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Cal Basketball: Has the Pandemic Resulted in a Lost Offseason for the Bears?
Coach Mark Fox appreciates the approach his Cal basketball team has maintained since last being on the court together 161 days ago. It was March 11 and the Golden Bears beat Stanford in the first round of the Pac-12 tournament at Las Vegas.
The next morning the remainder of the season was canceled, an early casualty of COVID-19.
“Our team has had a really good perspective through the whole thing,” Fox said this week. “They’ve been really poised and patient and mature about it. There’s frustrating times for all of us. It’s about keeping the right mindset and then navigating what comes our way.”
Fox, beginning his second season as the Bears’ coach, turned philosopher for a moment while talking about the pandemic.
“All fires turn to ashes, and this one will, too,” he said. “We just hope that nobody gets burned along the way.”
But while every player on the roster is healthy right now, according to Fox, he worries that such a long stretch away from the court has unavoidable consequences.
“I think the biggest challenge is how much time we’ve missed and how quickly we can get back to form,” he said. “And then can we make the improvements we really had wanted to make in the offseason?”
The pandemic's latest victim for college basketball players is a lost offseason.
The Bears won 14 games last season, a leap from eight each of the two previous years, but Fox's program is still in its infant stages and has miles to go to pull even with the Pac-12's upper echelon. The spring and summer months would have been critical in terms of development, with players expected to improve themselves both physically and from a skill standpoint.
Instead, most players have been at home, taking classes remotely while trying to find ways to train on their own. Some of them still haven’t returned to campus, including sophomore guard Dimitrios Klonaras, who remains in Greece. Sophomore center Lars Thiemann has just arrived from home in Germany and must be quarantined for two weeks before interacting with coaches or teammates.
Players who are back on campus cannot even get together for a shoot-around at an outdoor court because they are not allowed to share a basketball. Mostly, it’s weight lifting and conditioning. “Baby steps,” Fox said.
In the meantime, he already has seen things trend in the wrong direction.
“The few that have returned, there was a very obvious erosion and deterioration to their physical ability,” Fox said. "They would admit that four-and-a-half months off was really tough on them physically. How long it takes to recover from that and then be in position to make gains? That’s the question.”
Fox isn’t being critical of his players.
“It’s one of the consequences of what we’re going through,” he stressed. “Is it different every place? Yeah.”
For instance, Fox’s son, Parker, plays at Clemson, where the workout schedule is farther along than in Berkeley. “They were behind when they started, too. They’ve just had some time to catch up,” Fox said.
The Bears will have plenty of catching up to do.
“It’s really hard to train at the level these kids have to train and the elite level of conditioning they reach during the season . . . to maintain that at home or without facilities or without the right nutrition,” Fox said.
Cal’s training staff has generated workouts designed to allow players to gradually return to form without risking soft-tissue injuries.
"You can imagine someone who weighs 240 pounds and you don’t change directions for 4 1/2 months, you start moving again and all your joints are going to hurt,” Fox notes.
Just being around some of his players, even on a limited basis, has been a nice reminder of more familiar times.
“I’ve watched them lift and been around them,” Fox said, “and that’s been unbelievable for both my spirit and theirs.”
Baby steps.
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Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo
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