Cal Talking About How He Hates Depth

[BJD]

Can anyone point me to a quote from any Cal player that claims he was promised or guaranteed anything? Only thing I've ever heard from players is just the opposite.

[WeWant9]

I like to have depth, we’ve seen too many seasons derailed due to injury. With that said, I think it does depend on the coach. Cal probably does do better when he has ~8 main guys. You just end up holding your breath all season hoping for no injuries to those main guys.

[Joneslab]

Can anyone point me to a quote from any Cal player that claims he was promised or guaranteed anything? Only thing I've ever heard from players is just the opposite.

It’s just something I always assumed based on how they operated when the dust settled. I think the overarching promise wasn’t about PT or role, but rather simply, Come here, play a season, get drafted.”

And Cal fulfilled that promise A LOT.

[Pete Hogwallop]

By the way, unbelievable handle and avatar.

Thank you!

[bucsrule8872]

This has been Cal’s problem since 2015.

He blamed platooning for killing his recruiting.

[Pobilly]

This has been Cal’s problem since 2015.

He blamed platooning for killing his recruiting.

Yeah he will never admit playing the twins over Ulis and Booker was the big issue. Yes the twins did some good things here but in the tourney Ulis and Book were on it most of the time.

[Joneslab]

This has been Cal’s problem since 2015.

He blamed platooning for killing his recruiting.

Ironically I've always wondered if Poythress staying healthy would've got that done for us.

Water under the bridge now. And we've parsed it and re-parsed it a million times. But the Poythress injury was straight damnin.

[M4Cat]

Glad that is Arkansas' problem to deal with now. Player retention is valued under Pope here, and he did a good job assembling this balanced roster.

[runninrichie]

Yeah he will never admit playing the twins over Ulis and Booker was the big issue. Yes the twins did some good things here but in the tourney Ulis and Book were on it most of the time.

That's revisionism. Booker's defense was awful and he was in a shooting slump. The real issue was he forced the offense to be, get the ball to Towns on the block. If that didn't work, try to get fouled.

[BJD]

Yeah he will never admit playing the twins over Ulis and Booker was the big issue. Yes the twins did some good things here but in the tourney Ulis and Book were on it most of the time.

It didn't work out. But why wouldn't Cal trust the twins? One always knows what they should have done after the fact. But in the moment I would have trusted the twins and especially Aaron.

[SportsFan]

I'm sure I'm not posting anything groundbreaking here.... because it should be apparent to anybody that paid attention to Cal's coaching and approach the past 15+ years....but Cal doesn't like having a deep bench because he doesn't know how to use it. His area of expertise is getting guys through the college ranks as quickly as possible so that they can play in the NBA. Period. Nothing enlightening that I'm sharing there. He wanted to get the guys that he figured would be drafted as many minutes as possible to showcase their abilities. He wasn't about "finding the right mix', or playing the hot hand, or even developing a bench for the purpose of team building....he was all about pushing guys through the system as quickly as possible so he could recruit over them year after year.

[KCKUKFan]

Yeah he will never admit playing the twins over Ulis and Booker was the big issue. Yes the twins did some good things here but in the tourney Ulis and Book were on it most of the time.

I've never cared for this argument.

Book hadn't hit a shot consistently for about two months going into the tourney, and the twins literally willed us to a title game the year before and led us to 38 straight wins...

We lost to Wisconsin because Poythress got injured, allowing Dekker to go wild, we took the air out of the ball, and we tightened up. If it weren't for Andrew Harrison, we wouldn't have beaten Notre Dame in the Elite Eight.

[SportsFan]

We lost to Wisconsin because Poythress got injured, allowing Dekker to go wild, we took the air out of the ball, and we tightened up.

Potthress got injured 8 games into the season. They had won 30 in a row after he was injured ...so I don't think his absence was the reason for the loss to Wisconsin.

[KCKUKFan]

Potthress got injured 8 games into the season. They had won 30 in a row after he was injured ...so I don't think his absence was the reason for the loss to Wisconsin.

I meant we didn't have a defender for a stretch 3 as a reason why Dekker went off, not Poythress specifically.

After Poythress got injured, that was the only thing that team lacked. And Wisconsin was one of the only teams in the field with a player like that that could exploit that weakness.

We didn't really have any bad matchup issues that year because we were so big and deep, and could switch everything, but Wisconsin was the closest matchup problem. And it bit us.

Had Poythress not gotten injured, we would've had a defensive stopper for a guy like Dekker.

[KCKUKFan]

This has been Cal’s problem since 2015.

He blamed platooning for killing his recruiting.

Did he ever actually say that, or was it just implied?

I know he said that opposing coaches used it against him on the recruiting trail, but he never really had any huge problems recruiting after the platoon year, give or take a Zion.