Cal has an interesting basketball history. Between the 1920’s and the 1950’s, the Bears were a very solid program, culminating in the brilliant run of Pete Newell.
Newell was only there from 1956 to 1960,
but in those years, he was an amazing coach. In his first year, he finished 17-8. In his second season, the Bears made it to the West Regional finals, losing to Bill Russell and San Francisco, 50-46. The next year, they lost to Elgin Baylor’s Seattle team, 66-62.
In 1959, Cal won the NCAA Tournament and in the following season, they lost to Ohio State.
Newell retired for health reasons after that season but many consider him the greatest pure coach in the history of college basketball. One wonders what would have happened in the old PAC-8 had he gone head-to-head with Wooden in the 1960’s.
Then Cal was mostly irrelevant until Lou Campanelli showed up and made the Golden Bears reasonably competitive before he was fired for being abusive to his players. Todd Bozeman took over for Campanelli and with future Hall of Famer Jason Kidd running the show, knocked Bobby Hurley, Grant Hill and Duke out of the 1993 NCAA tournament (Bozeman flamed out spectacularly at Cal after a scandal in 1996).
Ben Braun, Mike Montgomery and Cuonzo Martin all had some success between 1996 and 2017, but since then, things have not gone well. Wkying Jones posted a 16-47 record over two years. Mark Fox managed 38-83 between 2019 and 2023. And now, Mark Madsen runs the show. In his third season, he’s currently sporting a 27-38 mark.
One of the interesting things about Cal is that the Bears are willing to hire coaches from their biggest rival. That happens to a limited extent in the Triangle where some programs hire coaches of non-revenue teams who attended or worked for other Triangle schools, but it’s quite rare in football or basketball. Vic Bubas and Bucky Waters went to and coached for NC State before coming to Durham, but that’s about it. It’s almost inconceivable that Duke or UNC would hire someone to coach basketball or football who started at the other end of 15-501 and NC State fans would never tolerate hiring a coach from UNC.
Cal has hired both Montgomery, who was a gifted coach, and Madsen, who played for him at Stanford. It’s unusual from our point of view here. Even last year’s best Bear, Andrej Stojakovic, made a cross-bay transfer, going from Stanford to Cal (he’s since transferred again, this time to Illinois).
Madsen was a solid player at Stanford, going with the 29th pick in the 2000 NBA Draft to the Los Angeles Lakers. He got an immense compliment from Shaquille O’ Neal who said that “he used to beat me up in practice.” They called him Mad Dog for a reason.
As a head coach, he started at Utah Valley and was there for four years. UVU was and most remains anonymous in basketball but in his final year, Madsen led the Wolverines to a 28-9 record and the NIT semifinals.
So far, Cal has been a tougher slog.
Madsen took over in 2023-24 as the PAC-12 was falling apart and the game was being turned upside down by NIL and the new transfer rules.
In his first season, he finished 13-19 and last season, he finished 14-19.
This year?
To be determined.
Cal loses Stojakovic (17.9 PPG), Jeremiah Wilkinson (15.1 PPG), Jovan Blacksher (10.5 PPG), BJ Omot (10.8 PPG), Mady Sissoko (8.3 PPG), Joshua Ola-Joseph (7.2 PPG), Christian Tucker (1.7 PPG), Spencer Mahoney (1.5 PPG), Gus Larson (1.4 PPG), Devin Curtis, Vladimir Pavlovic, Jaden Goodall and Hugh Vandeweghe.
Madsen gets back 6-7 senior Rytis Petraitis (8.2 PPG), 6-2 senior DJ Campbell (7.8 PPG), 6-10/245 senior Lee Dort (3.6 PPG) and 6-1 Stephon Marbury II, who redshirted.
From the portal, the new Bears include 6-8/220 grad student John Camden (16.8 PPG at Delaware), 6-10/235 Milos Ilic (14.4 PPG at Loyola Maryland), 6-7 senior Chris Bell (9.3 PPG at Syracuse), 7-0/210 sophomore Dhiaukuei Manyiel Dut (1.1 ppg at Georgia State) 6-5 Knightdale native and grad student Nolan Dorsey (9.1 PPG at Campbell), 6-2 junior Dai Dai Ames (8.7 PPG at Virginia), 6-8/240 Sammie Yeanay (2.6 PPG at Grand Canyon), 6-11/235 Mantas Kocanas (2.0 PPG at Florida Atlantic) and 6-3 Justin Pippen (1.6 PPG at Michigan)
There are only two freshmen: 6-0 Semetri Carr and 6-5 Jovanni Ruff.
Clearly a lot of what happens for Cal will come from the portal haul. Some of those guys we know at least somewhat: Bell was at Syracuse and has a reputation as a shooter, Ames was at Virginia last year and Camden spent two years at Virginia Tech, but you probably didn’t know or forgot because he was a non-factor on a couple of mediocre teams.
Pippen you may have some awareness of because of his father, Scottie, who is an NBA legends but the younger Pippen didn’t do much at Michigan last year.
We admire Madsen’s toughness. We like what he did at Utah Valley, because it’s kind of uncommon for a former NBA player to succeed as a college coach. John Thompson did well, but he started at the bottom and worked his way up. It’s not always an advantage and in fact, it might be a disadvantage. A guy like Dusty May has to learn everything from the ground up and a guy like Madsen doesn’t have that, at least unless he chooses to, as Johny Dawkins and Damon Stoudamire did.
What he does have is a hard-nosed attitude that he can transfer to his players. We thought Cal played hard in Cameron last year though they were never going to win that game. And they have work to do to replace Stojakovic and Wilkinson, who was really quite good as a freshman.
Several ACC schools are dealing with a do-less-with-more mentality, Florida State, BC, Stanford and Cal among them.
They’re all finding ways, or trying to find ways, to compete despite significant disadvantages. For Cal, the best way ultimately may be the Mad Dog way: fight like hell and make your opponents work their very hardest to beat you. It worked for Gary Williams when he was at Maryland and it might work for Madsen at Cal as an ACC school. However, only time will tell. Cal has a lot of work to do to get back to the glory days.
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