Photo by Cody Glenn, USA Today
Cal Basketball: Coach Mark Fox Expects Bears to be Improved in 2020-21
“We expect to be better.”
It’s what first-year Cal coach Mark Fox almost has to say about his basketball team. What you'd expect him to say. And, if you’re a Cal fan, what you’d want him to say.
But, on the heels of a 14-18 record that represented a six-win improvement over the season before, Fox also knows it won’t come easily, much less automatically.
“We expected to be better each week throughout our season,” he said of the the 2019-20 campaign. “But if you look back we had a schedule for a team in rebuilding mold was probably not ideal. We did the best to manage that.”
That schedule included a trip to Madison Square Garden where the Bears played Duke and Texas. It also included Bay Area treks to USF and Santa Clara and a home date vs. Saint Mary’s, all of whom won at least 20 games. Cal lost all five of those games.
The Bears’ 2020-21 schedule “will be a little challenging, with more games away from home,” Fox said.
Cal will play Nov. 23-24 at the Hall of Fame Classic in Kansas City, a four-team event also including TCU, Northwestern and South Carolina, none of whom was expected to earn an NCAA tournament bid last Sunday.
Pairings have not been announced for the Hall of Fame event, and rest of Cal’s schedule has not been released.
“We’ll have to be better just to be the same,” Fox said. “Our expectation is our team will improve — the best way to have a better winter is to have a good summer.”
*** Here is Mark Fox after a late-season game talking about his reaction to the low expectations of others:
Here are a few more subjects Fox touched on during his teleconference with beat writers this week:
— As of now, every eligible player on the current roster is expected to be back next season, Fox said. That includes junior guard Juhwan Harris-Dyson, who missed the second half of this season due to academic issues.
“He’s focused on getting school work done,” Fox said. “We expect him and everyone to return. You never know what will happen down the road.”
— Fox said he was pleased that the NCAA last Friday instituted a recruiting ban through at least April 15, and also advised schools to suspend both official and unofficial campus visits by potential recruits.
“I’m thankful that the ban was put in place,” he said. “I was prepared to leave (on a recruiting trip) that afternoon (and) I was going to leave my coaches on campus. I didn’t want them at risk.
“Now everybody can concentrate on the things that are most important the next month. The only thing I can do (involving recruits) is work the phone.”
When recruiting does resume, Fox said the priorities are to find “another guy who can handle the ball , , , players who can shoot the ball and play with skill.”
— In the meantime, Fox said coaches will rarely be in the office or work face-to-face, and instead will use video-conferencing. The staff is beginning analytics work and film study, breaking down every aspect of Cal’s performance, including individual play, while also looking at other teams and trends in the game.
“We’re going to try and maximize this time period as much as we can,” Fox said. “Obviously, it's an ever-changing world. We’ll try to adjust as quickly as we can.”
— Fox isn’t currently worried about restrictions that would make it difficult for his players to do individual off-season workouts.
“This situation across the globe has kind of shut everybody down. That is exactly in line with what we want these guys to do,” he said. “All of them need some down time. They need time to mentally decompress and their bodies need time to recover.”
— With two wing players having already been signed for next season, Fox anticipates the Bears will be a more skilled team. But some of that improved skill will be he result of development, not merely recruiting.
“One thing we have to do — we will do — is we need to spend a ton of time shooting the ball,” he said. “Everybody on our team has to be a better shooter next year. I think we’ll be able to accomplish that.”
Cal ranked 11th in the Pac-12 in field-goal percentage (.421) although it was sixth in 3-point accuracy (.335). The Bears were the league's lowest-scoring team (63.2 points), although some of that was the result of an intentionally slow pace.
