Standards of Excellence
As promised, today I’ll start seriously talking about how Cal is going to replace Ben Braun as the men’s basketball head coach. It is not a given that this will happen; there are still plausible scenarios/arguments whereby, at the end of the year, Sandy Barbour expresses confidence in his coaching ability, and Braun continues his work at Cal through next year and beyond. Still, I think the tide has turned.
Over the past few years, the grumbling and discontent about Braun have grown louder and harder to ignore, prompting me to run an entire five part series on the subject last year. Past years have brought us excuses for his team’s failures, and so despite his track record, this year was widely viewed as a ‘put up or shut up’ sort of year for Braun. This year’s team has been given reasonable health and reasonable expectations (compete in the top half of the Pac-10 and make the NCAA tournament), and so unless the Bears go on some sort of miracle run, I think it’s safe to say Braun will have decidedly failed to ‘put up’. Defending him is getting to be a difficult task, and I get the sense that more and more of his ‘on the fence’ support is peeling away, perhaps deciding that to pull the Bears up out of mediocrity, a change is needed, if only to shake things up.
Anyway, I’m going to run a little exercise where I pretend to be the Athletic Director, and I decide we’re going to look at making a change regarding the men’s basketball coaching staff. It’s a tough decision, and I’m glad I’m just writing about it on the internet instead of actually having such a weighty responsibility.
Now, instead of simply throwing around names of basketball coaches, I’d like to be a little more systematic about this process, which is why I’m going to start by laying out some standards and expectations for the basketball program. If we’re really going to justify making a change, I think we ought to have concrete goals to measure the program up against, showing how the current head coach has failed to meet such standards, why we expect said coach will fail to meet such standards in the future, and why we expect the new coach we hire will succeed where the current coach has failed. This can be a big, expensive process, what with contract buyouts, executive search consulting firms, and lucrative contracts aimed at luring successful coaches away from their current jobs, and so if we’re going to undertake it, we’d better be damned sure we’re ending up with a better coach than we started with.
The way I see it, there are two major factors on which to evaluate a coaching staff, and most everything falls within one of those two categories. They are, in order of importance:
1. Representing the University
2. Competitive Performance
That’s right, competitive performance comes second. I know not everyone feels this way, but I will not support a program whose off-court shenanigans cast a negative light on the University I love, no matter how many titles it wins in the process. No way, no how. It’s not worth it.
Breaking these categories down:
Representing the University
- Legal issues (crimes, misdemeanors, etc. — players AND coaches)
- Ethics issues (academic fraud, recruiting scandals)
- Scholarship issues (poor grades, failing to graduate)
The basic idea here is to avoid bringing negative attention to the University, with of course the ideal being a group of true student-athletes that are role models for the community. I can stomach minor violations on a very occasional basis (i.e. a player caught smoking pot, or failing to make grades for a semester), but only as long as they remain isolated incidents, and there is a program and a culture in place to prevent and actively discourage such occurrences from turning into patterns of behavior.
Under Ben Braun, Cal has been very good with regards to these issues. It is perhaps Braun’s strong suit. Unfortunately, excelling in this area does not win you any points; it is merely a prerequisite for a successful basketball program, buying a seat at the next table, where we can begin to talk about competitive performance.
Competitive Performance
- Conference Championships
- Tournament Performance
- National Exposure/Prominence
In a general, hand-wavy sort of way, I think that most people would agree that reasonable goals for a basketball team would be to regularly compete for conference championships, have some NCAA tournament success, and gain some sort of national prominence. These goals, of course, are rather open-ended, and leave quite a bit of grey area, where we are uncertain that certain accomplishments actually merit the term ’success’. Ben Braun’s problem, obviously, is that his achievements at Cal sit somewhere within this grey area.
By any reasonable standard, Ben Howland has been a success at UCLA. By the same token, there’s no way to qualify Jay John, formerly of Oregon State, as anything but a failure there. Ben Braun? That’s a trickier question. How many Pac-10 wins are enough? How many NCAA tournament appearances? Must Cal be consistently ranked in the top 25 to be considered successful? What’s needed is a benchmark, whereby we can say, with a reasonable degree of confidence, that a given level of achievement is successful enough.
So what’s a reasonable goal for Cal? On one hand, Cal hardly has a storied basketball history; there’s the NCAA title in ‘59, the runner-up finish in ‘60, the brief light of the Jason Kidd era, aaaand…that’s pretty much it. There’s been some other moderate successes along the way, but nothing most college basketball fans will remember (I’ll bet, even now, there are more people who can tell you Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s name when he played at UCLA than can tell you where Leon Powe played his college ball, if they’ve even heard of Leon Powe). Given our past history, there’s no justification for expecting immediate or sustained greatness.
On the other hand, Cal is a world-class university, with vast resources, a stellar academic reputation, a beautiful location, and good (though not great) local prep basketball talent. They compete in one of the toughest conferences in the country, the Pac-10, and annually face off against storied programs such as Arizona and UCLA. Remember, before Mike Montgomery arrived at Stanford, the Cardinal had virtually no basketball history to speak of. There is no limiting barrier in place that says Cal cannot build a basketball program capable of competing with the best in the country.
With that in mind, I’ll now get more specific about the vague performance standards I mentioned before. Feel free to disagree with me. In fact, please do, as I think this can be a valuable discussion.
Regularly compete for conference championships
There are 10 teams in the Pac-10; I don’t think it’s too much to ask to win a conference championship once a decade. I think Cal should be in the hunt* for a conference championship most years, and should be in the hunt for a top-5 conference finish virtually every year. Barring extraordinary circumstances**, Cal should never finish last.
* ‘in the hunt’ - mathematically alive going into the final week of the season, or thereabouts
** massive injuries, everyone leaves for the NBA, etc.
Have some NCAA tournament success
Cal should make the NCAA tournament on a regular basis, something that I believe should follow from meeting the previous expectations. Cal should win NCAA games with some regularity, and while Final Fours are tough expectations to meet, I think Cal should make a regional final at least as often as it wins the Pac-10 (once a decade).
Gain some sort of national prominence
This will follow from meeting the first two expectations, as winning the conference and making noise in the tournament will lead to national exposure. Rankings are not everything, but Cal should be a part of them with some regularity. Cal should also endeavor to schedule more high-profile non-conference games, which will help with exposure to recruits. Besides, I think dropping a close game at Kansas State is worth more than blowing out Jackson State at home, both in terms of experience and NCAA tournament consideration.
If you’re scoring at home, you’ll see that Braun does poorly with regards to competitive performance. Yes, the Bears are competitive, but it’s been a long time since they were competitive enough, and in 12 years on the job, Braun has still failed to bring home a single conference title. Perhaps I’m expecting too much, but I don’t think so. Some people might suggest that I’m not expecting enough. Anyway, my next post will begin to suggest coaches who might actually be able to meet these standards while coaching at Cal. I’ll be back in a couple days.
There will be no repercussions if Braun has been tethered along this long. As long as Cal football succeeds I expect Braun will find himself on a longer leash than most of us desire. UC Berkeley is still an academic institution, and Cal Athletics is focused on representing the university through character men like Braun and Tedford. As long as no plausible candidates exist, the status quo will probably hold.
If Cal can find an ethical coach who would do the same as Tedford did for basketball, I’ll be the first to jump on board.
Comment by Avinash — February 26, 2008 @ 7:27 pm
Luckily for our situation, no one can argue that Braun hasn’t had enough time to establish his program and players. It’s been so long I barely remember Cal playing different styles and with different player personalities
Comment by Nick — February 26, 2008 @ 9:17 pm
Thank you for bringing to light one of the failures in the the great history of CAL athletics! Cal Basketball has not lived up to our expectations for all the reasons that you have stated in your blog! When Cal Basketball can get past the ethical violations and can outdo the accomplishments that that Jeff Tedford did with Football and energize the team to work for the goal of being in the Final Four, where we belong, that will be the Cal Basketball that we cheer and are proud of! I don’t know couch Braun, but I do know that if it’s not working, fix it! I would hope that there would not be any economic problems with this problems with this realignment of management, but If there are, I would think that it will be for the betterment of Cal Bears Basketball in the long run. OK, so who are your picks for the new Bears Basketball Couch? We’re waiting for your next blog to find out!
Comment by Kats — February 26, 2008 @ 9:36 pm
Hi guys, it’s great to see near-unanimous consensus among Cal fans that Ben Braun should be on his way out. While it’s great that he supposedly represents the university well, he should not be getting paid over 1 million/year just for that. For that kind of money, a coach is expected to win big every so often. I’m sure we could find a coach willing to be paid 250k/year (a decent Bay Area salary) to produce the kind of results Ben Braun has achieved. After all, why did the alumni bother to spend all that money renovating Haas Pavilion? To aspire for NIT titles? The most telling data point of Ben Braun’s tenure is his record against Stanfurd. 5-19. He should have been gone a long time ago.
Comment by djmoney — February 27, 2008 @ 12:17 am
I don’t know where you get the “represents the university well” argument. His graduation rate has been embarrassing and is regularly near the bottom of the conference. When i saw those numbers a couple of years ago the issue was done in my eyes. he can’t coach, and he doesn’t graduate players. i thought we expected more at cal.
http://stanford.scout.com/2/618619.html
Comment by J.R. — February 27, 2008 @ 5:20 am
Let’s be honest, there are two words that make it clear Cal can no longer afford to give Braun more time: Mike Montgomery. Is there any doubt that a Montgomery-coached Bears team would make the NCAA tournament next year? Or compete for a Pac-10 title if one Ryan Anderson could be coaxed to stay another year? Montgomery is clearly reluctant to leave the Bay Area, but eventually, jobs like Indiana will be too enticing to resist.
Excellent post, Ragnarok, by the way. Go Bears!
Comment by California Pete — February 27, 2008 @ 7:28 am
Mike Montgomery to Indiana…that is an interesting thought. Now as much as he may be reluctant to leave the Bay Area, the color scheme at Indiana would work better for him than the color scheme at Cal. He seems to do much better with red programs (Montana, Stanford, Indiana) than with blue and gold programs (Golden State, Cal).
Comment by Montezuma's Revenge — February 27, 2008 @ 8:25 am
Avinash,
UC Berkeley is still an academic institution, and Cal Athletics is focused on representing the university through character men like Braun and Tedford.
You’re correct, but the difference between Tedford and Braun is that because Tedford wins, he sets an example for people to aspire to, whereas Braun’s example is far less valuable because far fewer people pay attention to it. Furthermore, if people do pay attention to Braun, it may be merely as an example of “ethical guys finish last”.
Character is nice and all, but if you’re not at least going to try and win, what’s the point of having a big, expensive basketball program at all? We might as well be the University of Chicago.
Comment by ragnarok — February 27, 2008 @ 9:08 am
Braun out. Mike Montgomery in. Done and done.
Comment by CalBandGreat — February 27, 2008 @ 9:11 am
J.R.,
Those graduation statistics you cited probably deserve an entire post to respond to them, but I’ll try and state the short version here.
First of all, those graduation rates include players who left school early for the NBA. I would never begrudge someone for leaving school to take advantage of an excellent professional opportunity such as the NBA, and their failure to get a degree doesn’t bother me. It seems to me that the point of attending college should be to get an education, preparing oneself for the professional world. A degree, while an important public mark of education, is still just a piece of paper.
However, the real reason that Braun’s graduation rate is horrible is because of all of the players that have transfered out. Vander Laan, Legans, Bond, Kately, McGuire, Langford, etc. As far as I know, these players all left Cal for basketball-related reasons (or at least non-academic reasons), and even if they eventually got their degree somewhere else (and I don’t know of any who haven’t), they still count against Cal’s graduation rate. The high transfer rate is definitely a black mark against Braun’s program, but I feel it’s a coaching (or recruiting) issue, and not an academic issue.
Of course, I haven’t mentioned David Paris, who, to the best of my knowledge, did flunk out of Cal (I can’t verify such information). That IS an academic issue, but I’m willing to accept one academic casualty in 12 years. It probably still leaves the basketball program with a better academic failure rate than the University in general.
Comment by ragnarok — February 27, 2008 @ 9:32 am
“Now, instead of simply throwing around names of basketball coaches, I’d like to be a little more systematic about this process”
Thank you for embarking on this type of analysis. It is much needed. Getting frustrated with Braun’s career at Cal can’t simply equate to conclusions like “we need Mike Montgomery” or “get Mark Few.” Unless Cal is able to spend the $ for a proven coach who can, with little doubt, fulfill our expectations at the high-major level, the most likely coach is going to come from the mid-major ranks.
With regards to your two criteria (1. Representing the University 2. Competitive Performance) and the standards/expectations you set forth, I don’t think many would argue with the bulk of it. There is certainly room for more specificity, but in general you got it.
The definition of specific expectations is a major component to coming up with a new job description for the Cal men’s basketball coach.
I think the harder question to answer though is how does Cal, if likely drawing form the pool of mid-major candidates, avoid a repeat of a Ben Braun-level coach.
One of the main things learned from the Braun era (or the Don Monson at Minnesota era, or Stan Heath at Arkansas, or…) is that success on the mid-major level does not by itself translate to success at the major conference level. With the enhanced recruiting possibilities (and possibilities that players will transfer to seek more playing time or go pro) come new decisions to be made as to how to develop a consistent level of success.
The search for candidates should go beyond who reached the sweet 16 this year or what coach pulled off an shocking upset. Winning a couple notable games in the tournament can’t simply be taken at face value as indicative of a coach who would be the right fit for Cal. Obviously a sturdy win-loss record is important, playing competitively and beating very strong teams is important, but you really have to look at where Braun fell short at Cal to come up with the criteria for selecting a coach from the mid-major ranks.
I think it is a combination of these three elements:
1) very strong leadership abilities. This is a broad category that is wide ranging from how they deal with the administration, fans, media, and donors to how they connect and inspire both on a one-on-one basis with players and the team as a whole.
2) knowledge — tactical, instructional, and developmental skills. This goes from teaching the small details (i.e. footwork) to strategic dexterity both in-game and over the course of a season (and seasons).
3) can specifically layout their plan for how they can be successful at Cal. One of Braun’s main failings is that he made bad recruiting decisions and had poor roster management at the start of his career at Cal and even when he corrected some parts of this area, it became evident that he just wasn’t good enough for whatever reason (parts from #1 and #2 above) to execute that plan. If Sandy Barbour is looking at a mid-major coach where the school didn’t have access to the level of recruit that would come to Cal (like Braun at Eastern Michigan), how, specifically, does the coach intend to build a successful program at Cal. What kind of recruits? What kind of system? This is a crucial question.
I look forward to reading your further posts on this topic.
Comment by smokeyrover — February 27, 2008 @ 10:59 am
thanks for bringing up another great point…the high number of transfers is extremely alarming in my opinion. not a # i’d cite when defending braun. yes, the graduation rate #’s include what seem to be misleading information….but its the same system everyone used, so side by side comparisons are valid. Plus this rate is easily cited and embarrassing nonetheless.
Comment by J.R. — February 27, 2008 @ 12:13 pm
But is it really realistic to expect 1 Pac-10 title every decade? On average it works out, but that either assumes that all the teams are roughly equal, or that Cal isn’t one of the schools that never wins a title. Because realistically, Arizona and UCLA are going to win the title more than 10% of the time.
Unfortunately, someone has to play the Devil Rays to the Yanks and BoSox of the conference.
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