Coach Justin Wilcox Says Cal's Recruiting Issues Will Resolve With Answers on Pac-12 Alignment
Coach coach Justin Wilcox says he understands why potential recruits have questions about the future of the Pac-12 and the Bears’ place in it, but is confident many of their questions will be answered before signing day on Feb. 1.
The Bears had two recruits de-commit this week, including four-star safety R.J. Jones of Bellflower, Calif., who told 247Sports, “I don’t know where Cal is going to be in a couple years.”
Wilcox is not permitted to talk about specific recruits by name, but he stressed that while this is a legitimate concern he’s not losing sleep over it.
“I don’t get upset with them,” Wilcox said of 17-year-old high school athletes trying to navigate a complicated recruiting landscape. “Put yourself in their shoes. There’s a lot of information out there — there’s a lot of articles, a lot of media members, a lot of talking heads that have a lot of different opinions.
“They hear all that. Or their parents hear all that or their coaches. I don’t judge them for that.”
The announcement late last month that USC and UCLA intend to join the Big Ten Conference in the fall of 2024 has opened a floodgate of speculation.
Will Oregon be next to depart?
Or Washington or Stanford?
Will the Pac-12 survive, and what might it look like?
Where does Cal fit into the puzzle?
Wilcox understands why anyone would have questions, and in particular young men making the biggest decisions of their lives. What can resolve this muddle?
“More information and clarity is the only thing that really solves it but I feel really good about our leadership and what’s going to be happening,” Wilcox said Saturday after the Bears’ second scrimmage of fall camp.
“There’s a lot to be determined. Signing day is a long way away. We don’t get real emotional one way or the other with recruiting decisions.
“It’s significant. It’s a topic that’s being discussed in every recruiting discussion right now. Understandably so. I think we’re going to have more information before signing day. So some of those things should be able to clear themselves up.”
Recruiting has always been a challenging business, but the process is now crowded by other evolving issues.
“It’s changed a lot,” Wilcox said. “Any one of these changes — whether it’s what’s happening with the conferences or the transfer portal or NIL — any one of those things within a given year would have been massive.
"But you kind of cram them into a really short time period, it just feels a lot different. I think everybody’s kind of doing their best to sort through all of it. It’s all well-intentioned but it’s different than it used to be, I’ll put it that way.”
Asked if he believes the Bears’ situation is being used against them in recruiting by rival schools, Wilcox said he doesn’t devote much time to worrying about that.
“I wouldn’t say anything’s off limits in recruiting, unfortunately,” he said. “Some schools recruit with more of a message about themselves and what they do. And then there’s some schools that don’t.
“We try to talk about Cal and what we do. We know the type of players and people that we’re looking for. That’s just the world of recruiting.”
Likewise, Wilcox said he doesn’t wrestle with the question of whether Cal is potentially more greatly affected by the uncertainty of the Pac-12’s future than anyone else.
“My job is to help coach our team to be as good as we can possibly be. To recruit the players, to track and retain staff members. To get those people to work together toward a common goal. That’s what I’m focused on,” he said. These things that I don’t have any control over, I try not to — I can’t say I’m perfect — I try not to spend a lot of time on it.”
So he doesn’t lose sleep when the Bears get bad news on the recruiting front?
“Can’t. We’ve got practice, players to help develop, a lot of things we’re working on to try and improve ourselves,” he said. “We’re going to continue to recruit, full-throttle. The atmosphere in college football right now is unique, for everybody.”
So, for the short term, until things are sorted out, what is his message to players the Bears are recruiting?
“There’s going to be information going that I think will help answer a lot of their questions. And we feel really confident about our position as an institution, as a football program, where we’re going,” Wilcox said. “We know who we are, we know what we’re looking for. We have our goals.
"We have great support from our athletics department, from our constituent groups and so our job is to coach our players really well, treat our players really well and go win games.”
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The Bears held their second extensive scrimmage of fall camp on Saturday morning and Wilcox acknowledges in the video atop this story that the team still has much improvement to make.
“I thought it was just OK,” he said the scrimmage. “The effort was good but we can certainly do better. We need to continue to kind of gain rhythm in every phase.
“Like every scrimmage, you’re going to have some good moments but we need practice. We’ve got to see improvement from every unit on the field.”
Wilcox discusses the progress of quarterback Jack Plummer, the first-year transfer from Purdue, in the video below:
The Bears have two more weeks before their opening game Sept. 3 at home against UC Davis. Saturday was their final public scrimmage before practices are closed beginning early next week.
Plummer in the video below provides his evaluation of Saturday’s action. He said he was happy with the way the offense moved the ball but it needs to finish better.
One highlight was backup quarterback Kai Millner’s 31-yard touchdown pass to Tommy Christakos, who made a nice over-the-shoulder catch in the end zone.
The kick game showed promise, with starter Dario Longhetto successfully converting a 55-yard field goal. Backups Michael Luckhurst and Nick Lopez connected from 51 and 48 yards, respectively.
Lu-Magia Hearns and Collin Gamble had interceptions for the defense.
Center Matthew Cindric shares his thoughts on the scrimmage in the video below.
Cover photo of Cal coach Justin Wilcox
Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo
