Cal Basketball: Coach Mark Fox's Holiday Wish For his Players

Coach Mark Fox was happy about his Cal basketball team’s second straight win on Tuesday. But he couldn’t help but express feeling helpless to make the holidays a little better for his players.

Beginning Wednesday, players have three days off from organized team activities. Their Christmas will be unlike any other due to restrictions in place to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

They cannot travel home to be with family, which is not unusual this time of the year for players who live out of state or for international players. But the athletic department also cannot organize a team meal for all of them to enjoy together.

The entire scenario had Fox in a bad mood, even after the Bears’ 70-65 victory at Seattle.

“The next three days they’re not allowed to go home. That’s a massive sacrifice,” Fox said in the video above, which begins with him celebrating the win over Seattle that was achieved without leading scorer Matt Bradley (ankle sprain) and starting forward Grant Anticevich (appendectomy).

“Now, some of the international kids wouldn’t have gone home,” Fox said. “But even the kids that are local aren’t going to be allowed to go home because of the protocols that are in place and the sequester that’s required, the testing that’s required at the end of the sequester. And you can’t practice until you get through all that.”

Players will be delivered holiday meals Thursday and Friday. But they will eat those meals in their apartments, without company they’d probably enjoy having.

In other words, the holidays will be no different than virtually every other day the players are experiencing right now.

“The daily life of a player right now is no fun,” Fox said. “We don’t have a locker room, we don’t have a place where they can gather. They eat every meal out of a box. They don’t eat meals together. They’re separated all the time except the little bit we get to practice. They dress on the side while they’re sitting on the ground.

“They’ve got to get up in the morning and stick a thing down their nose at 8:45 and sit around and wait for the results until we can even have shoot-around. It’s a very isolated and difficult existence. Ir’s no fun for them.

“The fun is we still get to play the game that we love, represent the school we care deeply about. But the sacrifices they make to do that are immense.”

The courts at Haas Pavilion will be accessible to players over the next three days if they want to get some time shooting the basketball. But coaches aren’t permitted to be there and there will be no organized team activities until Saturday.

Like a lot of us, players will celebrate Christmas with their families via Zoom or Facetime. Fox understands that’s a poor substitute for the real thing.

“The next three days are going to be hard,” he said. “They need a break, they need to be with family, and they can’t be.”

The Bears will practice again starting Saturday in preparation for the resumption of the Pac-12 schedule. Cal, 5-4 overall but 0-2 in conference play, has games at Oregon on New Year’s Eve and Oregon State on Jan. 2.

COVER PHOTO BY KELLEY L. COX, USA TODAY

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo

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