When Cal Women's Basketball Head Coach Lindsay Gottlieb was a student at Brown University, she'd call her father the night before a big test, looking for advice. After gently verifying with his daughter that she knew her stuff, Gottlieb's father would encourage her to do something he knew she loved: watch whatever basketball game was on TV that night.

"Little did he know that he was actually prepping me for my career!" Gottlieb exclaims.

Luckily for Cal Women's Basketball fans, Gottlieb's father's words were good career advice for the now-head-coach of the Golden Bears, who has notched a record of 103-33 (.757) since her 2011 instatement.

Gottlieb is so approachable that if you didn't know who she was, you might guess that she was a student at Cal. The young coach typically dresses in basketball sweats. Stepping into the expansive, beautifully designed women's basketball offices (wood paneled walls, lounges with flat-screen TVs...So. Many. Rooms.) you might not guess that the tall, grinning, simply-dressed young woman standing in the lounge surrounded by a lively group of taller-than-average young women reigns supreme. She's only 37 years old and she's already made Cal a national presence. In 2013, just her 2nd year at the helm, she led the Golden Bears farther than any team in school history.

The youngest of four children, Gottlieb grew up in a family of lawyers. She studied Political Science as an undergraduate at Brown, "probably because our dinner conversations were either about somebody's case, or sports."

The day after she graduated from Brown, "I got my first coaching job offer at Syracuse. It was pretty neat."

As a college senior, Gottlieb's coaches knew that she wanted to become a coach. While her teammates were applying for jobs at consulting firms and grad schools, Gottlieb took a different route.

"I sent a letter to every women's basketball coach in America. I said, 'This is who I am, and I want to get into coaching.'"

Gottlieb would return to her mailbox one day to find a personalized letter from Tara VanDerveer.

"It said, 'Our game needs people like you. We don't have a job, but keep going after your dream.'"

The legendary Stanford coach wasn't the only one to reply; Gottlieb still has letters from many of the coaches ("the really big time ones") who wrote her back, including UConn Coach Geno Auriemma.

"Everyone told me, 'You've got to go to the Final Four to network and meet people.'"

So in 1999, Gottlieb bought a plane ticket to the final rounds of the Women's NCAA Tournament, hoping to meet coaches who might want to hire her in the future. While her best friend from high school competed -- she started at point guard for Duke, whose team had upset Tennessee -- Gottlieb fielded her first job offer.

It was from then-Santa Clara head coach Karen Horstmeyer, who would go on to coach the Cal women years later, and who still has a connection with Gottlieb and the program. ("Our kids work her camps, she's been a wonderful supporter. We've maintained a relationship ever since.")

The position was unpaid, however. Horstmeyer cautioned Gottlieb that moving across the country, particularly to an expensive place like Northern California, would be tough with no income, but to use the position as a backup plan if she couldn't find what she was looking for.

While Gottlieb wasn't picky about where she went, she had a focused understanding of what she wanted.

"I'll move anywhere, I'll do anything. It's about the right situation."

Soon after she first met Horstmeyer, Gottlieb received an offer from Marianna Freeman at Syracuse, to be a third assistant and concurrently work on a Masters degree.

"She said, 'I read your letter and thought: I need to get this young person up here for an interview.' The other people on that staff are still some of my best friends and mentors in the profession. I definitely consider myself very lucky."

Gottlieb joined Freeman's staff right after she graduated from Brown.

Now, she advises aspiring coaches to have an open ("there's no one protocol") but

discerning approach to their career.

"You want to be in good situations where you can learn from people."

When Joann Boyle brought Gottlieb to Richmond as an assistant, Gottlieb was just 24 years old. Her meteoric rise through the coaching ranks included her first head coaching position at UC Santa Barbara in 2008, then her second at Cal in 2011, after which she led her 2013 team to the very place where she had first hoped that a coach would take a chance on her.

"I would say the success we have is so humbling," Gottlieb says. "It sounds cliché, but I think all coaches I respect understand it's about the process. Doing things right every day, treating people right every day. If you happen to have success it's a byproduct of that."

Gottlieb's early and unparalleled success at Cal puts her in a unique position. Many of the coaches who mentored her have never reached nearly the heights to which she has taken the Cal team.

Two months after Gottlieb took her team to the Final Four, she was on the phone with Joe McKeown, the head coach at Northwestern. He heartily congratulated her on the run, proud that a former assistant he knew from her days at Richmond (and his at the helm of George Washington's program) had asserted herself as a national force. For any coach, particularly a seasoned competitor like Gottlieb, brushing past praise and focusing instead on internally-trained criticism...in this case, "I wish we'd gotten Louisville", is more than natural. Today, Gottlieb grins and somewhat sheepishly recalls the reply of a man who had a couple decades of experience on her.

"He said, 'Lindsay, I've been coaching for 25 years and we've never made a Final Four.'"

Particularly as a young coach, Gottlieb remains mindful to temper the driven focus and tendency to introspectively critique that have paved the road for her success.

"I understand that there are some great coaches who've never gone to a Final Four or won championships," she says. "I don't think our program is better than others because of that."

Furthermore, she has a long list of people to whom she feels grateful in her coaching journey. Not only does Gottlieb continue to link them to her ability as a coach, she sees them as permanent fixtures in her life, affecting any future achievements she reaches.

"I would never be the head coach here if it weren't for Joann (Boyle)," Gottlieb says. "I would never be the head coach here if it weren't for Devanei Hampton and Ashley Walker. To me, any success we have or I have is a reflection on them."

When Gottlieb led her team to the Final Four, Boyle (Gottlieb's mentor, who she replaced at Cal) was right there beside her in New Orleans, hanging out with the team, writing notes of encouragement. Watching players you recruited play at the highest national level possible under someone else could probably make even the most reasonable person bitter. But Boyle, according to Gottlieb, could not have been a bigger source of support.

"There was not one ounce of anything but positivity from her. It's pretty cool when you have personal relationships that trump wins and losses."

Strong personal connections come naturally for Gottlieb, whose family encouraged her to pursue areas that she independently chose.

If you are walking the streets of Brooklyn, you might just see two little boys running around in Cal jerseys. One of them might declare that he's Stephen Curry. The other might declare something else.

"I'm Layshia Clarendon!"

The tiny self-pronounced basketball professionals belong to the oldest sister of Cal Women's Basketball head coach Lindsay Gottlieb, and are only the youngest examples of the support her family of predominantly law professionals has consistently shown for her career.

"My parents were incredible with encouraging us to do what we love, and really allowing us to excel and be great at those things, because we wanted to," she says. "I think there was an atmosphere in our house of caring about academics because it's interesting to talk about high level things, not because we needed an SAT score. Similarly, advising us to pursue our passion in terms of a career and not something that might look good on paper."

While her mother passed away during her sophomore year at Brown, Gottlieb's father got to see his inadvertent career advice, to watch more basketball, realized.

"My father was at the Final Four, which ended up being just a few months before he passed away," Gottlieb says. "How cool is that, that he got to see it? And at the same time I think he would have been just as proud if I was coaching at a D3 school, not on a national stage."

Her mother is remembered through her basketball career as well.

"My older siblings will be like, 'She would love your team. She would love Boyd!'"

Gottlieb's sister, the one with the two little boys who run around Brooklyn in their Cal jerseys, as well as her other siblings, "are total supporters."

Unsurprisingly, it comes naturally to Gottlieb to foster a familial atmosphere within her own team that seems to mirror the unconditional support she received from her siblings and parents.

Her house is open to her players, who come over "quite a bit."

"One thing when I got the job and met with everyone on the team, they all sort of said we want a relationship with you away from basketball. We want to come over to your house when it's not just for recruiting."

We are rockin' the party hats if I do say so myself. #HappyBdayCharms #CalWbbFam pic.twitter.com/TKzfm4KPaW- Lindsay Gottlieb (@CalCoachG) May 2, 2015

Gottlieb agreed with her players, and immediately made their desire for an unconditional relationship that transcends basketball a reality.

"The idea of them being able to come over to watch a game on TV or to have whatever, ice cream sundae night at my house, I think that's just important, part of who we are and what we do. That's not going to be only on a year when we go to the Final Four and win thirty games."

It isn't hard to see the approach of a man who had such complete faith in his daughter's ability that he encouraged her to watch a basketball game instead of study for a final manifest in Lindsay Gottlieb.

"If they don't know that I care about them first, they're not going to hear me when it comes to X's and O's," she says. "They're all going to get a genuine caring and love and attention to what they need as a human being."

"That's just the only way I know."

There really is no better feeling as a coach than witnessing your players achieve their dreams, whatever those dreams may be.- Lindsay Gottlieb (@CalCoachG) April 16, 2015