As I’m sure you’ve all heard, Sandy Barbour has pulled off yet another great hire in former Stanford and Golden State Warriors coach Mike Montgomery. This comes as a bit of a surprise—in the week since Ben Braun has been fired, names such as Denver Nuggets assistant Mike Dunlap, Washington State coach Tony Bennett, Villanova coach Jay Wright and Pitt coach Jamie Dixon have oft been mentioned as leading potential candidates. St. Mary’s coach Randy Bennett and Nevada coach Mark Fox were also possibilities.

But none would’ve been as perfect of a fit as Montgomery is for the job. He is a track record of success at the college level, he has coached in the NBA (albeit not so successfully), he can compete with the Lute Olsons and Tim Floyds to lure recruits, and he has the name to generate the type of excitement for the program—both within the Bay Area community and on the national stage—that has been absent for years.

Whether Montgomery will have actual success here remains to be seen—he is a grind-it-out, controlling, defensive-minded coach that will be very unlike anything the Bears are used to. Jerome Randle for one won’t be too pleased—if he thought he couldn’t play his type of ball in Braun’s system, he hasn’t experienced anything yet. Regardless, in terms of rejuvenating the program, Montgomery is pretty much perfect.

The NIT might be the last thing on your radar at this point in time, but low and behold, the Cal men’s basketball team is drawing some national attention. During the first half of its 68-66 win over New Mexico last Wednesday, Jerome Randle raced up the floor on a Bears fastbreak with one man between him and a trailing Patrick Christopher. Randle passed the ball off the backboard to Christopher who caught it for the slam dunk, sending the one thousand or so Cal fans in attendance into a frenzy. Sunday night, it was No. 1 on SportsCenter’s Top 10 plays of the week, not including NCAA Tournament plays. Jamal Boykin had said after the game, “Hopefully that makes the Top 10!” Well, what do you know?

I hope everybody is enjoying March Madness, the best time of year. Pac-10 teams have performed predictably, with the exception of USC which thoroughly disappointed me and pretty much busted the midwest region of my bracket. Oregon and Arizona never looked impressive in conference play, so there was no reason to expect them to survive even the first round of Tourney play. Washington State, on the other hand, is looking dominant, and how about Brook Lopez’s clutch baseline fadeaway that gave Stanford the win in overtime? I wouldn’t mind seeing either of those teams go deep into the Tournament.

But UCLA. That’s a different story. I couldn’t care less if a Bruins loss anytime before the national title game would bust my bracket. After seeing this for the third time this season, I would love to see UCLA finally fall flat on its face.

Simply ridiculous.

So Cal has accepted a bid to the National Invitation Tournament and will play No. 5-seed New Mexico on Wednesday at 8 p.m. Since the Bears are the higher seed at No. 4, they will be hosting the Lobos at Haas Pavilion, though with a win, they will likely go on the road as their next opponent will be the winner between No. 1-seed and 2007 NCAA Tournament runner-up Ohio State and No. 8-seed UNC Asheville.

There is really no way to spin it so that a berth to the NIT is a laudable accomplishment. Having said that, there are a few reasons fans should still make it out to Haas Pavilion for one last time this year: (Click here to read more…)

So the Cal men’s basketball team will indeed be playing in the postseason… the National Invitation Tournament that is. The Bears will be hosting New Mexico on Wednesday at 8 p.m.

More to come…

If Cal men’s basketball coach Ben Braun doesn’t make some huge adjustments in the second half, this game could well become a blowout.

The halftime score stands at UCLA 39, Cal 25. (Click here to read more…)

Wow. How about Ryan Anderson’s shot? Two seconds on the shot clock, Jerome Randle inbounds the ball to Ryan who comes off the screen, elevates and swishes a deep fallaway three just when the Cal men’s basketball team looked like it was going to falter at the end, just as it has all season long.

Actually, I was bracing myself for a loss since midway through the first half. The Bears came out a little flat on both ends of the floor. The defense for much of the game, especially the first half and the beginning of the second, was horrendous. Washington was able to penetrate to the rack with ease, and as soon as Ryan Appleby started draining his threes, I thought to myself how wrong my prediction was. (Click here to read more…)

There are a couple reasons why there is no way the Cal men’s basketball team is losing to Washington in the first round of the Pac-10 tournament on Wednesday at 6 p.m. (Click here to read more…)

During the first half of the Cal men’s basketball team’s 70-49 blowout loss to Washington State on Thursday, it didn’t help the Bears that guard Patrick Christopher–the team’s second-leading scorer–bruised his left hip and limped into the locker room at halftime. He attempted to play in the second half, but the pain limited him to just five minutes in the period. (Click here to read more…)

Cal men’s basketball officials cleared Jerome Randle yesterday for practice and said that he will be available for Thursday’s game against Arizona in Tucson, Ariz.
Randle suffered a concussion in a collision with Ryan Anderson in Saturday’s 92-70 loss to Oregon at Haas Pavilion. In addition, he has an ankle sprain and a thigh contusion, but neither seemed to bother him against the Ducks, as he scored a team-high 17 points.
Randle better be healthy, because he will probably have to deal with the Wildcats’ leading-scorer, Jerryd Bayless.