What’s up, Cal family? My name is Rod Benson and I’m excited. Yeah, I started there. Pressure right out of the gate. So what? Sure, the words “excited” and “Cal” don’t often go together when we are talking about the basketball program lately. It’s mostly been a rough decade, to say the least. That’s not to say that we don’t ever feel excited, but in all my years, I can firmly say we hardly ever say it. We’ve been hurt too many times to just blindly love again – to just go trust again. All of that and I’m still excited. I think you should be, too.
In case you’ve been under a rock, here’s a meme that details my excitement:
Am I hyperbolic? Maybe? Do I care? No. I get it, Cal doesn’t have the kind of recruiting class they had my sophomore year that included Leon Powe, Ayinde Ubaka, Dominic McGuire, and Marquise Kately. It doesn’t. It doesn’t have the Ivan Rabb, Jaylen Brown class of 2015. Right? This isn’t Jamal Sampson coming in or Jerome Randle… Or is it?
Call me crazy, but I’m fairly confident that Coach Madsen will start off hot and right the ship so desperately in need of righting. Actually, it’s not that crazy. Madsen is the first Cal coach with NBA experience as a player since Cuonzo, and he has much more of it. That means something to me, because great locker room guys and teammates like him understand three things some guys never do: How to make the best players look good, how to give the last players hype, and a keen understanding of the system all at once.
Further, Madsen coached in the D-League in the old days. I’m unsure how the league is run now, but back then there was no way someone could coach without an extreme amount of empathy. Empathy for the players who hadn’t figured it out mentally yet, for those who made financial choices in the short term, and especially for the guys who found themselves in trouble but needed a chance and some encouragement. The D-League was rough.
Lastly, he really doesn’t have to do much. Cal is coming off one of the worst seasons in NCAA history. The bar is LOW. It’s low-low. Here’s another meme describing my reactions to potential Cal basketball results:
I’ll be hyped at 5 and I will indeed become Cyclops if they get to 20 wins. I take the time to say that because that’s the energy I think we should all have going into the season. I was there in 2002 when Cal Football bounced back from 1-10 to go 7-5 and that year was exciting as hell. They marched the goalposts down Bancroft after we beat Stanford that year. No one expected them to win the Pac-12, but our optimism for a program that lost nearly every game the previous season was pretty damn high.
Call me crazy but I feel that again. I feel like Cal basketball has finally made some choices that have perked up the ears of those fans and alumni around the world. It’s as if the beacons have been lit in Lord of the Rings and there has been a collective call to arms. I’m ready, not for everything I’ve ever wanted, but for the only thing I ever needed: a program that feels like the future is looking very bright.
Related:
Bear Insider Podcast: Cal Head Coach Mark Madsen
Bear Insider Podcast: Cal Hoops Recruiting Talk With Rod Benson
Are we raising NIL money to keep him?75bear said:
Am I the most stereotypical Cal fan ever, since I'm now concerned Rod is going to be hired away from the Cal family because his media takes and presence are so damn interesting and on the nose?
