[socaltownie]

WOW. That was a pretty darn impressive show of BB over 4 minutes ;-)

[ayetee11]

That team it's more athletic than about 300 other teams

[clunkyregistration]

It isn't just Kansas, ALL of the teams the last couple of days are infinitely better than Cal. Cal was a JV or frosh team compared to the real college basketball teams this year. There is a monumentally wide gap between where Cal's program is and the upper end of college hoops. Monty needs to start working WAY harder on the recruiting trail or he should step aside and let someone else have the job who's willing to put in the work.

[SmellinRoses]

Relative to the athletes we've seen in these games over the last week, you can only conclude that Monty's recruiting is a joke.

Why would we extend the contract of a guy who can't recruit when recruiting is everything? Would Self or Calipari or Motta go anywhere with our players - of course not.

Yes, he's done relatively well in the Pac but this is not your father's Pac 10/12. If we are going to pay a coach a lot of money, he has to be able to recruit.

Hard to imagine the sweet sixteen with Monty at the helm. He's a good Xs and Os guy but hard to have any enthusiasm for his extension.

[OldBlue1999]

You guys calling for Monty's job is the joke.

[FingeroftheBear]

KU and the Final Four teams are what a true junior NBA team would look like if the NBA used the Euro League model.

Most coaches that get that level of talent consistently are made of sleaze and moral flexibility.

[OdontoBear66]

Originally Posted by FingeroftheBear

KU and the Final Four teams are what a true junior NBA team would look like if the NBA used the Euro League model.

Most coaches that get that level of talent consistently are made of sleaze and moral flexibility.

So I love MM as much as anyone on this board, but you seem to be playing the "we are clean and shitty and they are made of sleaze and moral flexibility". So is that what we want? Is clean and so-so good enough. If the game is not played with kid gloves, do we want to play? Exactly what are your aspirations for Cal BB? Wonderful and beyond reproach is what I read. I would love that too, but does it play? Look at college basketball as it is now structured, and it starts in high school with AAU ball. Does your vision of Cal BB (and mine to a degree) even want to go there? It is a tough question. Basketball, more than most other sports, is tainted (I use liberty with a broad brush to include a lot of evils here). Not pretty. College BB is right now a one year minor league for the NBA.

[GBMARIN]

Kansas is good, but Kentucky is even more of an NBA feeder.

[sycasey]

There are reasons why teams like Kentucky and Kansas are able to get the talent they do that have nothing to do with how good the coach is at recruiting. Just pointing at those teams and then pointing at Cal doesn't mean it's all on Monty's shoulders that we don't have their kind of talent. Those are programs with long histories of success that sell themselves to a large extent.

His recruiting hasn't been great so far, but it's also true that his track record is one of building a program slowly and incrementally, so we shouldn't be surprised that we aren't Elite Eight level after only 3 seasons with him. An extension is justifiable given that (1) we are certainly doing better now than we were under the last few years of Braun, and (2) Monty does have a history of getting teams to a high level after MANY years at the helm (way more than he's had so far at Cal).

[southseasbear]

Spot on! ^

[Scooterville Gau]

^ agree

[88Bear]

Originally Posted by OldBlue1999

You guys calling for Monty's job is the joke.

Man, are you ever singing my tune. The notion that Monty is somehow 'failing' is like something out of the Bizarro World. He is the most successful coach we have had since Pete Newell. That is not an exaggeration, yet people here are mad because we aren't Duke.

It is true that we haven't gone ape in recruiting, but we have hardly been awful. What he has accomplished since he has been here is an embarrassment of riches compared to anything else we have done in hoop in my lifetime (and remained off of probation...) The lack of perspective from some posters is shocking.

[Bobodeluxe]

It is true, however he is much better than that faint praise. I can't understand why he would want to coach in this dirty era.

[south bender]

Every single Division I school (340? of them) wants to win the NCAA tourney.

However, we see that maybe a dozen or so schools regularly contend for the championship year after year after year. These same schools have the most talent year after year after year.

Would we not all agree that there are reasons for this, that this is not just some odd, unexplainable phenomemon?

Without listing the reasons--and they have been enumerated/explicated here many times and quite recently--is it not naive to think that the Cal coach by the force of his personality and his hiring of the elusive crackerjack recruiting assistant will miraculously lift Cal into this elite dozen or whatever is the small number of the regularly dominant programs?

Can't we get over this fantasy of Cal's immediately joining this elite group, if only Monty were a better recruiter? If only Monty were replaced by somebody else who wanted it more, who would snap his fingers and take us to the top?

Clearly Monty is the best thing that has happened to Cal basketball since Newell. Clearly Monty wants to win as much as anybody posting on this site. Clearly Monty's teams play better basketball than those of any other Cal coach since since Newell.

We can all hope for even better from the Cal basketball program, but it should not prevent our enjoying the extraordinary improvement that Monty has been over every Cal coach since Newell.

Go Bears!

[sycasey]

Originally Posted by south bender

Every single Division I school (340? of them) wants to win the NCAA tourney.

There are 345 Division 1 basketball programs. For a bit of perspective, remember that even making the NCAA Tournament field as one of the last selections and losing in the first round, that places you safely in the Top 20% of all D1 teams (68/345). When you consider our actual seeding (1st among the 12 seeds, or about the 45th best team in the committee's estimation), that puts us safely in the top 15% of teams, with a good 300 teams lined up behind us.

Monty is doing fine. Cal is not yet at the level of a program where we can expect tournament appearances every year, much less high seeds and deep runs every year. But we are close.