Don’t tell me you had to ask who the Mad Dog is!  Why, it’s Mark Madsen, of course!

 

 

Yeah, that screams Mad Dog, all right.

And he wants you to know what he thinks about Mike Montgomery jumping ship.

Sometimes even the unthinkable can happen.  When I arrived at our NBA shoot-around today I learned that Mike Montgomery was going to be name head mens basketball coach at Stanford archrival: UC Berkeley.   Of course I called him to congratulate him but it went to voicemail right away so I left him a message–I left that message grudgingly. 

All I can remember about UC Berkeley is hostility.  One time one of our walk on players from the East Bay almost got into an altercation with a UC Berkeley fan even before the game started! I think the fan threatened a lawsuit or someting.   Then last year someone actually hijacked my Gmail email account!  The sad thing was that I could see when he was online through the "Chat" functionality from another one of my gmail accounts.  I "chatted" with him online to my "old" account and threatened to get the FBI, CIA and every law enforcement agency possible on his tail unless he gave me back my account.  Finally he releneted and sent me a message:  "You can have your email account back, the new password is "UCBerkeley." 

So maybe you can see why I’m confused about Mike going over there.  It’s just a bunch of low lifes over there at Cal. 

GRR THAT MARK MADSEN BOOOOO I CHOOSE TO REMEMBER YOU FOR THIS!

Wait, there’s more?

Of course I’m kidding.  While I’m serious about the email hijacking, Cal is an awesome place and a world class institution.  I was excited about maybe going there myself, but then they kind of stopped recruiting me.  One of my best high school teammates went there an loved it.  Actually one of my first text messages was to my brother in law who is doing a UC Berkely PHD.  I told him I was mad that his school was stealing our old coach! 

In fairness I think it’s great for everyone, and I think that the San Francisco Bay Area is going to have some great basketball in the coming years.  Trent Johnson is one of the real rising stars in the college game and one of the best minds I’ve ever had the privilege of playing for (he was assistant coach at Stanford while I played there.).  Now you’ve got Trent at Stanford, Mike over at Cal and a lot of great recruits comign out of Northern California.  UC Berkeley just took a major step in the right direction in getting back to the levels of Pete Newell and Jason Kidd.

Man, I just wanted to hate the guy, but now he’s offering an olive branch!  Those Stanford guys sure are tricky.  I don’t know whether laugh at his dancing or laugh with him.

As opposed to here.  The man everybody loves to hate managed to land on his feet by taking over as head coach of the Rice Owls.

Willis, the winningest coach in Rice history, was dismissed March 11 by his alma mater. He had a 219-246 career mark at the school and led the Owls to three NIT appearances, but the Owls stumbled to 3-27 this season.

Braun, who was the 1997 Pac-10 coach of the year, is now charged with turning around the program. He went 219-154 in 12 seasons at Cal and led the Golden Bears to five NCAA tournaments.

It sounds like a clear upgrade for the Owls when you see that the winningest head coach in Rice history managed as many wins as Ben Braun did at Cal, it just took him 92 more losses to do so.  So we wish Ben Braun the best of luck in his endeavors, but somehow we don’t see him coming back to haunt our Bears any time soon from the depths of Conference USA.  Nor do we really see this move keeping John Calipari up late at night.

Bonus: for even more fun, head to SI.com’s Rice Owls men’s basketball page, and notice all of the action shots are of the Southern Miss Golden Eagles pwning the Owls.

Brief update on Cal Football related stuff (okay, and I did get these off of BearInsider.  But I thought I’d link them anyways in case there are some readers who read blogs and not BearInsider.  And if you’re one of those people, I can’t blame you since I often find I’m a much happier and sane person when I avoid that forum on a daily basis - and especially after losses):

Justin Forsett is preparing for the draft by hitting the weights and hitting the books.  Juggling one’s academic goals, athletic goals, and being a jet-setter at the same time can be quite a challenge.   

And in quite possibly one of the shortest and mindless articles I’ve read in a while, the LA Times writes that Cal Football is on the shakiest ground (metaphorically, not literally) since Tedford’s arrival.  Why is it mindless?  Somehow, Cal Football’s supposed dismal outlook is in part because of the Kevin Hart hoax and Cal’s non-acquisition of Mr. Hart.  Riiiigggghhhhttt.  Everyone knows Cal didn’t offer or recruit Mr. Hart.  The non-acquisition of Mr. Hart can hardly be considered a loss to the program when it didn’t even want the kid.  If anything, the Hart Hoax was a benefit to the Cal Football program by giving the program national publicity.