July 17, 2009

David Fox

California athletic director Sandy Barbour has seen enough to know that her fans now are quite comfortable in seeing a former Stanford coach on the Golden Bears' bench.

The change only took a season.

An NCAA tournament appearance and 22 wins helped.

"Every now and then, there's a little jab," she says. "He did a great job of diffusing that one."

Indeed, Mike Montgomery's first season at Cal was such a success that the new question is whether fans can get used to the Bears competing for Pac-10 titles.

Cal hasn't been a consistent winner since the legendary Pete Newell retired from college coaching in 1960, a year removed from the 1959 NCAA championship and shortly after reaching the 1960 title game. The Bears have returned to the NCAA tournament only 11 times since and haven't won even a share of the Pac-10 regular-season title.

Last season's appearance could become an annual event for Cal under Montgomery, who took Stanford ? the Bears' archrival ? to the NCAAs 12 times in his 18 seasons there, including in each of his last 10 seasons. Next season, with four returning starters off a team that finished tied for third with 11 Pac-10 wins, Cal will be the league's preseason favorite.

"It was really a shot in the arm when we hired Mike Montgomery," Barbour says. "Hopes were high and expectations were elevated. But we thought it would take a little more time than Mike's initial season."

A different style

After the 2007-08 season, Cal fired Ben Braun on March 26. The Bears hired Montgomery, who was working with Fox Sports Net and as an assistant to Stanford athletic director Bob Bowlsby, on April 4. Less than a week after Cal hired Montgomery, Stanford coach Trent Johnson surprisingly left for LSU. That meant Stanford was without a coach while its archrival had the Cardinal's iconic former coach at the helm.

Cal will be a perimeter-oriented team once again next season, with guards Jerome Randle and Patrick Christopher and small forward Theo Robertson leading the way. They are three of the four returning starters, all seniors.

Starting center Jordan Wilkes, a 7-footer, is the only major loss from the roster. Truth be told, his output might not be missed; he averaged only 4.7 points and 4.0 rebounds and had just 14 blocks.

Cal again could struggle to put a capable low-post player on the floor, but it might not matter in the Pac-10. The league returns almost no established big men after players such as Washington's Jon Brockman, Arizona's Jordan Hill and USC's Taj Gibson graduated or turned pro early.

"We didn't have much of an inside game, and that's something we have to have," Montgomery says. "We shot the ball very well last year, which is why we won. ? And that's hard to sustain. We've got to get better defensively. We've got to establish a game in the paint."

Until that happens, Randle will make Cal go. A 5-foot-10 senior from Chicago, Randle averaged fewer than 10 points per game through his first two seasons. Then, in Montgomery's first season, Randle blossomed, averaging 18.3 points ? the highest for a returning player in the league ? and led the Pac-10 with 5.0 assists per game.

"I didn't have any idea that he was as good as he is," Montgomery says. "He's really a great shooter. He rarely misses.

"The thing for Jerome was some maturity and understanding what's good for him to be successful. He was under control. He knew when he made a mistake, and he tended not to make it again."

Montgomery saying Randle "rarely misses" is a bit of hyperbole ? but not that much. Randle shot 50.1 percent from the field, 46.3 percent from 3-point range and 86.3 percent from the free-throw line. He did this after shooting just 42.8 percent from the field as a sophomore. Randle also improved his assist-to-turnover ratio to 1.74-to-1 from 1.25-to-1.

"I heard he was really tough on point guards," Randle says of Montgomery. "But we jelled pretty good right off the bat. I always had a fiery coach growing up. I told him, 'If you feel you have to yell at me to get the point across, that's fine with me.'

"We hit it off as soon as he stepped on campus."

Christopher, the No. 5 returning scorer in the league at 14.5 points per game, teams with Randle to give the Golden Bears one of the best guard tandems in the nation. Christopher is another offense-minded player; he shot 35.8 percent from 3-point range and hit 83 percent of his free throws.

Robertson is the remaining member of Cal's "Big Three"; he averaged 13.1 points and hit 48.7 percent from 3-point range and 48.8 percent overall.

A big key for Cal will be how three key players recover from offseason surgeries. Robertson (hip) and sophomore guard Jorge Gutierrez (knee), whom Montgomery called his toughest player, already are on the mend. Most serious, though, might be the recovery of 6-8 forward Harper Kamp (knee), who will be critical to Cal's inside game.

Kamp was a reserve who saw a lot of time last season, and he seems likely to move into the starting lineup with Wilkes' departure. Kamp, like Wilkes, sometimes is too passive, and he needs to become a better rebounder.

The team also is going to have to learn to cope with expectations. The Bears were picked eighth in the league last season and ended up as one of the nation's biggest surprises. They won't sneak up on anyone next season.

An 83-77 victory at Arizona on March 5 sealed Cal's third-place finish in the league and likely clinched an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. But Montgomery says his team became a little too comfortable at that point, and it showed ? Cal didn't win again. The Bears lost their regular-season finale to Arizona, their Pac-10 tournament opener to USC, then their first-round game with 10th-seeded Maryland in the NCAA tournament.

Montgomery says his players must learn how to deal with success and how to play as the favorite rather than the underdog.

"Does that tighten them up? How do they react to that?" he says. "That's got to be the question. We've got to understand there's going to be some expectations. They've not been in that position before."

Not many Cal teams have.

David Fox is a national writer for Rivals.com. He can be reached at dfox@rivals.com.