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Shades
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Stormeo
Joined: 14 Jul 2019
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 Posted: 01/10/21 6:01 pm ::: |
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| Oregon gets the 59-point win, 100-41. Tough day for Cal, in an already tough season. I wouldn't be surprised if they opted out of the rest of the season at some point, considering they already only have 8-9 available players to work with. One more injury or even one player simply testing positive might just do it.
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myrtle
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| Posted: 01/10/21 6:46 pm ::: |
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| Stormeo wrote: |
| Oregon gets the 59-point win, 100-41. Tough day for Cal, in an already tough season. I wouldn't be surprised if they opted out of the rest of the season at some point, considering they already only have 8-9 available players to work with. One more injury or even one player simply testing positive might just do it. |
I also had the thought they might be better off to figure out a way to just dump the rest of the season. I feel bad for them though. It's hard to tell if 'experience' is a good thing for them, or if it just makes them feel inadequate. It has to be pretty discouraging to be a doormat.
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Queenie
Joined: 18 Nov 2004
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| Posted: 01/10/21 7:05 pm ::: |
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| Sometimes I wonder if Cal is only playing because Stanford is playing. Rivalries, y'know?
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ucbart
Joined: 21 Nov 2004
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| Posted: 01/10/21 7:12 pm ::: |
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| Queenie wrote: |
| Sometimes I wonder if Cal is only playing because Stanford is playing. Rivalries, y'know? |
Is Cal the worst P5 team? That's a tough gig to take over. Gottlieb's teams got worse and worse every year and she wasn't a good recruiter.
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Howee
Joined: 27 Nov 2009
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GlennMacGrady
Joined: 03 Jan 2005
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| Posted: 01/10/21 8:52 pm ::: |
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| What reverse alchemy has turned the Golden Bears into lead? They were regular 20 game winners under Boyle-Gottlieb and made the Final Four just seven years ago. |
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myrtle
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| Posted: 01/10/21 8:56 pm ::: |
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| There are definitely good players coming out of HS in the Bay Area and the greater NoCal area so I would think Cal should be attractive to some of them. I think some will prefer being big fish in a smaller league - ie USF, St. Mary's, San Jose, Santa Clara, etc... Anyway, the longer Cal stays in the basement the harder it is to recruit - kind of a chicken and egg thing. I'm rooting for them to improve.
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myrtle
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| Posted: 01/10/21 8:58 pm ::: |
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| GlennMacGrady wrote: |
| What reverse alchemy has turned the Golden Bears into lead? They were regular 20 game winners under Boyle-Gottlieb and made the Final Four just seven years ago. |
Gottlieb pretty much left the cupboard bare. I was pretty surprised she was moving UP...just before I assumed she would get fired. IMO neither a good coach nor a good recruiter. But a nice person..
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GlennMacGrady
Joined: 03 Jan 2005
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| Posted: 01/10/21 9:44 pm ::: |
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| myrtle wrote: |
| GlennMacGrady wrote: |
| What reverse alchemy has turned the Golden Bears into lead? They were regular 20 game winners under Boyle-Gottlieb and made the Final Four just seven years ago. |
Gottlieb pretty much left the cupboard bare. I was pretty surprised she was moving UP...just before I assumed she would get fired. IMO neither a good coach nor a good recruiter. But a nice person.. |
I don't know what direction Gottlieb moved, but why would she have gotten fired? In her last three seasons she was 20-14 (NCAA 2), 21-11 (NCAA 1) and 20-13 (NCAA 2), and she was 179-89 (.668) overall. Cal's six player 2020 freshman class was ranked 7th in the country by ESPN, after only Oregon and Stanford in the Pac12. Gottlieb must have had something to do with recruiting those players.
I still don't understand the team's chemistry. |
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myrtle
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| Posted: 01/10/21 11:04 pm ::: |
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She inherited great players so her first few years looked good.
Then they had one terrible year in the middle.
Then they won 20 games but primarily by playing very weak OOC. That last three years the best they finished in conference was 5th. Coming from a few years of competing at the top, that was a huge dive.
I don't know how much she had to do with the current Freshman class. As I said, she is a 'nice' person which can help in recruiting. Those recruits committed after she had left.
And I guess it is also a reminder that that good class are all Freshmen and 10 of the 12 players on the roster are Freshmen or Sophomores, so maybe there is no place to go but up from here. Hopefully those players stick with it and don't get discouraged and disperse.
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Conway Gamecock
Joined: 23 Jan 2015
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| Posted: 01/10/21 11:33 pm ::: |
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| Cali's best decades ever in reaching the NCAAT was the 2000s and the 2010s. They made the tournament in 2017, 2018, and 2019. I am also surprised they fallen so hard so fast....
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GlennMacGrady
Joined: 03 Jan 2005
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| Posted: 01/11/21 12:03 am ::: |
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| myrtle wrote: |
| I don't know how much she had to do with the current Freshman class. As I said, she is a 'nice' person which can help in recruiting. Those recruits committed after she had left. |
I'm not trying to quibble but just tease out some facts. The current freshman class of HS 2020 would have formally signed with Cal in November 2019 and may have verballed earlier than that in 2019 or maybe even in 2018. Gottlieb resigned in June 2019, so I would assume she was fully involved with the entire recruitment process of all of them.
Gottlieb's final four years of conference play overlapped with the amazing resurgences at Oregon and Oregon State, the improvement at UCLA, and the Plum years at Washington. So, it's not surprising that conference play got tougher for everyone else during those years.
The first culprit in a mystery is usually a family member. So, I think some scrutiny should be put on the current coach, Charmin Smith, about whom I know nothing except that she was a long time assistant at several places with no prior head coaching experience. |
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Stormeo
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| Posted: 01/11/21 12:28 am ::: |
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| Howee wrote: |
| Is it Cal's better/best players that are injured? Not good, all around. They've been a long time out of their Glory Dayz, back when they rivaled Stanford for PAC 12 domination. |
A few pieces of info about Cal:
They only started out with 12 players to begin with.
As Myrtle mentioned, all but 2 of them are underclassmen. Half the team is made of freshmen. This was always going to be a rebuilding year.
By their 2nd game, 3 of the players already suffered season-ending injuries – and all 3 of them are guards.
2 scholarship (non-walk-on) guards remain for the rest of the season. A couple games this season they've only had 1, where one of the walk-ons (Archer Olson) has had to spot-start.
With the guard rotation shot, the young post players have had to play together, out of position (6'3 Dalayah Daniels has started a few games at the SG spot!).
All of the aforementioned reasons collectively hurt their ability to play effective defense.
Nobody – and I mean nobody – who's left can hit 3s with any consistency. Their best shooter is shooting 24.1% from 3. They're shooting 16.7% from 3 as a team.
TL;DR: They're inexperienced, they're injured, they're playing out of position, they can't shoot, and as a result of all this (other than the shooting, maybe) they can't play D. They have height and absolutely nothing else. It really is miraculous that they're still playing.
It should be noted that coming into this season, their 2020 recruiting class was ranked 7th in the nation on HoopGurlz, good for 3rd in the conference behind Stanford (6th in the nation) and Oregon (1st in the nation). Cal should eventually be okay, if Charmin Smith can get all of her recruits to stick around beyond this year and get everyone on the team healthy.
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GlennMacGrady
Joined: 03 Jan 2005
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| Posted: 01/11/21 1:45 am ::: |
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| Stormeo wrote: |
A few pieces of info about Cal:
They only started out with 12 players to begin with.
As Myrtle mentioned, all but 2 of them are underclassmen. Half the team is made of freshmen. This was always going to be a rebuilding year.
By their 2nd game, 3 of the players already suffered season-ending injuries – and all 3 of them are guards.
2 scholarship (non-walk-on) guards remain for the rest of the season. A couple games this season they've only had 1, where one of the walk-ons (Archer Olson) has had to spot-start.
With the guard rotation shot, the young post players have had to play together, out of position (6'3 Dalayah Daniels has started a few games at the SG spot!).
All of the aforementioned reasons collectively hurt their ability to play effective defense.
Nobody – and I mean nobody – who's left can hit 3s with any consistency. Their best shooter is shooting 24.1% from 3. They're shooting 16.7% from 3 as a team.
TL;DR: They're inexperienced, they're injured, they're playing out of position, they can't shoot, and as a result of all this (other than the shooting, maybe) they can't play D. They have height and absolutely nothing else. It really is miraculous that they're still playing.
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Those are some certainly relevant and interesting details about Cal's poor performance this short season, but it doesn't address the reasons for last season's collapse to 12-19, 3-15 and last place in the conference from Gottlieb's 20-13, 9-9 record in the previous season. The pronounced big collapse happened under Charmin Smith, who is now 12-29 for her career. |
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root_thing
Joined: 28 Apr 2007
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| Posted: 01/11/21 12:02 pm ::: |
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| GlennMacGrady wrote: |
| Stormeo wrote: |
A few pieces of info about Cal:
They only started out with 12 players to begin with.
As Myrtle mentioned, all but 2 of them are underclassmen. Half the team is made of freshmen. This was always going to be a rebuilding year.
By their 2nd game, 3 of the players already suffered season-ending injuries – and all 3 of them are guards.
2 scholarship (non-walk-on) guards remain for the rest of the season. A couple games this season they've only had 1, where one of the walk-ons (Archer Olson) has had to spot-start.
With the guard rotation shot, the young post players have had to play together, out of position (6'3 Dalayah Daniels has started a few games at the SG spot!).
All of the aforementioned reasons collectively hurt their ability to play effective defense.
Nobody – and I mean nobody – who's left can hit 3s with any consistency. Their best shooter is shooting 24.1% from 3. They're shooting 16.7% from 3 as a team.
TL;DR: They're inexperienced, they're injured, they're playing out of position, they can't shoot, and as a result of all this (other than the shooting, maybe) they can't play D. They have height and absolutely nothing else. It really is miraculous that they're still playing.
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Those are some certainly relevant and interesting details about Cal's poor performance this short season, but it doesn't address the reasons for last season's collapse to 12-19, 3-15 and last place in the conference from Gottlieb's 20-13, 9-9 record in the previous season. The pronounced big collapse happened under Charmin Smith, who is now 12-29 for her career. |
Gottlieb left rather suddenly in the middle of the summer, and Smith was hired two months after she started a new job with the New York Liberty. Her final game with NY was June 28th, so she basically took over the team Gottlieb left behind. What was the main reason for Cal's drop-off? Probably the graduation of Kristine Anigwe, who averaged 22.5 points and 16.2 rebounds per game. That kind of production is hard to replace. I can't think of any other P5 player within recent memory who averaged that many rebounds. Certainly no one who also scored 20+ points per game. Obviously, great programs are able to attract top talent every year. In this case, it appears Gottlieb was unable to do so and Smith was left holding the bag.
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Stormeo
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| Posted: 01/11/21 12:25 pm ::: |
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| GlennMacGrady wrote: |
| Those are some certainly relevant and interesting details about Cal's poor performance this short season, but it doesn't address the reasons for last season's collapse to 12-19, 3-15 and last place in the conference from Gottlieb's 20-13, 9-9 record in the previous season. The pronounced big collapse happened under Charmin Smith, who is now 12-29 for her career. |
You’re right. I was simply speaking to Howee’s question about why they’re bad right now.
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myrtle
Joined: 02 May 2008
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| Posted: 01/11/21 5:07 pm ::: |
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It wasn't just Anigwe after the 18-19 season. They lost 3 other starters, including the one that transferred to Louisville. Not sure why the transfer happened or who's 'fault' it was if there was a fault. It's always shocking when your coach bails and when three of your closest teammates graduate so maybe it was just a desire to start over or play for a team with a better chance to be good.
At this point, I have no idea if Charmin Smith will turn out to be a decent coach or not. She hasn't been able to do much with the ragtags she was left with/ or in spite of all the issues Stormeo outlined, but not sure if there is a coach who could have done better. So I'm willing to see what happens over the next couple of years. And we'll see if April Phillips can do some recruiting.
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calbearman76
Joined: 02 Nov 2009
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)a year ago as well as Kianna Smith to Louisville and Alaysia Styles to Maryland. But even with them gone there was hope with Jazlyn Green, Leilani McIntosh and Cailyn Crocker as returning guards. Green was a preseason All Pac12 honorable mention coming into the season. They also signed two promising international guards, Alma Elsnitz and Orlando Muca. Up front they had Evelyn Lutje Shipholdt returning as a serviceable forward along with incoming Freshmen Dalayah Daniels, Michelle Onyiah, Fatou Samb and Sela Heide. This looked like a team that could compete by the end of the season if a few of their freshmen panned out.