Mark Fox is excited to rebuild Cal basketball
Cal men’s basketball hit the reset button back in the spring with the hiring of Mark Fox as their new head coach. With the 2019-20 season just around the corner, Fox is excited about the challenge that lies ahead of him, understanding that it won’t be easy to turn around a Golden Bears program that went 16-47 overall (5-31 in Pac-12 play) over the last two seasons.
“Well, it’s exhilarating,” Fox told the media last week about rebuilding the program. “The massive matrix that has to be put together is really a fascinating project for me. It’s exhilarating to figure out how to exactly put the infrastructure together that can allow us to succeed to making sure you have the right people in the right seats and the right personalities and obviously the personnel that goes into putting together a roster and all the things.
And so, it’s a massive undertaking, but it’s also one that I’m excited about when I wake up every day and so what I’m most excited about is trying to put all those pieces together and lay out that map and fortunately I don’t have to do it by myself. I do have a great staff and couldn’t be happier with that group right now.”
Touching more on the coaching staff, Fox likes what each member of his staff brings to the table. He feels that they complement each other well and should have no trouble working together over the course of the season.
“I have Andrew Francis who is working with our wing players and our perimeter players and Andrew is obviously a very experienced coach with time at Iowa and even back to his days at Villanova,” Fox said. “And certainly, every one of our full time coaches goes out and recruits and so they all have that responsibility. They all have the responsibility of scouting future opponents. And so that’s something that all three of the coaches will do. But Andrew has brought a real wisdom and experience level to our staff and a personality that I think our players enjoy.
“Chris Harriman comes to us from the University of New Mexico and obviously is a native of Australia. First came to the United States as a player and then worked for Rick Majerus and obviously I think had a great tenure with Coach Majerus. He works with our big players and he’s got a great energy level and a real experience that I think is very valuable for us and so he’s really done a nice job and then Marty Wilson, who had been here for less than a year when I came has obviously head coaching experience and was a really good guard back as a player and he’s also working with our perimeter players.
“So, those three have complimented each other very well. Probably as well as I could have anticipated and so I’m very excited about the chemistry within our staff. I think to this point it has been an advantage for us.”
In order to successfully jump start a program, a head coach needs to ensure that he has total buy in from his players as well as his coaches. So far, everything seems to be going pretty smooth on that end.
“Well the players have to join the team. The team is not joining the players,” Fox emphasized. “And so, I think every player has to have that approach. That they have to join the group. And to this point we’ve had terrific buy in from every kid on our roster.
“Obviously, the kids that were here last year know their way around Berkeley, but they don’t know exactly how we want to play or how we want to function, so from that standpoint no one had an advantage. They all had to make that step essentially together. And we’ve had tremendous buy in from them. They’ve been coachable, they’ve listened, and I know that they’re tired of the individual workouts as every team is. They’re ready to go five-on-five and they’re ready to practice and quite honestly I think the coaches are ready for that, too.”
Junior forward Grant Anticevich is really enjoying the process of learning Fox’s ways. The team motto “invest and attack” really resonates with him due to all the work that he and his teammates put in the offseason. After a summer of getting in shape and improving his craft, Anticevich is ready to start practicing with his teammates in full.
“Yeah, it’s awesome so far,” Anticevich said. “We have a new team, a lot of new players, new coaching staff obviously. We’ve just been doing a lot of learning and working hard this summer and improving our games. A lot of individual work and the phrase ‘invest and attack’ is something that we’ve all taken upon like we really put a lot into that every single day. Focusing, working hard. And then putting the days here and then putting the weeks together. So, it’s been great so far. I’ve learned a lot. I feel like I’ve really improved in the off-season. I think I speak for the whole team when I say that.”
Grad transfer guard Kareem South echoed Anticevich’s comments. Coming from a mid-major school, South is ready to get to work and prove that he belongs in the Pac-12.
“We’re coming in with a lot of energy because we’ve put in a lot of work this summer with the individual workouts and we’ve invested a lot,” South said. “For me personally, I really took good care of my body and really been challenged by the coaches to really just work on my game and so I’m really ready to see the results coming into the practice tomorrow.
“I’m ready and I’m excited to play in the Pac-12. It’s also known as a power five conference, so I know that there’s going to be an elite level of competition, which I’m ready for. I’ve always kinda been over-looked in high school and throughout college. So, it would be nice to showcase my talent at a higher level.”
While there’s a lot of excitement about working with this new coaching staff, the Cal players know it won’t be easy. The staff is demanding a lot from them and expecting that they do things the right way.
“Coach Fox and the rest of the coaching staff, they’re very intense, but they demand a lot out of us, and they have a sense of urgency behind everything that they do,” South said. “And that relates to how we come off and how we approach the game mentally.”
The intensity that the coaches are bringing is by design. They know rebuilding this program will not be easy and that it will require a lot of hard work. If everyone is able to put their best foot forward and give everything they got, the hope is that they’ll see better results than people anticipate.
“Well, our number one priority is just that we have got to establish just how hard we have to work every day and how we have to function every single minute of every day in order for us to be successful,” Fox said. “I think that our players understand that to win at this level takes a massive investment. And we have to make sure that every day, that we’re committed to doing the right things the right way, and we have to establish that everyone on our team and really everyone within our program is when they walk in the doors, comes in with their hard hat on ready to put the work in. And if we do that, those daily efforts will add up. But that has to be our priority. That that becomes really part of our DNA that when we show up, there’s a level of effort that we’re going to give.”
When looking ahead to the 2019-20 season, the one thing we can be certain of with Cal is that Mark Fox will not allow his team to slack off. They may not win a lot of games, but they will come out focused and ready to play. The days of wetting themselves and getting blown off the court are over. At least that’s the expectation with this new staff in charge.