Cal's New Players Strive to Build Unity in Summer Basketball Workouts

Five transfers and four freshmen begin to blend their talents in Cal's offseason practices currently underway

Cal head coach Mark Madsen | Photo by Jake Curtis

Cal’s men’s basketball team is in the midst of its eight-week summer workout program that spans June and July, and these days the offseason practices are more important than ever.

Like most college teams, the Bears have had a lot of roster turnover from this past season.  Cal returns only one starter from its 2025-26 squad (Lee Dort), and it’s good bet that four of the players who transferred to Cal in the offseason will be starters in 2026-27. Some of the incoming four freshmen figure to get playing time as well. In many ways, it’s a whole new team.

Cal head coach Mark Madsen is taking this time in June and July to introduce the Bears’ offensive and defensive principles to the newcomers, build team chemistry and begin to determine which combination of players work well together.

“The summer is vital right now,” Madsen said after a practice this week. “When I played 30 years, a long time ago, teams weren’t allowed to do anything with the players in the summer. But we absolutely need it now because there’s so much movement across the board in college basketball.

“Every team has turnover. Every team is incorporating new guys. Every team is installing a new system, so you need time.”

Last season’s Cal team featured some transfers who were highly touted high school players but played little as freshman before becoming standout players after transferring to Cal. That was particularly true of Justin Pippen, who seldom played as a Michigan freshman, but became a standout as the Bears starting point guard as a sophomore.

“This year’s group we have some guys that have proven themselves a little bit,” said Madsen. “We have other guys with something to prove.”

Four of the five transfers Cal brought in this offseason were four-star prospects coming out of high school.

Jake Wilkins, a transfer from Georgia, and Amier Ali, a transfer from Mississippi State who earlier played for Arizona State, were highly recruited high school players who have had limited success in college so far. Madsen is hoping they can emerge like Pippen did.

One of Madsen’s strengths is his ability to build confidence in his players, and that attracted Ali, who has been trying to find the right setting.

So why is Cal right for Ali?

“Obviously coach Madsen, great coach, great person as well,” Ali said. “I wanted to come to a coach who would build confidence in me and bring me up, but be hard on me at the same time.”

And what do you want to get out of the summer session?

“Team-wise I want to build chemistry,” Ali said. “Just by doing stuff off the court and on the court I feel like will help us in close games. We’re playing in the ACC, so we’re going to have to be tied together when we go on the road . . . We got to stay composed and stay together.”

The Bears will need to be greater than the sum of their parts because with the loss of four starters – Pippen, Dai Dai Ames, Chris Bell and John Camden – nearly every preseason prediction expects Cal to finish near the bottom of the ACC standings this coming season.

CBS Sports picked the Bears to finish 16th in the 18-team ACC in its projections in early June. But Cal was picked to finish 16th in the preseason ACC poll last season and the Bears finished tied for ninth, recorded 22 wins overall, had wins over North Carolina, UCLA and Miami, and nearly reached the NCAA tournament.

Madsen is already introducing team concepts, which is a little different from what Wilkins experienced at Georgia.

“Here we put in plays early,” Wilkins said. “We want to get on our stuff as soon as we can so everybody knows going into the fall.”

That is the priority during the summer, according to Madsen.

“The biggest thing we’re looking to do right now is we’re looking to install a lot of our principles and install our system,” Madsen said. “We started the first two or three weeks focusing heavily on defense, and now we’re starting to sprinkle in some of our offensive principles. So there’s learning, there’s bringing together new players to our existing roster that came back to there’s a period of time where you bring it all together.”

This is the time when the team is put together. Madsen said he has not thought about a player rotation yet, and there are a lot of options for a starting lineup.

What he sees this summer will play a major role in which Cal players step on the floor for the November 3 opener against Cal State Bakersfield.