He stockpiled players, not what you could call stars, but players he and his staff trained to fit his system, and play it nearly as well as his starters. John Wooden used the same formula, until he began to attract major stars Like Kareem. Then his teams looked more like the top teams of today with many stars on the rosters. Newell handed out 17 scholarships to freshmen, and had 40-45 scholarship players in the program every year. And those were days when there were far fewer injuries and hardly ever any transfers. The biggest thing he had to worry about was perhaps players flunking out, or quitting the team to study, and sometimes an individual matchup that was hard to contain, like Chamberlain of Kansas, Elgin Baylor, or Bill Russell of USF. Newell's teams lost all those games.

One and done players are fun for fans, and maybe can help a good team become a great one, but they are no lock to come on to a chopped liver roster, or even an average roster, and take them to great success in your NCAA tourney. I don't think all the great programs became great by running out and signing one and dones in their coach's first or second season. Wasn't it more common for them to begin by recruiting very good 4-year players, eventually becoming a winning team, and then begin to attract one and dones to improve their roster a little further?

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So, again, you ignore my question. I'll boil it down for you

Please name any player that Cal did not get because it took a one and done (or potential one and done) player that would have made Cal better as a program than the potential one and done player did.

Cal does not replace players like Matt Bradley with one and done players. They replace players like Saulius Kuzminskas with one and done players. Because most years Cal either has a crappy project player like that as their last scholarship OR they leave a scholarship on the table.

How on earth do you support taking JC players who have max 2 years when you say one and done's destabilize the program because they aren't around long enough? I assume you don't want graduate transfers either? Or are you only against GOOD players who only play a year?

As socal said, you post is SO binary. You compare our taking one and dones to teams like Duke. No one is saying Cal should go out on the recruiting trail and go one and done or bust. NO ONE. They are saying go out on the recruiting trail and sign the best players they can. Trying to bring in all one and dones would be moronic because we simply can't attract them. Absolutely everyone who advocates taking one and dones is saying you recruit the best players who are interested. If that means you get 4 Matt Bradleys one year, awesome. I would be thrilled to get the class that Patrick Christopher came in with. However, if you have a local kid like Jason Kidd or Leon Powe or Ivan Rabb or a legacy like Jabari Bird or interest falls into your lap from a player like Shareef or Jaylen Brown, you take them. I would also love to have the Jason Kidd class or the Lamond Murray class.

No one is saying that guarantees you a deep run in the tourney. What they are saying is that makes you the best Cal that Cal can be. I don't see how you can deny that. Kidd and Murray beat Duke and went to the Sweet Sixteen and put up one of the best regular seasons we have had. The Shareef team would have been terrible without him and his one year certainly didn't hurt us being followed up by a Sweet Sixteen run that was the closest we have come to an Elite Eight since Newell (with a first round draft pick in Ed Gray who may have been an early NBA entrant if not for off the court issues delaying his career, and a strong inside presence who was expected to be an NBA player until injuries derailed him). Are you going to argue we are better without Powe? Brown and Rabb gave us our highest seed. We have also had some great teams without one and dones. But bottom line, we have never had a one and done or potential one and done player not reach the tournament in his career, and we have had many years where we haven't reached the tournament.

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The reason that the pathway to glory is not a team of stars like Cal had in 2016, is because Cal did not have nearly enough of them. They had only two players of a caliber that the NBA would take them early (early on, Bird was of that group, but injuries made that impossible.) Cal had only 4 top 100 ranked players, when Wallace is added to those three. I guess you could count Domingo as a 4-star player on paper, but he never played even close to that level at Georgetown or Cal. Mathews was a high-ranked 3-star, but not a top 100 player. Cal had no one else even close to top 100 status. This is not enough of a roster to have big success in the NCAA. The best programs need 10 top 100 players to sustain success.

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So, your solution to Cal not having enough good players is to not take 3 of the good players it had because they were potential one and dones (Brown, Rabb, Bird)? How does that make sense? I'll leave off Bird for the sake of argument. How was that team better if Cal didn't take Brown and Rabb? How was the next year's team better if Cal did not take Brown and Rabb. Not a philosophical argument about hypothetically being able to bring in a Matt Bradley. Specifics. I'll remind you. When Cal took Brown and Rabb, they left multiple scholarships open. They recruited 2 guys who no one thought was going to be one and done, who ended up not able to come due to academics, who did very little with their college career. So if the coach got all the guys he could get that he wanted, from a basketball perspective he would have gotten Brown, Rabb and at best two guys with a couple years development might have become role players. Martin did not leave a Theo on the table to get Brown or Rabb.

Your argument is always "one and dones hasn't lead to glory". NEITHER HAS ANYTHING ELSE. Instead of setting up one and dones at Cal against a nearly impossible standard, set it up against the standard the alternative has achieved. Your argument is disingenuous because you measure the success of the strategy you don't like against the highest standard and you don't apply any standard at all to the strategy you wish to employ. Bottom line, your strategy has resulted in a tiny fraction of tournament appearances over the years where the alternative has a high incidence of tournament appearances. Sure. No Elite Eights. No Final fours. But a much higher rate of at least SOME success than the alternative.

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Looking at the top teams, Duke, Kentucky, UNC, Kansas, and a couple more, what their rosters have in common is they are loaded with highly ranked recruits. Each year they have players leaving for the NBA, and they have 10 or 11 top 100 ranked recruits on the roster. And each of those teams has a very good coach with a very good coaching staff. Even with all that, if you look at the last 20 years, the best of these teams only wins a title maybe once every 7 years, and maybe gets to another Final Four slightly more often.

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We aren't Duke. We are trying to be the best Cal. And how does the fact that no team wins titles more than once every 7 years mean that you are right?

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Newell handed out 17 scholarships to freshmen, and had 40-45 scholarship players in the program every year. And those were days when there were far fewer injuries and hardly ever any transfers. The biggest thing he had to worry about was perhaps players flunking out, or quitting the team to study, and sometimes an individual matchup that was hard to contain, like Chamberlain of Kansas, Elgin Baylor, or Bill Russell of USF. Newell's teams lost all those games.

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Okay. Cal should petition the NCAA for an exception to the 13 scholarship limit and allow them to carry 45 scholarship players so they can find and train the best 10. You should write about Newell because he was great under the circumstances of the day. This is why you shouldn't try to write about Newell as if the model he used then can be used today. It can't. You just proved that point. It was based on working with 45 players to use coaching to develop 10 guys in a system. That model is not available. If you miss on 35 guys under that model, who cares. Basically 3 out 4 of your signees can suck and you are still awesome. You do that today, you are going to get embarrassed.

I guarantee you if Newell were coaching today, he would have tried to recruit the 13 best players he could get his hands on that fit his system. If he was unable to take a player like Jason Kidd or Ivan Rabb or Jaylen Brown and plug him into his system, he wasn't much of a coach. You know that isn't true.

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One and done players are fun for fans

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Actually, I think it is the opposite. I think that you and many Cal fans, including myself, find it fun to watch a guy who maybe isn't the greatest excel based on sheer effort, practice, will, etc. So, I love to see a guy like Conor Famulener walk on, work his butt off, and earn a starting spot. It is often more frustrating to watch a guy like Jaylen Brown who has all the talent in the world and you just know he can be even better and for whatever reason he is very good but not great. But the bottom line is basketball is about who scores the most points. Not who beats their expectations. In that context, an underachieving Brown beats an overachieving Famulener on the scoreboard every single time.

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, and maybe can help a good team become a great one, but they are no lock to come on to a chopped liver roster, or even an average roster, and take them to great success in your NCAA tourney.

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No one said otherwise. There are no locks in life

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I don't think all the great programs became great by running out and signing one and dones in their coach's first or second season. Wasn't it more common for them to begin by recruiting very good 4-year players, eventually becoming a winning team, and then begin to attract one and dones to improve their roster a little further?

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Of course they didn't!!!!! Sheesh. 1. Most of the great programs have been great for decades. When they started being great the concept of one and dones didn't exist. 2. Barring hiring John Calipari, how on earth would a not great program be able to fill a class with one and dones? Not great teams have no choice but to take almost all 4 year players. And, by the way, not great teams mostly stay not great teams.

If socaltownie's solution were that Cal should go out and recruit Duke's players, I'd say, thanks Captain Obvious. How do you propose to do that? He isn't saying that. This is not about taking ALL one and dones. This is about taking them when you can get them. As I have said before, if Cal ever gets to the point where its last scholarship is a choice between Brown or Theo Robertson, let's have the conversation then. You and I would probably be in the minority but we probably agree. That has never happened and I would be ecstatic if our program got to that point. But Cal absolutely should have taken Brown, Rabb, Powe, Kidd, Shareef, and Bird and even Sampson, and they should take the next one that comes along as long as the alternative is leaving a scholarship open or taking a player who is likely never to start. There is zero logical argument based on recruits Cal has been able to attract in the last 40 years to do otherwise.

My problem with one-and-dones is that you need to restock the team every year. It's hard to win every year when last year's best player(s) have left. Even if you do, there is no guarantee of sustained success.

Udub has embraced the one-and-done approach and did field some very good teams. Romar, had some great talent during his tenure, but could not sustain a winning program. Recently, they won the PAC-12 regular season in 2018-19, Hopkins was coach of the year, but they lost in the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament by 21 points. Nowell, the PAC-12 player of the year, a sophomore, then declared for the draft (and was picked 43rd). This year, UW finished last in the PAC-12 with the same coach, and with 2 highly praised freshmen. These 2 freshmen are now also leaving for the NBA. There is a lot of second guessing going on in Seattle about continuing with this approach.

I want to win and sustain a winning program. If we can do it with a steady flow of NBA first rounders, great! What would it take for Cal to sustain a pipeline of NBA talent? I don't know, but if we can do it, I'm on board.

Let me say one other thing, about Coach Newell, who I greatly admire given that my father went to Cal during his tenure: if Bruce Jenkins' biography is to be believed, the key player of the championship team, Big D, basically fell into his lap. He developed him, of course, but the height at least was there at the beginning. What would have happened had he not retired is one of the great mysteries of college basketball, IMHO. Gail Goodrich has said he might have gone to Cal, because his family and the Newells were close. Maybe Cal wins another championship, instead of UCLA winning in 1964. By the time Kareem has to pick a school Cal is probably more hospitable to black students than UCLA, and his subsequent life path clearly points Walton going to Cal, had Newell stayed.

Oh well, something else Cal related to torture myself about.

SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Today, Stanfurd signed the #7 player in the country.

I wonder what Mark Fox has planned to keep Cal competitive.

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Yeah I saw this. But remember - the apology crowd doesn't like one and dones, pines about Pete newell, and thinks that Hawaii exposed the fallacy of getting mcDonald all Americans so everything will be A OK.

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who are these apology people who don't want to sign one-and-dones?

you keep making arguments against a false narrative

when I read posts from others, I don't hear that ... most would be ok would becoming the Duke of the West Coast, with 3 one-and-done each year, with the rest of the roster full of 5 and 4 star players

the issue, is we can't just snap our fingers and say yeah, I agree .... let's do that

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Do you read SFBear?

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so the 'crowd' is one?

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There are a number of posts by others that question one and done vs. coach em up talent - variants being essentially "Cal will never be able to get one and dones (even though it has in the past) and thus it is a fools quest to recruit that kind of talent." Jesus - read the board - and no crowds because there are about a dozen people who actually CARE enough about the program to post

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Well, you are right about one thing: Cal has recruited one and dones in the past. THREE of them in FIFTY YEARS, since the 1971 court decision to allow players to leave college early for the NBA. The one and dones are Shareef Abdul-Raheem, Jamal Sampson, and Jaylen Brown. Out of over 650 players recruited and signed by Cal in fifty years we have landed exactly three one and dones. So you are right, we have done it, once every 16 years or so.

And what did these one and dones of ours do for Cal?

Shareef Abdul-Raheem: His team went 17-11, finished 10th in the PAC10 (no fault of his, as Cal's record was reduced to 2-25 due to recruiting violations of the coach), and lost in the 1st round of the NCAA.

Jamal Sampson: His team went 23-9, finished 2nd in the PAC10, and lost in the 2nd round of the NCAA.

Jaylen Brown: His team went 23-11, finished 3rd in the PAC12, and lost in the 1st round of the NCAA.

Their teams have been better than many Cal teams, but not as good as some Cal teams who had no one and dones.

My point has been that even though we have had these three one and dones, they alone have brought us no glory. If Duke or Kentucky is your model, you need TEN top 100 players on your roster, including several one and dones. Cal has never done that, and I for one, don't think Cal can do that. Nor do I want that. I want three to four year players to start with, and as we begin to have success, then add some one and dones, if you wish, to make the team better. Think Tony Bennett or Bo Ryan. Isn't that more doable, starting from the basement of Division One? As a Cal fan, I enjoyed seeing Lamond Murray and Allen Crabbe and their teams for three years. And I really enjoyed Jerome Randle and Jorge Gutierrez for 4 years. I can barely remember Jamal Sampson, or his team.

SFCity, let me play devil's advocate here. The three "one and done" players' teams that you refer to had an aggregate W/L record of 63-30, and all went to the NCAA tourney. While I agree with you that these results brought Cal no significant "glory", by our standards and results over the past 50 years, an average season of 21-10 with a trip to the dance is something most Cal fans would be very happy with every year.

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Let me say something controversial - I think the reason that the Wisky strategy DOESN"T work in the Pac-12

1) Bo is a once in a generation coach. You really should read up on how he built that program and the VERY long and deep success he had at lower levels with that approach.
2) I am not convinced that anyone in the Big10 recruits at the level that UCLA, Arizona and Oregon do on a year in-year out basis.

I love this site.

https://basketball.realgm.com/ncaa/conferences/Big-Ten-Conference/2/nba-players

40 Big 10 players in the NBA. 62 Pac12 players in the NBA

Again, repeat after me.

Many (most?) years Cal has to play UCLA, Zona, and Oregon 6 games. Sometimes we only have to play them 5. A very few only 4. To get off the seed of death Cal either has to run the table on a BRUTAL OOC schedule (when they have no drawing power and thus few invites to the made for TV tournies and home/aways in December) OR split those games. If you are on the seed of death (7 through 10) it means, in the current Pod system, you are almost guaranteed a brutal second game should you be able to win the first (essentially a 1 or a 2 getting a near home game where they may not have had to fly and usually have 90% of the fans in the stands - sometimes in a stadium they know and have played in (see Greenville)

Now can the scrappy team from hickory high beat, on any given night, a team of wildcats stuffed with 2 or 3 first round picks? Sure. Why sports are great. But you need more than 1 win. You gotta have 3 or 4 or else...again....seed of death.

I just am at a loss as to why people on this site do not get this. Blue and gold glasses? Pete Newell nostalgia? Forgetting that our conference championship came at a VERY down time for both Zona and UCLA and prior to the true emergence of Nike U.

Now maybe it could be cause some posters are FINE with getting in as an 8. Honestly I find that nearly as depressing as missing the entire tournie cause it isn't fun to watch cal get stripped in the backcourt 3 successive possessions by UCON in a game that essentially was at UCON.

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Bo Ryan hasn't coached that team for the last four years and they're still doing fine. And the Big Ten is a far better conference than the Pac-12 and has been for a while so I don't get the brutal schedule argument.

Drop the hickory high bull**** for a minute. Ask yourself, can Cal legitimately expect to build a program on top level recruits when we have tougher academics to deal with and don't have the amenities to offer that the competition does? And when we've outright sucked the last few years? How much are donors willing to put up for a new practice facility, another coach buyout, probably another AD?

Yeah, building a program like Wisconsin takes time, takes a good ability to spot talent to develop outside the usual top-100 list, takes a good coaching staff able to develop players, and a strong regional recruiting program. And it isn't clear Fox is a guy who can do that. But this discussion seems totally binary in your mind. Either magically grab top 50 recruits all the time or be an 8 seed at best. But look at last year's results. Purdue had the 34th ranked class in 2017 and 49th in 2018 and was a final four team. Texas Tech was 39th and 33rd. Virginia Tech 18th and 54th. Obviously all those teams had talent. They also had good coaching. And it would be better to get more top ranked players in the mix, which they are doing now. But you have to have a base to build on and we do not. So instead of assuming everyone who favors a longer-term build wants to be scrappy underdogs forever, maybe you should consider if your premise is even relevant right now.

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The numbers say otherwise. 62 current NBA players from the PAC 12 while 40 from the FOURTEEN team big 10. Big 10 has done better in tournament time - but I think a pretty clear argument that the raw TALENT at the Pac12 has been, based on who is getting paid serious money to play by the best talent evaluaters on the planet, a more talented conference.

Again, we can ALWAYS find a team in any particular year or even a couple of years that does well. Talent develops, a kid is undervalued, a player doesn't play AAU, he grows 6 inches and suddenly is a monster. These are all good stories.

But you are not building a PROGRAM over a set of years because to get off the seed of death (because it is a really hard truth to lean into) that you have to split against.....

A) A team which clearly is a criminal enterprise in Arizona with a leadership who doesn't give a rats ass and which is not a selective (in any stretch of the imagination) R1 institution
2) A team which is an extension of a multi Billion dollar shoe company whose mission is not to educate its players but to promote a brand by winning at any price necessary
3) A school which is frankly in its twilight but which is the preeminent school in a major metro area of 10 million and which has a legacy of NBA stars that are deeply committed to the institution and willing to encourage recruits to put on Bruin Blue

And finally a conference, because it is on the west coast, is somewhat "cheap" and which doesn't travel strongly doesn't get as a strong a November and December schedule as the Big 10, Big 12 or ACC (and increasingly SEC)

These are not facts I am particularly happy about. But they are facts. You don't get to choose the ground you fight on. Simply put - unless Cal has a pathway to having talent ABOUT as good as the top 3 there really isn't a path forward than seeds of death every 3-4 years.

BTW - One of the reasons I mistakenly thought Martin was the guy (and I think could have been the guy except for Williams & Dirks cutting his knees off) was NOT because he recruited Ivan and Brown - it was the guys that got nixed by the admin - hard nosed kids that wanted to play in the East Bay. Think a multitude of Jason Kidds.

And btw - in case you want to have fun. Here is a great piece about an "All Oakland" team. Funny that only ONE of those kids went to Cal.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/35724-what-if-the-nba-all-oakland-team

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I'm not sure which local kids you think Martin would have landed with administration support. There are not a multitude of Jason Kidds in any town in this universe, but I don't recall East Bay kids who would have gone to Cal absent administration issues. Oscar Frayer? Ben Kone?

That BR list was interesting if you like history, but c'mon. Hook Mitchell? What does he have to do with this discussion? And none of them are even playing any more.

On the bigger issue, you seem to think that I'm advocating not having talent. That's not the case, as I've said repeatedly. But I wouldn't use NBA players as a measure of success. I'd use winning teams as the measure. I really don't care what players do after they leave college for the purpose of this discussion. But more to the point, you don't say how you would get that NBA talent to Cal. You've also argued that such talent predominantly comes from top-50 recruiting targets. They aren't coming here without the investment I mentioned, and even then only after that takes hold. So what's YOUR pathway to talent acquisition? I can't recall you ever describing it. I've named a lot of programs that started by building over time, became successful and now can reload each year. You have not named a single program that has a model you think Cal could use right now, given where Cal is. So how does this magic happen?

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Lets unpack.

First - I want to be VERY clear (and I have been but I think sometimes you disregard this). It isn't about TEAMS....it is about PROGRAMS. What do I mean by that distinction? Anyone (really) can find lightening in a bottle every now in then. Case in point...DAVIDSON. They went to the Elite 8 in 2008. They haven't won a tournament game sense and have make 4 appearances in 12 years. Yeah - we know who played point for them. What I want is a PROGRAM that does well - over a consistent number of YEARS.

Second - you really haven't give us PROGRAMS. We either hear about Newell or a mistaken data free analysis of Wisconsin. I have tried to show you why the program Bo Ryan built (and now Gard - who was Assistant under Bo for FOURTEEN YEARS) has some very unique qualities rather than just "well coached" (which they are).

Third - Lets be clear since you like twisting words. Martin had 3 years to see if he would work. Arguably really 2 and a case could be made for 1.5 since the first year is tough and he had checked out by about January 15th the last. Again, we heard of at least FIVE kids that martin wanted that the admin nixed. Maybe they should have. I don't know. But I do know that it is a hard measure to judge him against when Williams/Dirks wanted him to recruit "their way" (and sometimes I think yours).

Fourth - you rightly ask me my pathway. It is owning the East Bay - and lets make a VERY fine point of it since apparently I have to hit you over the head with a 2 by 4 - that means being an attractive school and program to African American kids from Northern California that sadly sometimes are NOT made to feel welcome on Cal's campus when compared to UCLA, Arizona and USC. Sad but very true. But that is the pathway and it needs to be leaned into hard if you wish to compete. I put that list to show that unlike a lot of schools (UCLA being a prime example) that own their backyard for the best talent Cal has rarely done so. Lets imagine what the program would have looked like if, for example, Monty hadn't been a putz and gotten Aaron Gordon - a kid from a family of ****ing engineers of all things - to consider Cal and then paired Gordon with Raab and Brown. My heart goes pitter pat.

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I don't think you get my point or what I wish for. Your first sentence is exactly what I've been saying. What I wish for is a coach to build a program that is sustainably successful. I mentioned winning teams as a measure of success as a point of disagreement with you defining success as players sent to the NBA. I did not say a winning year or two is enough. My point was I don't give a damn if individual players go to the NBA - I care if they win here. I want a winning program here. The question is how to make that happen given where we are now, which as you've admitted has problems.

I have never brought up Pete Newell. Not once. Ever. Other than to say his teams would be demolished by any modern team. I used Wisconsin as one example of five or six different schools, because they are PROGRAMS who began by building a foundation, because they recruit to the culture they've instilled and the style they play. Because it took time and none were originally built on highly ranked recruiting classes. Because they had coaches who were given enough leeway to do that. Because they started at a place where they couldn't necessarily compete for the top 50 or top 100 players and still managed to have success. Don't get fixated on the one coach you seem to think is unique. He's not.

I've also said we should own the East Bay, and for that matter the Bay Area. But to do that we need to be in a place where those players should even want to consider Cal. As nice an idea as "owning" the local area is, the kids who can come to Cal, deal with academics and make an impact are not numerous (true of any area you name). And for those that do exist, why would they want to come to Cal? We are a sub-par program with sub-par facilities, tough academics and a tough admissions process. So we're probably not going to be high on the lists of the players you want unless we've changed those things. How do you do that?

My view is that you have to start by identifying players who are more diamonds in the rough and develop them, and those kids have to buy into the culture you're trying to instill. Do that, have some success, and players will have more reason to consider coming here. Once again, I'm not saying Fox is the right guy to do that, but I think the program needs to be on better footing with some continuity before there's something to sell to those kids.

Now, I'd rather have a bunch of money come flowing in, we build great facilities, we get awesome administrative support, have a huge budget for assistants, travel, recruiting, and all the stuff the schools you mentioned earlier already have. Then you might be able to jump straight to playing against the big boys. But I don't see that happening, which is why I'm looking at it the way I do.

Aaron Gordon would have been a great get. Monty was not a good recruiter. I don't think anyone is arguing over that one.

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I couldn't agree more. Udub just had their prized 10 star freshmen declare for the NBA draft and is expected to go early in the first round. Udub finished last in the PAC-12. Sports journalists in Seattle are asking if Udub should finally abandon the one-and-done approach they have been following in recent years.

Just a few years ago, we had a team with 4 players that went on to play some in the NBA. We lost in the 1st round of the NCAA tournament.

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our team with the 4 nba players got us a 4 seed. our team that lost in the 1st round of the NCAA tournament only had 2 nba players

but I get your point

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What you said is true, but that team also had Jordan Mathews who transferred to Gonzaga and started for the Zags as they won the WCC, won the WCC tournament, and finished as NCAA Runnerup. losing only to UNC in the final.

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if your point is that we should have beat hawaii anyway, then I agree. the problem was at PG. Singer did well, but he got in early foul trouble and sat. Coach then tried Chauca who could not compete, and even tried Brown at PG, and we know how that went.

in addition, the lack of having wallace and bird forced coach to play role players domingo and roger more. Of the 3 lightly used players to play to fill the gap of the starters going down, here was their stats:

Roger 26 minutes - 0-5 shooting, 3-6 FT, 2 RB, 2 ASSTs, 1 TO, 2 FLs - 3 pts
Domingo 14 minutes - 0-4 shooting, 2 RB, 1 TO, 1 FL - 0 pts
Chauca 8 minutes - 0-2 shooting, 1 RB, 1 ASST, 1 TO, 1 FL - 0 pts

That's 48 minutes going 0-11 shooting - 3 pts

Mathews who you mentioned played 31 minutes - 9-15, including 3-8 from 3, 2-2 FT, 4 RBs, 1 ASST, 1 Steal, 1 TO, 3 fouls - 23 pts

Singer 30 minutes - 5-9, 5 RBs, 0 ASSTs, 2 Steal, 5 fouls

King/Rooks combo 36 minutes - 3-4, 5-9 FTs, 5 RBs, 1 BLK, 2 TOs, 4 fouls - 11 pts

Rabb 38 minutes - 5-11, 3-4 FTs, 12 RBs, 2 ASSTs, 1 BLK, 1 TO, 3 fouls - 13 pts

Brown 17 minutes - 1-6, 2-2 FTs, 2 RBs, 7 TOs, 5 fouls - 4 pts

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Hawaii

G Smith 6-8, 7-8 FTs - 19 pts
G Bobbitt 7-16, 2-4 FTs, 7 RBs, 4 ASSTs - 17 pts
F Jankovic 5-9, 6-6 FTs, 5 RBs, 16 pts

1. So their senior PG outplayed our senior backup guard and our two rarely used PGs (Chauca and Brown)
2. Jankovic played Rabb even
3. Mathews was the only one who really showed up
4. Our bench played horribly
5. Brown played the worst game of his college career (and only 17 minutes)

AND our coach did a terrible job

I still believe that we win going away if we had Wallace for the game. If we had both Wallace and Bird, we would have gone to the sweet sixteen

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Yeah, the people that continually point to the Hawaii loss as somehow showing that having McDonald's All Americans like Brown, Rabb and Bird is not a viable path ignore what actually happened.

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Let's leave aside the Hawaii game for a moment. The reason that the pathway to glory is not a team of stars like Cal had in 2016, is because Cal did not have nearly enough of them. They had only two players of a caliber that the NBA would take them early (early on, Bird was of that group, but injuries made that impossible.) Cal had only 4 top 100 ranked players, when Wallace is added to those three. I guess you could count Domingo as a 4-star player on paper, but he never played even close to that level at Georgetown or Cal. Mathews was a high-ranked 3-star, but not a top 100 player. Cal had no one else even close to top 100 status. This is not enough of a roster to have big success in the NCAA. The best programs need 10 top 100 players to sustain success.

Looking at the top teams, Duke, Kentucky, UNC, Kansas, and a couple more, what their rosters have in common is they are loaded with highly ranked recruits. Each year they have players leaving for the NBA, and they have 10 or 11 top 100 ranked recruits on the roster. And each of those teams has a very good coach with a very good coaching staff. Even with all that, if you look at the last 20 years, the best of these teams only wins a title maybe once every 7 years, and maybe gets to another Final Four slightly more often.

Top teams stockpile all these players because some stars get injured, or get sick before a game, or are inconsistent, or fail to live up to their ranking, or leave school early, or get suspended for violations, or transfer to another school. When Bird and Wallace went down to injuries, and Brown had a horrible game, that was not unusual for a season. What was unusual was that these events happened close together in time, the injuries right before a big game, and Brown laying an egg during the game itself. A program like Duke or Kentucky would shrug their shoulders and plug 3 more stars into the game. Cal didn't have 3 extra stars waiting to go into the game. What they had on the bench were misfits and projects, like Chauca, RMB, Rooks, and Okoroh. Except for Chauca perhaps, all these players had been improving, but none were ready to contribute star power to fill the void left by Wallace, Bird, and Brown for the Hawaii game. People tell me I shouldn't write about Pete Newell, but Newell used the same formula: He stockpiled players, not what you could call stars, but players he and his staff trained to fit his system, and play it nearly as well as his starters. John Wooden used the same formula, until he began to attract major stars Like Kareem. Then his teams looked more like the top teams of today with many stars on the rosters. Newell handed out 17 scholarships to freshmen, and had 40-45 scholarship players in the program every year. And those were days when there were far fewer injuries and hardly ever any transfers. The biggest thing he had to worry about was perhaps players flunking out, or quitting the team to study, and sometimes an individual matchup that was hard to contain, like Chamberlain of Kansas, Elgin Baylor, or Bill Russell of USF. Newell's teams lost all those games.

One and done players are fun for fans, and maybe can help a good team become a great one, but they are no lock to come on to a chopped liver roster, or even an average roster, and take them to great success in your NCAA tourney. I don't think all the great programs became great by running out and signing one and dones in their coach's first or second season. Wasn't it more common for them to begin by recruiting very good 4-year players, eventually becoming a winning team, and then begin to attract one and dones to improve their roster a little further?

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So, again, you ignore my question. I'll boil it down for you

Please name any player that Cal did not get because it took a one and done (or potential one and done) player that would have made Cal better as a program than the potential one and done player did.

Cal does not replace players like Matt Bradley with one and done players. They replace players like Saulius Kuzminskas with one and done players. Because most years Cal either has a crappy project player like that as their last scholarship OR they leave a scholarship on the table.

How on earth do you support taking JC players who have max 2 years when you say one and done's destabilize the program because they aren't around long enough? I assume you don't want graduate transfers either? Or are you only against GOOD players who only play a year?

As socal said, you post is SO binary. You compare our taking one and dones to teams like Duke. No one is saying Cal should go out on the recruiting trail and go one and done or bust. NO ONE. They are saying go out on the recruiting trail and sign the best players they can. Trying to bring in all one and dones would be moronic because we simply can't attract them. Absolutely everyone who advocates taking one and dones is saying you recruit the best players who are interested. If that means you get 4 Matt Bradleys one year, awesome. I would be thrilled to get the class that Patrick Christopher came in with. However, if you have a local kid like Jason Kidd or Leon Powe or Ivan Rabb or a legacy like Jabari Bird or interest falls into your lap from a player like Shareef or Jaylen Brown, you take them. I would also love to have the Jason Kidd class or the Lamond Murray class.

No one is saying that guarantees you a deep run in the tourney. What they are saying is that makes you the best Cal that Cal can be. I don't see how you can deny that. Kidd and Murray beat Duke and went to the Sweet Sixteen and put up one of the best regular seasons we have had. The Shareef team would have been terrible without him and his one year certainly didn't hurt us being followed up by a Sweet Sixteen run that was the closest we have come to an Elite Eight since Newell (with a first round draft pick in Ed Gray who may have been an early NBA entrant if not for off the court issues delaying his career, and a strong inside presence who was expected to be an NBA player until injuries derailed him). Are you going to argue we are better without Powe? Brown and Rabb gave us our highest seed. We have also had some great teams without one and dones. But bottom line, we have never had a one and done or potential one and done player not reach the tournament in his career, and we have had many years where we haven't reached the tournament.

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The reason that the pathway to glory is not a team of stars like Cal had in 2016, is because Cal did not have nearly enough of them. They had only two players of a caliber that the NBA would take them early (early on, Bird was of that group, but injuries made that impossible.) Cal had only 4 top 100 ranked players, when Wallace is added to those three. I guess you could count Domingo as a 4-star player on paper, but he never played even close to that level at Georgetown or Cal. Mathews was a high-ranked 3-star, but not a top 100 player. Cal had no one else even close to top 100 status. This is not enough of a roster to have big success in the NCAA. The best programs need 10 top 100 players to sustain success.

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So, your solution to Cal not having enough good players is to not take 3 of the good players it had because they were potential one and dones (Brown, Rabb, Bird)? How does that make sense? I'll leave off Bird for the sake of argument. How was that team better if Cal didn't take Brown and Rabb? How was the next year's team better if Cal did not take Brown and Rabb. Not a philosophical argument about hypothetically being able to bring in a Matt Bradley. Specifics. I'll remind you. When Cal took Brown and Rabb, they left multiple scholarships open. They recruited 2 guys who no one thought was going to be one and done, who ended up not able to come due to academics, who did very little with their college career. So if the coach got all the guys he could get that he wanted, from a basketball perspective he would have gotten Brown, Rabb and at best two guys with a couple years development might have become role players. Martin did not leave a Theo on the table to get Brown or Rabb.

Your argument is always "one and dones hasn't lead to glory". NEITHER HAS ANYTHING ELSE. Instead of setting up one and dones at Cal against a nearly impossible standard, set it up against the standard the alternative has achieved. Your argument is disingenuous because you measure the success of the strategy you don't like against the highest standard and you don't apply any standard at all to the strategy you wish to employ. Bottom line, your strategy has resulted in a tiny fraction of tournament appearances over the years where the alternative has a high incidence of tournament appearances. Sure. No Elite Eights. No Final fours. But a much higher rate of at least SOME success than the alternative.

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Looking at the top teams, Duke, Kentucky, UNC, Kansas, and a couple more, what their rosters have in common is they are loaded with highly ranked recruits. Each year they have players leaving for the NBA, and they have 10 or 11 top 100 ranked recruits on the roster. And each of those teams has a very good coach with a very good coaching staff. Even with all that, if you look at the last 20 years, the best of these teams only wins a title maybe once every 7 years, and maybe gets to another Final Four slightly more often.

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We aren't Duke. We are trying to be the best Cal. And how does the fact that no team wins titles more than once every 7 years mean that you are right?

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Newell handed out 17 scholarships to freshmen, and had 40-45 scholarship players in the program every year. And those were days when there were far fewer injuries and hardly ever any transfers. The biggest thing he had to worry about was perhaps players flunking out, or quitting the team to study, and sometimes an individual matchup that was hard to contain, like Chamberlain of Kansas, Elgin Baylor, or Bill Russell of USF. Newell's teams lost all those games.

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Okay. Cal should petition the NCAA for an exception to the 13 scholarship limit and allow them to carry 45 scholarship players so they can find and train the best 10. You should write about Newell because he was great under the circumstances of the day. This is why you shouldn't try to write about Newell as if the model he used then can be used today. It can't. You just proved that point. It was based on working with 45 players to use coaching to develop 10 guys in a system. That model is not available. If you miss on 35 guys under that model, who cares. Basically 3 out 4 of your signees can suck and you are still awesome. You do that today, you are going to get embarrassed.

I guarantee you if Newell were coaching today, he would have tried to recruit the 13 best players he could get his hands on that fit his system. If he was unable to take a player like Jason Kidd or Ivan Rabb or Jaylen Brown and plug him into his system, he wasn't much of a coach. You know that isn't true.

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One and done players are fun for fans

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Actually, I think it is the opposite. I think that you and many Cal fans, including myself, find it fun to watch a guy who maybe isn't the greatest excel based on sheer effort, practice, will, etc. So, I love to see a guy like Conor Famulener walk on, work his butt off, and earn a starting spot. It is often more frustrating to watch a guy like Jaylen Brown who has all the talent in the world and you just know he can be even better and for whatever reason he is very good but not great. But the bottom line is basketball is about who scores the most points. Not who beats their expectations. In that context, an underachieving Brown beats an overachieving Famulener on the scoreboard every single time.

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, and maybe can help a good team become a great one, but they are no lock to come on to a chopped liver roster, or even an average roster, and take them to great success in your NCAA tourney.

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No one said otherwise. There are no locks in life

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I don't think all the great programs became great by running out and signing one and dones in their coach's first or second season. Wasn't it more common for them to begin by recruiting very good 4-year players, eventually becoming a winning team, and then begin to attract one and dones to improve their roster a little further?

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Of course they didn't!!!!! Sheesh. 1. Most of the great programs have been great for decades. When they started being great the concept of one and dones didn't exist. 2. Barring hiring John Calipari, how on earth would a not great program be able to fill a class with one and dones? Not great teams have no choice but to take almost all 4 year players. And, by the way, not great teams mostly stay not great teams.

If socaltownie's solution were that Cal should go out and recruit Duke's players, I'd say, thanks Captain Obvious. How do you propose to do that? He isn't saying that. This is not about taking ALL one and dones. This is about taking them when you can get them. As I have said before, if Cal ever gets to the point where its last scholarship is a choice between Brown or Theo Robertson, let's have the conversation then. You and I would probably be in the minority but we probably agree. That has never happened and I would be ecstatic if our program got to that point. But Cal absolutely should have taken Brown, Rabb, Powe, Kidd, Shareef, and Bird and even Sampson, and they should take the next one that comes along as long as the alternative is leaving a scholarship open or taking a player who is likely never to start. There is zero logical argument based on recruits Cal has been able to attract in the last 40 years to do otherwise.

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The brother I never knew.

And my "solution" is even a bit tighter - it is that Cal should be positioned - and cal coaches evaluated - on their ability to recruit the one and dones (or 2 and dones) from NorCal that can deal with the academics at Cal. Losing them, consistently, is grounds for a talk with the AD unless the W-Ls are showing otherwise.

Again, I return to 2 recent players:
There is no way Aaron Gordon should have gone to Zona and his decision to do so should have caused serious post-mortum discussions at the university
There is also no way that Cal should not have found a way to bury the hatchet with the Payton family. One wonder if we had whether GPJ would have sniffed Cal after his stint at CC.

The fact that we do NOT consistently retain bay area and sacto talent seems like the first step toward rebuilding the program. And yes - that means being an attractive location to kids that can make money at the show and may not be at the institution for more than a season or 2.

IssyBear said:

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My problem with one-and-dones is that you need to restock the team every year. It's hard to win every year when last year's best player(s) have left. Even if you do, there is no guarantee of sustained success.

Udub has embraced the one-and-done approach and did field some very good teams. Romar, had some great talent during his tenure, but could not sustain a winning program. Recently, they won the PAC-12 regular season in 2018-19, Hopkins was coach of the year, but they lost in the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament by 21 points. Nowell, the PAC-12 player of the year, a sophomore, then declared for the draft (and was picked 43rd). This year, UW finished last in the PAC-12 with the same coach, and with 2 highly praised freshmen. These 2 freshmen are now also leaving for the NBA. There is a lot of second guessing going on in Seattle about continuing with this approach.

I want to win and sustain a winning program. If we can do it with a steady flow of NBA first rounders, great! What would it take for Cal to sustain a pipeline of NBA talent? I don't know, but if we can do it, I'm on board.

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Seattle had a VERY strange year. Once healthy at the end of the year they showed what they were capable of.

RedlessWardrobe 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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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Today, Stanfurd signed the #7 player in the country.

I wonder what Mark Fox has planned to keep Cal competitive.

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Yeah I saw this. But remember - the apology crowd doesn't like one and dones, pines about Pete newell, and thinks that Hawaii exposed the fallacy of getting mcDonald all Americans so everything will be A OK.

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who are these apology people who don't want to sign one-and-dones?

you keep making arguments against a false narrative

when I read posts from others, I don't hear that ... most would be ok would becoming the Duke of the West Coast, with 3 one-and-done each year, with the rest of the roster full of 5 and 4 star players

the issue, is we can't just snap our fingers and say yeah, I agree .... let's do that

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Do you read SFBear?

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so the 'crowd' is one?

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There are a number of posts by others that question one and done vs. coach em up talent - variants being essentially "Cal will never be able to get one and dones (even though it has in the past) and thus it is a fools quest to recruit that kind of talent." Jesus - read the board - and no crowds because there are about a dozen people who actually CARE enough about the program to post

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Well, you are right about one thing: Cal has recruited one and dones in the past. THREE of them in FIFTY YEARS, since the 1971 court decision to allow players to leave college early for the NBA. The one and dones are Shareef Abdul-Raheem, Jamal Sampson, and Jaylen Brown. Out of over 650 players recruited and signed by Cal in fifty years we have landed exactly three one and dones. So you are right, we have done it, once every 16 years or so.

And what did these one and dones of ours do for Cal?

Shareef Abdul-Raheem: His team went 17-11, finished 10th in the PAC10 (no fault of his, as Cal's record was reduced to 2-25 due to recruiting violations of the coach), and lost in the 1st round of the NCAA.

Jamal Sampson: His team went 23-9, finished 2nd in the PAC10, and lost in the 2nd round of the NCAA.

Jaylen Brown: His team went 23-11, finished 3rd in the PAC12, and lost in the 1st round of the NCAA.

Their teams have been better than many Cal teams, but not as good as some Cal teams who had no one and dones.

My point has been that even though we have had these three one and dones, they alone have brought us no glory. If Duke or Kentucky is your model, you need TEN top 100 players on your roster, including several one and dones. Cal has never done that, and I for one, don't think Cal can do that. Nor do I want that. I want three to four year players to start with, and as we begin to have success, then add some one and dones, if you wish, to make the team better. Think Tony Bennett or Bo Ryan. Isn't that more doable, starting from the basement of Division One? As a Cal fan, I enjoyed seeing Lamond Murray and Allen Crabbe and their teams for three years. And I really enjoyed Jerome Randle and Jorge Gutierrez for 4 years. I can barely remember Jamal Sampson, or his team.

SFCity, let me play devil's advocate here. The three "one and done" players' teams that you refer to had an aggregate W/L record of 63-30, and all went to the NCAA tourney. While I agree with you that these results brought Cal no significant "glory", by our standards and results over the past 50 years, an average season of 21-10 with a trip to the dance is something most Cal fans would be very happy with every year.

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And let me underscore something

Jaylen Brown CONTINUES to be a great ambassador for the program. Is there a higher profile Cal Alum that talks about his hoops experience? He isn't talking about Butte Community College.

SAR is EVERYTHING that is right with college BB and again, is a great ambassador for the program. The fact that he came back, earned credits while in the NBA and ultimately walked should make ALL of us EXTREMELY proud.

I don't think Jamal has been that involved with the program since leaving. That said he is coaching hoop in LA last I heard. I hope, like with every HS coach in the country, we are staying in contact and leveraging that relationship.

RedlessWardrobe 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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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Today, Stanfurd signed the #7 player in the country.

I wonder what Mark Fox has planned to keep Cal competitive.

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Yeah I saw this. But remember - the apology crowd doesn't like one and dones, pines about Pete newell, and thinks that Hawaii exposed the fallacy of getting mcDonald all Americans so everything will be A OK.

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who are these apology people who don't want to sign one-and-dones?

you keep making arguments against a false narrative

when I read posts from others, I don't hear that ... most would be ok would becoming the Duke of the West Coast, with 3 one-and-done each year, with the rest of the roster full of 5 and 4 star players

the issue, is we can't just snap our fingers and say yeah, I agree .... let's do that

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Do you read SFBear?

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so the 'crowd' is one?

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There are a number of posts by others that question one and done vs. coach em up talent - variants being essentially "Cal will never be able to get one and dones (even though it has in the past) and thus it is a fools quest to recruit that kind of talent." Jesus - read the board - and no crowds because there are about a dozen people who actually CARE enough about the program to post

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Well, you are right about one thing: Cal has recruited one and dones in the past. THREE of them in FIFTY YEARS, since the 1971 court decision to allow players to leave college early for the NBA. The one and dones are Shareef Abdul-Raheem, Jamal Sampson, and Jaylen Brown. Out of over 650 players recruited and signed by Cal in fifty years we have landed exactly three one and dones. So you are right, we have done it, once every 16 years or so.

And what did these one and dones of ours do for Cal?

Shareef Abdul-Raheem: His team went 17-11, finished 10th in the PAC10 (no fault of his, as Cal's record was reduced to 2-25 due to recruiting violations of the coach), and lost in the 1st round of the NCAA.

Jamal Sampson: His team went 23-9, finished 2nd in the PAC10, and lost in the 2nd round of the NCAA.

Jaylen Brown: His team went 23-11, finished 3rd in the PAC12, and lost in the 1st round of the NCAA.

Their teams have been better than many Cal teams, but not as good as some Cal teams who had no one and dones.

My point has been that even though we have had these three one and dones, they alone have brought us no glory. If Duke or Kentucky is your model, you need TEN top 100 players on your roster, including several one and dones. Cal has never done that, and I for one, don't think Cal can do that. Nor do I want that. I want three to four year players to start with, and as we begin to have success, then add some one and dones, if you wish, to make the team better. Think Tony Bennett or Bo Ryan. Isn't that more doable, starting from the basement of Division One? As a Cal fan, I enjoyed seeing Lamond Murray and Allen Crabbe and their teams for three years. And I really enjoyed Jerome Randle and Jorge Gutierrez for 4 years. I can barely remember Jamal Sampson, or his team.

SFCity, let me play devil's advocate here. The three "one and done" players' teams that you refer to had an aggregate W/L record of 63-30, and all went to the NCAA tourney. While I agree with you that these results brought Cal no significant "glory", by our standards and results over the past 50 years, an average season of 21-10 with a trip to the dance is something most Cal fans would be very happy with every year.

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I can't disagree with you there. I guess I would like more than that, When you get to an Elite 8, it really starts to get exciting. Plus I'd like to see a PAC12 Title once in a while. None of the three one and dones I mentioned helped to give us one of those.

The brother I never knew.


And my "solution" is even a bit tighter - it is that Cal should be positioned - and cal coaches evaluated - on their ability to recruit the one and dones (or 2 and dones) from NorCal that can deal with the academics at Cal. Losing them, consistently, is grounds for a talk with the AD unless the W-Ls are showing otherwise.

Again, I return to 2 recent players:
There is no way Aaron Gordon should have gone to Zona and his decision to do so should have caused serious post-mortum discussions at the university
There is also no way that Cal should not have found a way to bury the hatchet with the Payton family. One wonder if we had whether GPJ would have sniffed Cal after his stint at CC.

The fact that we do NOT consistently retain bay area and sacto talent seems like the first step toward rebuilding the program. And yes - that means being an attractive location to kids that can make money at the show and may not be at the institution for more than a season or 2.

SCT, you may be right here, but you also can't just say that player X "should have gone to Cal," without evaluating the circumstances. I'll refer back to my comment in the other thread regarding Jaylen Brown, who clearly came to Cal for his year because he wanted a year of intellectual experience, and wasn't going to spend his free time in the gym developing his jumper. By the same token, the fact that Gordon went to U of A strongly suggests that he was only going to college to play basketball, not to go to class at all. And as much as I admire Jason Kidd as a player, my understanding is that he also dumped on academics in year 2, when he knew he was leaving regardless. Brown has been a great ambassador for the program, and I hope we get more kids like him, who are talented and want a college experience. But as I said in the other thread, you have to take kids for the skill levels and desire they bring with them, and not criticize that they're not gym rats.

I don't think "I like one-and-dones," "I don't want one-and-dones" is a meaningful argument. We're not only talking about the basketball program, we're talking about individual young men. I would never turn down a Jaylen Brown or a Shareef; not only are they outstanding players, but as SCT observed, great ambassadors for Cal. (FWIW, I think Jaylen didn't do as well at Cal as he could have primarily because of Martin's coaching or lack thereof). OTOH, I wouldn't pursue a player like James Wiseman who obviously had no interest whatsoever in school, or (God forbid!) anyone Altman or Miller pursue. It's not about aggressively pursuing one-and-dones so much as being willing to go after the few who are OKG's.

Agreed. The other thing I would say is that as a public school, Cal is more accountable for the performance of its student body academically than Furd or Duke, and also as a public school provides less hand-holding, rightly or wrongly. The hand-holding we've discussed at Furd, which I assume also occurs at Duke, is tailor-made for athletes. The sink-or-swim approach at Cal toward academics is not. Again, that's something that goes beyond the AD, and is not easy to change. It didn't bother Jaylen Brown, or Shareef, who dived right in. Not everyone is capable of that.

SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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HoopDreams said:

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socaltownie said:

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Chapman_is_Gone said:

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Today, Stanfurd signed the #7 player in the country.

I wonder what Mark Fox has planned to keep Cal competitive.

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Yeah I saw this. But remember - the apology crowd doesn't like one and dones, pines about Pete newell, and thinks that Hawaii exposed the fallacy of getting mcDonald all Americans so everything will be A OK.

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who are these apology people who don't want to sign one-and-dones?

you keep making arguments against a false narrative

when I read posts from others, I don't hear that ... most would be ok would becoming the Duke of the West Coast, with 3 one-and-done each year, with the rest of the roster full of 5 and 4 star players

the issue, is we can't just snap our fingers and say yeah, I agree .... let's do that

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Do you read SFBear?

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so the 'crowd' is one?

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There are a number of posts by others that question one and done vs. coach em up talent - variants being essentially "Cal will never be able to get one and dones (even though it has in the past) and thus it is a fools quest to recruit that kind of talent." Jesus - read the board - and no crowds because there are about a dozen people who actually CARE enough about the program to post

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Well, you are right about one thing: Cal has recruited one and dones in the past. THREE of them in FIFTY YEARS, since the 1971 court decision to allow players to leave college early for the NBA. The one and dones are Shareef Abdul-Raheem, Jamal Sampson, and Jaylen Brown. Out of over 650 players recruited and signed by Cal in fifty years we have landed exactly three one and dones. So you are right, we have done it, once every 16 years or so.

And what did these one and dones of ours do for Cal?

Shareef Abdul-Raheem: His team went 17-11, finished 10th in the PAC10 (no fault of his, as Cal's record was reduced to 2-25 due to recruiting violations of the coach), and lost in the 1st round of the NCAA.

Jamal Sampson: His team went 23-9, finished 2nd in the PAC10, and lost in the 2nd round of the NCAA.

Jaylen Brown: His team went 23-11, finished 3rd in the PAC12, and lost in the 1st round of the NCAA.

Their teams have been better than many Cal teams, but not as good as some Cal teams who had no one and dones.

My point has been that even though we have had these three one and dones, they alone have brought us no glory. If Duke or Kentucky is your model, you need TEN top 100 players on your roster, including several one and dones. Cal has never done that, and I for one, don't think Cal can do that. Nor do I want that. I want three to four year players to start with, and as we begin to have success, then add some one and dones, if you wish, to make the team better. Think Tony Bennett or Bo Ryan. Isn't that more doable, starting from the basement of Division One? As a Cal fan, I enjoyed seeing Lamond Murray and Allen Crabbe and their teams for three years. And I really enjoyed Jerome Randle and Jorge Gutierrez for 4 years. I can barely remember Jamal Sampson, or his team.

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This is a massively disingenuous post.

First of all, when you are recruiting, you can't look ahead and see who actually plays one year. You have to judge at the time. At the time Cal signed recruits, the following were expected potential one and dones:

Jason Kidd
Shareef
Leon Powe
Jaylen Brown
Ivan Rabb
Maybe Jabari Bird (but that is a massive stretch)
No one expected Jamal Sampson to be a one and done. He became one because 1. He hated school, 2. He had an overinflate view of his value, 3. Because he was tall he got a sniff at the NBA. However, I'm glad to include him because he still bolsters the point.
The bottom line is, if you are not willing to take one and dones, you do not get Jason Kidd, Leon Powe or Ivan Rabb. And this is actually a big flaw in your logic. Sometimes "one and dones" end up giving you more than a year. But you cannot argue for a philosophy where you say don't take one and dones, and then credit your side with Jason Kidd, Leon Powe and Ivan Rabb because you would not have had them.

Regarding the three you identify:

Quote:

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Shareef Abdul-Raheem: His team went 17-11, finished 10th in the PAC10 (no fault of his, as Cal's record was reduced to 2-25 due to recruiting violations of the coach), and lost in the 1st round of the NCAA.

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(just for information sake, Cal was 4th place in the Pac10 prior to the forfeits).

When Cal recruited Shareef, they left a scholarship in the class open. So it was one year of Shareef or one year of nobody.

The following year, Cal had one of the best years in the last 50. 2nd place and went to the Sweet 16. So having Shareef for a year didn't hurt Cal going forward. I'd also point out that Shareef agonized over the decision to leave. Had he stayed there is no telling how good that Sweet 16 team might have been.

Quote:

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Jamal Sampson: His team went 23-9, finished 2nd in the PAC10, and lost in the 2nd round of the NCAA.

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Jamal Sampson was not considering us until late and was a much needed player on the inside as Cal had a desperate lack of depth. Cal didn't fill all of its scholarships that year. It was Sampson or no one

The next year Cal went 22-9, finished 3rd in the Pac10 and lost in the 2nd round of the NCAA. So having Sampson for a year didn't hurt Cal going forward.

Quote:

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Jaylen Brown: His team went 23-11, finished 3rd in the PAC12, and lost in the 1st round of the NCAA.

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Cal left multiple scholarships on the table the year they recruited Brown. It was Brown or nobody.

The following year Cal was 21-13, 5th place NIT bid. Great, no. Bad. No. Was it caused by taking Brown? Given the alternative was taking nobody, no.

So the relevant questions are:

Did Shareef make his team better? Unequivocally Yes
Did he hurt the program in later years? Unequivocally no

Did Sampson make his team better? Unequivocally yes

Did he hurt the program in later years? Unequivocally no

Did Brown make his team better? Unequivocally yes

Did he hurt the program in later years? Unequivocally no.


Now, add guys you wouldn't get because you don't take one and dones

Jason Kidd. I'm not even discussing this. If you want to argue we were worse off with Jason Kidd, feel free. Again, if you won't take one and dones, you don't get Jason Kidd.

Leon Powe. Powe came in with a highly rated class. He was supposed to be one and done and would have been if he hadn't been injured. Unfortunately, most of the class that came in with him didn't pan out for us. He clearly contributed more than anyone in the class. He unequivocally made his teams better and

Ivan Rabb. Came in with Brown. Played a second year. See Brown. Answers are the same.

As an additional point, what happened under Wyking was not because Cuonzo recruited Brown and Rabb. It was because he otherwise recruited horribly.

In the last 40 years, Cal has gone to the tournament 13 times. Without guys who were potential one and dones (Kidd, Shareef, Powe, Sampson, Brown, Rabb), we went to the tourney 8 out of 33 years. With those guys, we went 5 of 7 years.

If you want to argue that what we need to do is recruit really good players who stay 4 years, I'm going to say the same thing I said about recruiting Duke's players. Thank you Captain Obvious, but how do you propose to do that?

Bottom line, with what Cal actually in real life recruits, Cal needs to take every good player it can get. 4 year high school players, 2 year JC players, one year grad transfers. Any other transfers, and yes, potential one and dones.

Further, it appears that they are going to significantly relax transfer rules. Given that, recruiting players planning to have them for 4 years is even more questionable.

By the way, Jamal Sampson was a very important part of a team that went to the second round of the tournament. Something we have only done 7 times since Newell. If you barely remember Inspector Gadget, your memory isn't that good.

Jeff82 said:

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The brother I never knew.


And my "solution" is even a bit tighter - it is that Cal should be positioned - and cal coaches evaluated - on their ability to recruit the one and dones (or 2 and dones) from NorCal that can deal with the academics at Cal. Losing them, consistently, is grounds for a talk with the AD unless the W-Ls are showing otherwise.

Again, I return to 2 recent players:
There is no way Aaron Gordon should have gone to Zona and his decision to do so should have caused serious post-mortum discussions at the university
There is also no way that Cal should not have found a way to bury the hatchet with the Payton family. One wonder if we had whether GPJ would have sniffed Cal after his stint at CC.

The fact that we do NOT consistently retain bay area and sacto talent seems like the first step toward rebuilding the program. And yes - that means being an attractive location to kids that can make money at the show and may not be at the institution for more than a season or 2.

SCT, you may be right here, but you also can't just say that player X "should have gone to Cal," without evaluating the circumstances. I'll refer back to my comment in the other thread regarding Jaylen Brown, who clearly came to Cal for his year because he wanted a year of intellectual experience, and wasn't going to spend his free time in the gym developing his jumper. By the same token, the fact that Gordon went to U of A strongly suggests that he was only going to college to play basketball, not to go to class at all. And as much as I admire Jason Kidd as a player, my understanding is that he also dumped on academics in year 2, when he knew he was leaving regardless. Brown has been a great ambassador for the program, and I hope we get more kids like him, who are talented and want a college experience. But as I said in the other thread, you have to take kids for the skill levels and desire they bring with them, and not criticize that they're not gym rats.

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Gordon has a brother who works at Google and has CONSISTENTLY spoken about his desire to get into tech/VC when his playing days are over. I only use him as an example. And I would note - we beat Zona for Rabb once we had a coach (Martin) that put in what it takes (and yes, it is humiliating) to recruit 18 year olds that are placed on a pedestal (look at Haase writing a letter a day for a year)

Jeff82 said:

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The brother I never knew.


And my "solution" is even a bit tighter - it is that Cal should be positioned - and cal coaches evaluated - on their ability to recruit the one and dones (or 2 and dones) from NorCal that can deal with the academics at Cal. Losing them, consistently, is grounds for a talk with the AD unless the W-Ls are showing otherwise.

Again, I return to 2 recent players:
There is no way Aaron Gordon should have gone to Zona and his decision to do so should have caused serious post-mortum discussions at the university
There is also no way that Cal should not have found a way to bury the hatchet with the Payton family. One wonder if we had whether GPJ would have sniffed Cal after his stint at CC.

The fact that we do NOT consistently retain bay area and sacto talent seems like the first step toward rebuilding the program. And yes - that means being an attractive location to kids that can make money at the show and may not be at the institution for more than a season or 2.

SCT, you may be right here, but you also can't just say that player X "should have gone to Cal," without evaluating the circumstances. I'll refer back to my comment in the other thread regarding Jaylen Brown, who clearly came to Cal for his year because he wanted a year of intellectual experience, and wasn't going to spend his free time in the gym developing his jumper. By the same token, the fact that Gordon went to U of A strongly suggests that he was only going to college to play basketball, not to go to class at all. And as much as I admire Jason Kidd as a player, my understanding is that he also dumped on academics in year 2, when he knew he was leaving regardless. Brown has been a great ambassador for the program, and I hope we get more kids like him, who are talented and want a college experience. But as I said in the other thread, you have to take kids for the skill levels and desire they bring with them, and not criticize that they're not gym rats.

---

I agree that you can't judge a coach by one recruit, but your judgment of Gordon is equally unfair. Kids choose a school for a whole lot of things. If a kid wanted to be a registered nurse and chose a significantly lesser school with a great nursing program over Cal because Cal doesn't have a nursing program, would you say they don't care about academics? Gordon wanted to be a basketball player. Arizona is an elite basketball school. It is a solid academic institution. Not nearly in the class of Cal, but for most kids, solid is good enough. In his "field of study" it is a lot better than Cal. Further, in basketball you actually get to meet the guy who will directly impact your life for your entire time there. Monty simply turned off a lot of guys, Gordon being one. And I would say when you have guys like Rabb and Lee turned off you can't blame it all on the recruits.

Which doesn't mean I regret Monty. At this point, I'd probably take Monty back with his strengths and weaknesses because despite the fact that his ceiling was very clearly 2nd round, at this point I might take that knowing what his floor is. I just wish we could have had Monty and Gordon and Lee and Rabb. I suspect if Monty were younger and more eager to prove himself, he would have done what it takes on the recruiting trail.

On the one-and-done issue, the Seattle Times had an interesting article on the subject today. Here is the link"

https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/uw-husky-basketball/one-and-none-why-washington-has-struggled-to-make-the-ncaa-tournament-with-star-freshmen/?

They looked at the question nationwide and noted the following:

"The allure of one-and-done players remains because the prevailing theory seems to be that teams need to have them to be successful. But is that true? We tested the theory by looking at every one-and-done player who has been taken in the first round of the NBA draft since the start of 2007 and examined how those players' college teams did. We also examined the 52 teams that have been in the Final Four in that time, researching the makeup of those teams by looking at what year in school the top five scorers were. What the data shows is that in most cases, experience trumps youth. The vast majority of teams (35 of 52) who made it to the Final Four were experienced teams (more than half their top scorers being upperclassmen)."

There have been 121 one-and-done players selected in the first round of the NBA draft starting in 2007. Twenty-five of them (including the five Huskies) never reached the NCAA tournament, and another 42 never reached the Sweet 16.

Just eight teams have gone to a Final Four with a one-and-done player, and only Kentucky has gotten that far more than once. Only two teams with a one-and-done starter have won an NCAA title, Kentucky in 2012 and Duke in 2015.

Six times in the past 10 years, Kentucky has failed to reach the Final Four when it had multiple one-and-done first-round picks. In 2014, the Wildcats had four of them and were still stopped short.

Why? Because experience matters. There have been 52 teams in the Final Four in the past 13 years. With the exception of four Kentucky teams and the 2015 Duke team, almost all have something in common: a lot of experience among their top players."

Don MacLean noted the following:

"Most of these one-and-dones just dominate in high school with their physical tools and don't really learn how to play and don't really need to learn how to play because they are just so physically dominant. But when you get to the college level, now you have to understand defensive schemes, screen-roll coverage and all kinds of stuff you never had to deal with. So, does it happen for you in 30 games before you get to the NCAA tournament? For some it probably does and some it probably doesn't."

IssyBear said:

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On the one-and-done issue, the Seattle Times had an interesting article on the subject today. Here is the link"

https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/uw-husky-basketball/one-and-none-why-washington-has-struggled-to-make-the-ncaa-tournament-with-star-freshmen/?

They looked at the question nationwide and noted the following:

"The allure of one-and-done players remains because the prevailing theory seems to be that teams need to have them to be successful. But is that true? We tested the theory by looking at every one-and-done player who has been taken in the first round of the NBA draft since the start of 2007 and examined how those players' college teams did. We also examined the 52 teams that have been in the Final Four in that time, researching the makeup of those teams by looking at what year in school the top five scorers were. What the data shows is that in most cases, experience trumps youth. The vast majority of teams (35 of 52) who made it to the Final Four were experienced teams (more than half their top scorers being upperclassmen)."

There have been 121 one-and-done players selected in the first round of the NBA draft starting in 2007. Twenty-five of them (including the five Huskies) never reached the NCAA tournament, and another 42 never reached the Sweet 16.

Just eight teams have gone to a Final Four with a one-and-done player, and only Kentucky has gotten that far more than once. Only two teams with a one-and-done starter have won an NCAA title, Kentucky in 2012 and Duke in 2015.

Six times in the past 10 years, Kentucky has failed to reach the Final Four when it had multiple one-and-done first-round picks. In 2014, the Wildcats had four of them and were still stopped short.

Why? Because experience matters. There have been 52 teams in the Final Four in the past 13 years. With the exception of four Kentucky teams and the 2015 Duke team, almost all have something in common: a lot of experience among their top players."

Don MacLean noted the following:

"Most of these one-and-dones just dominate in high school with their physical tools and don't really learn how to play and don't really need to learn how to play because they are just so physically dominant. But when you get to the college level, now you have to understand defensive schemes, screen-roll coverage and all kinds of stuff you never had to deal with. So, does it happen for you in 30 games before you get to the NCAA tournament? For some it probably does and some it probably doesn't."

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It's not interesting. It is stupid. If i were to tell you that I wanted to see whether red dice are more likely to roll a six than white dice so I rolled red dice 60,000 times and it came up six 10,000 times, and I rolled white dice 600 times and it came up six 100 times, therefore, red dice come up six more often than white dice, you'd call me stupid.

Well, it is equally stupid to say there are 121 one and done players selected in the first round over 13 years, or less than 10 per year, some being on the same team so let's say 9 teams per year, and boy howdy they went to the final four a lot fewer times overall than the teams that were lead by upperclassmen in scoring. I don't know where to find stats on that without hours of research, but I'd bet we are talking 200+ teams a year that fall into that category. I don't know why everyone who wants to prove "stars don't matter" make this same stupid argument of using overall numbers instead of rate.

In the past 13 NBA seasons, teams with Lebron James have won the championship 3 times. Teams without Lebron James have won the championship 10 times. Clearly teams without Lebron James are better. Why sign Lebron James?

Adding to this. Let me state their numbers differently. If instead of saying 25 of the 121 didn't make the tournament and 42 didn't make the Sweet Sixteen, I said, 96 of 121 made the tournament and 54 of 121 made the Sweet Sixteen, now what do you think?

So if you don't have a one and done, your odds are less than 1 in 5 of making the tournament. If you have a one and done, your odds are 80%. If you don't have a one and done, your odds are 1 in 29 of getting to the Sweet Sixteen. If you have one it is 45%.

Which do you think is better?

socaltownie said:

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Jeff82 said:

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The brother I never knew.


And my "solution" is even a bit tighter - it is that Cal should be positioned - and cal coaches evaluated - on their ability to recruit the one and dones (or 2 and dones) from NorCal that can deal with the academics at Cal. Losing them, consistently, is grounds for a talk with the AD unless the W-Ls are showing otherwise.

Again, I return to 2 recent players:
There is no way Aaron Gordon should have gone to Zona and his decision to do so should have caused serious post-mortum discussions at the university
There is also no way that Cal should not have found a way to bury the hatchet with the Payton family. One wonder if we had whether GPJ would have sniffed Cal after his stint at CC.

The fact that we do NOT consistently retain bay area and sacto talent seems like the first step toward rebuilding the program. And yes - that means being an attractive location to kids that can make money at the show and may not be at the institution for more than a season or 2.

SCT, you may be right here, but you also can't just say that player X "should have gone to Cal," without evaluating the circumstances. I'll refer back to my comment in the other thread regarding Jaylen Brown, who clearly came to Cal for his year because he wanted a year of intellectual experience, and wasn't going to spend his free time in the gym developing his jumper. By the same token, the fact that Gordon went to U of A strongly suggests that he was only going to college to play basketball, not to go to class at all. And as much as I admire Jason Kidd as a player, my understanding is that he also dumped on academics in year 2, when he knew he was leaving regardless. Brown has been a great ambassador for the program, and I hope we get more kids like him, who are talented and want a college experience. But as I said in the other thread, you have to take kids for the skill levels and desire they bring with them, and not criticize that they're not gym rats.

---

Gordon has a brother who works at Google and has CONSISTENTLY spoken about his desire to get into tech/VC when his playing days are over. I only use him as an example. And I would note - we beat Zona for Rabb once we had a coach (Martin) that put in what it takes (and yes, it is humiliating) to recruit 18 year olds that are placed on a pedestal (look at Haase writing a letter a day for a year)

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Sorry, don't buy it. He did go to an academic high school, but if he was really that concerned about his post-hoop prospects, he would not have gone to Arizona. To compare, Brown's logic was that he was going high in the draft, no matter where he went to school, so he might as well go somewhere where he would enjoy it. Gordon also could have done that. Also, by your implied logic, we should never have had Monty, because he didn't like recruiting. Well, it's pure speculation whether a coach other than Monty, who was a superior recruiter would have been more successful over his tenure. You guys are both making a binary argument--only talent matters versus only coaching matters. The reality is, we've never had both at the same time. All the coaches were either recruiters who couldn't coach (Padgett, Braun, arguably Martin, also Campanelli, who recruited Lamond Murray and Jason Kidd, then couldn't figure out how to get along with them), coaches who couldn't recruit (Monty), or couldn't do either (Edwards, Kuchen, Jones). I don't which category Bozeman goes in, because he got us on probation and wrecked his career cheating to a player (Jelani Gardner) who had a mediocre college career.

OaktownBear said:

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Jeff82 said:

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The brother I never knew.


And my "solution" is even a bit tighter - it is that Cal should be positioned - and cal coaches evaluated - on their ability to recruit the one and dones (or 2 and dones) from NorCal that can deal with the academics at Cal. Losing them, consistently, is grounds for a talk with the AD unless the W-Ls are showing otherwise.

Again, I return to 2 recent players:
There is no way Aaron Gordon should have gone to Zona and his decision to do so should have caused serious post-mortum discussions at the university
There is also no way that Cal should not have found a way to bury the hatchet with the Payton family. One wonder if we had whether GPJ would have sniffed Cal after his stint at CC.

The fact that we do NOT consistently retain bay area and sacto talent seems like the first step toward rebuilding the program. And yes - that means being an attractive location to kids that can make money at the show and may not be at the institution for more than a season or 2.

SCT, you may be right here, but you also can't just say that player X "should have gone to Cal," without evaluating the circumstances. I'll refer back to my comment in the other thread regarding Jaylen Brown, who clearly came to Cal for his year because he wanted a year of intellectual experience, and wasn't going to spend his free time in the gym developing his jumper. By the same token, the fact that Gordon went to U of A strongly suggests that he was only going to college to play basketball, not to go to class at all. And as much as I admire Jason Kidd as a player, my understanding is that he also dumped on academics in year 2, when he knew he was leaving regardless. Brown has been a great ambassador for the program, and I hope we get more kids like him, who are talented and want a college experience. But as I said in the other thread, you have to take kids for the skill levels and desire they bring with them, and not criticize that they're not gym rats.

---

I agree that you can't judge a coach by one recruit, but your judgment of Gordon is equally unfair. Kids choose a school for a whole lot of things. If a kid wanted to be a registered nurse and chose a significantly lesser school with a great nursing program over Cal because Cal doesn't have a nursing program, would you say they don't care about academics? Gordon wanted to be a basketball player. Arizona is an elite basketball school. It is a solid academic institution. Not nearly in the class of Cal, but for most kids, solid is good enough. In his "field of study" it is a lot better than Cal. Further, in basketball you actually get to meet the guy who will directly impact your life for your entire time there. Monty simply turned off a lot of guys, Gordon being one. And I would say when you have guys like Rabb and Lee turned off you can't blame it all on the recruits.

Which doesn't mean I regret Monty. At this point, I'd probably take Monty back with his strengths and weaknesses because despite the fact that his ceiling was very clearly 2nd round, at this point I might take that knowing what his floor is. I just wish we could have had Monty and Gordon and Lee and Rabb. I suspect if Monty were younger and more eager to prove himself, he would have done what it takes on the recruiting trail.

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Entirely likely regarding Monty. And as I said in my response to SCT, if you only value recruiting, then you discount Monty's tenure here, which now looks good in retrospect. On Gordon, we just disagree. If a kid is smart enough to get into Cal, even with the extra boost his application gets from being an athlete, and he chooses to go to a different school because it's better in basketball, to me that's on the kid, not on the coach. That's why we'll probably never have one-and-dones except as the final one or two pieces of the puzzle that is already largely filled in.

OaktownBear said:

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IssyBear said:

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On the one-and-done issue, the Seattle Times had an interesting article on the subject today. Here is the link"

https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/uw-husky-basketball/one-and-none-why-washington-has-struggled-to-make-the-ncaa-tournament-with-star-freshmen/?

They looked at the question nationwide and noted the following:

"The allure of one-and-done players remains because the prevailing theory seems to be that teams need to have them to be successful. But is that true? We tested the theory by looking at every one-and-done player who has been taken in the first round of the NBA draft since the start of 2007 and examined how those players' college teams did. We also examined the 52 teams that have been in the Final Four in that time, researching the makeup of those teams by looking at what year in school the top five scorers were. What the data shows is that in most cases, experience trumps youth. The vast majority of teams (35 of 52) who made it to the Final Four were experienced teams (more than half their top scorers being upperclassmen)."

There have been 121 one-and-done players selected in the first round of the NBA draft starting in 2007. Twenty-five of them (including the five Huskies) never reached the NCAA tournament, and another 42 never reached the Sweet 16.

Just eight teams have gone to a Final Four with a one-and-done player, and only Kentucky has gotten that far more than once. Only two teams with a one-and-done starter have won an NCAA title, Kentucky in 2012 and Duke in 2015.

Six times in the past 10 years, Kentucky has failed to reach the Final Four when it had multiple one-and-done first-round picks. In 2014, the Wildcats had four of them and were still stopped short.

Why? Because experience matters. There have been 52 teams in the Final Four in the past 13 years. With the exception of four Kentucky teams and the 2015 Duke team, almost all have something in common: a lot of experience among their top players."

Don MacLean noted the following:

"Most of these one-and-dones just dominate in high school with their physical tools and don't really learn how to play and don't really need to learn how to play because they are just so physically dominant. But when you get to the college level, now you have to understand defensive schemes, screen-roll coverage and all kinds of stuff you never had to deal with. So, does it happen for you in 30 games before you get to the NCAA tournament? For some it probably does and some it probably doesn't."

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It's not interesting. It is stupid. If i were to tell you that I wanted to see whether red dice are more likely to roll a six than white dice so I rolled red dice 60,000 times and it came up six 10,000 times, and I rolled white dice 600 times and it came up six 100 times, therefore, red dice come up six more often than white dice, you'd call me stupid.

Well, it is equally stupid to say there are 121 one and done players selected in the first round over 13 years, or less than 10 per year, some being on the same team so let's say 9 teams per year, and boy howdy they went to the final four a lot fewer times overall than the teams that were lead by upperclassmen in scoring. I don't know where to find stats on that without hours of research, but I'd bet we are talking 200+ teams a year that fall into that category. I don't know why everyone who wants to prove "stars don't matter" make this same stupid argument of using overall numbers instead of rate.

In the past 13 NBA seasons, teams with Lebron James have won the championship 3 times. Teams without Lebron James have won the championship 10 times. Clearly teams without Lebron James are better. Why sign Lebron James?

Adding to this. Let me state their numbers differently. If instead of saying 25 of the 121 didn't make the tournament and 42 didn't make the Sweet Sixteen, I said, 96 of 121 made the tournament and 54 of 121 made the Sweet Sixteen, now what do you think?

So if you don't have a one and done, your odds are less than 1 in 5 of making the tournament. If you have a one and done, your odds are 80%. If you don't have a one and done, your odds are 1 in 29 of getting to the Sweet Sixteen. If you have one it is 45%.

Which do you think is better?

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Well, let's look at our only one-and-done during this period. How did Jaylen Brown, who is a very special NBA player, perform when he was at Cal? He averaged 28 minutes/game. Why? He was in foul trouble a lot of the time. He had a field goal % of .431. He had a 3 pt. % of .294. He had a free throw % of .654. And, he lead the team in fouls at 108 and in turnovers at 105. It was obvious to all that he was the most talented player on the the team, but he made a lot of mistakes as a freshmen. A junior or senior Jayen Brown would have been all-world, but . . .

Jeff82 said:

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socaltownie said:

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Jeff82 said:

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The brother I never knew.


And my "solution" is even a bit tighter - it is that Cal should be positioned - and cal coaches evaluated - on their ability to recruit the one and dones (or 2 and dones) from NorCal that can deal with the academics at Cal. Losing them, consistently, is grounds for a talk with the AD unless the W-Ls are showing otherwise.

Again, I return to 2 recent players:
There is no way Aaron Gordon should have gone to Zona and his decision to do so should have caused serious post-mortum discussions at the university
There is also no way that Cal should not have found a way to bury the hatchet with the Payton family. One wonder if we had whether GPJ would have sniffed Cal after his stint at CC.

The fact that we do NOT consistently retain bay area and sacto talent seems like the first step toward rebuilding the program. And yes - that means being an attractive location to kids that can make money at the show and may not be at the institution for more than a season or 2.

SCT, you may be right here, but you also can't just say that player X "should have gone to Cal," without evaluating the circumstances. I'll refer back to my comment in the other thread regarding Jaylen Brown, who clearly came to Cal for his year because he wanted a year of intellectual experience, and wasn't going to spend his free time in the gym developing his jumper. By the same token, the fact that Gordon went to U of A strongly suggests that he was only going to college to play basketball, not to go to class at all. And as much as I admire Jason Kidd as a player, my understanding is that he also dumped on academics in year 2, when he knew he was leaving regardless. Brown has been a great ambassador for the program, and I hope we get more kids like him, who are talented and want a college experience. But as I said in the other thread, you have to take kids for the skill levels and desire they bring with them, and not criticize that they're not gym rats.

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Gordon has a brother who works at Google and has CONSISTENTLY spoken about his desire to get into tech/VC when his playing days are over. I only use him as an example. And I would note - we beat Zona for Rabb once we had a coach (Martin) that put in what it takes (and yes, it is humiliating) to recruit 18 year olds that are placed on a pedestal (look at Haase writing a letter a day for a year)

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Sorry, don't buy it. He did go to an academic high school, but if he was really that concerned about his post-hoop prospects, he would not have gone to Arizona. To compare, Brown's logic was that he was going high in the draft, no matter where he went to school, so he might as well go somewhere where he would enjoy it. Gordon also could have done that. Also, by your implied logic, we should never have had Monty, because he didn't like recruiting. Well, it's pure speculation whether a coach other than Monty, who was a superior recruiter would have been more successful over his tenure. You guys are both making a binary argument--only talent matters versus only coaching matters. The reality is, we've never had both at the same time. All the coaches were either recruiters who couldn't coach (Padgett, Braun, arguably Martin, also Campanelli, who recruited Lamond Murray and Jason Kidd, then couldn't figure out how to get along with them), coaches who couldn't recruit (Monty), or couldn't do either (Edwards, Kuchen, Jones). I don't which category Bozeman goes in, because he got us on probation and wrecked his career cheating to a player (Jelani Gardner) who had a mediocre college career.

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You may not realize this but a lot of people go to University of Arizona and actually get jobs. What do you think makes a bigger impact on Gordon's life, economically and otherwise, his basketball training or his academic training? Gordon had plenty of opportunity to engage in intellectual curiosity at Arizona and his post basketball life is probably not different based on being at UA instead of Cal vs. what he did with his time in college. I have no idea whether Gordon is inclined toward studies or not, but choosing Arizona as a student who plays basketball and has a significant opportunity at a long career whether in the NBA or overseas is does not mean they aren't concerned with academics. And yes, basically any basketball player who has a chance at the NBA cares more about what a school can provide them in terms of basketball rather than academics, but it doesn't mean they don't care about academics.