Rivalry games are always important to win and you especially don’t want to be embarrassed in one. Cal men’s basketball did a great job of embarrassing Stanford earlier this year when they won in Berkeley by a final score of 92-70, triggering questions about how hot the seat was for Stanford head coach Jerod Haase. Stanford would go on to lose two more league games after their loss at Cal, giving them an 0-7 record in the Pac-12 and forcing my hand to write about how hot the seat was for Haase.
At the time, I said the heat on Haase’s seat should be a 10/10 and that if they could go on to win four games in a row over the Oregon schools, Chicago State, and Cal, the seat could cool slightly to a 9/10. After watching Stanford do just that, I stand by what I wrote. The heat under Haase’s seat is still quite warm as a 9/10 would indicate, but I do think it has cooled a bit as a result of their current four game winning streak.
The most recent win for Stanford was a dominating 75-46 home victory over their rival Cal on Saturday. Early on it was a tight game, but the Cardinal went on to shred the Golden Bears, featuring highlights of Harrison Ingram throwing it down on ND Okafor and Isa Silva throwing down a monster dunk of his own. After the way Cal beat them earlier in the year, Stanford did not hold back, eager to pile on as much as possible. Rivalries are like that.
If the loss at Berkeley turned up the heat on Jerod Haase’s seat, one has to ask how hot Cal head coach Mark Fox’s seat is after the way his team got throttled on The Farm. I feel like this is a subject I have good authority to write on. Even though I now cover the rival school, I know the Cal program well, covering them for GoldenBearReport.com, Rivals’ Cal site, from the 2015-16 season all the way until I made the switch to Stanford in September of 2021. The first Cal team I covered had Jaylen Brown and Ivan Rabb and went on to be a 4 seed in the NCAA tournament before getting bounced in the first round by Hawaii.
Since then, the wheels have come off for Cal. In the 4th season of the Mark Fox era, Cal is 3-18 overall and 2-8 in the Pac-12. They’re a shell of who they were when Jaylen Brown was there. The drop off is staggering.
They started the season 0-12, losing to the likes of Eastern Washington, Texas State, Southern University, UC San Diego, and UC Davis. All of which were played in Berkeley.
When they blew the doors off Stanford in Berkeley, it was their second win of Pac-12 play as they had defeated Colorado in their previous game. It looked like they might have finally figured some things out. Their grad transfer guard DeJaun Clayton was now back, going off for 26 points against Stanford and when you considered the Colorado win, Cal looked like a team that might be able to be somewhat competitive in the Pac-12.
“It’s all about confidence,” Cal forward Sam Alajiki said after the victory over the Cardinal. “Like, we are good basketball players, we are good shooters, all of us. We just had, just an out of rhythm start [to the season] I guess. Because in practice we be making all of them. So, we expect in the game to make them. That’s why sometimes in the game we look so distraught. Because we expect to make these shots because we are high level players. This is a high major league and we are high major players.
“I just think we were all confident because we thought like man against man that we were better than them. And we kept that mentality the whole game and went straight at them and we won, so.”
The biggest key in what appeared to be a real turnaround by the Bears was having Clayton on the floor. Fox made it clear after the victory over Stanford that with him back in the lineup, they had new life as a program.
“DeJuan Clayton coming back,” Fox said of what the biggest key had been to their then-perceived turnaround. “I mean, that’s like, I mean that’s been the most challenging situation, I mean the poor kid missed, I don’t how many games he missed. Thirteen games? Missed thirteen games and all the practices and then you mix in everything else, but DeJuan coming back is what has given us some momentum. It isn’t the fact that we got off the schneid. I mean, I think that we needed him desperately. Doesn’t mean he’s going to play like this every night, but he’s a calming force, he can get his own shot, he can make guys better, and so everyone kinda relaxed. And, we just played with a much better rhythm offensively now that we’ve had him.”
Unfortunately for Fox and his Bears, the win over Stanford in Berkeley is looking more like an isolated high point than a sign of them really turning the corner. Since that victory, Cal has lost five straight games, four of which were blowout losses with an average margin of defeat of 23.25 points. The losses to Oregon at home and at Stanford were both by 29 points while the loss at home to Oregon State was by 20 points. The loss at Washington State was by 15 points. As for the fifth loss, that was at Washington by a final score of 81-78 in overtime. Cal led for much of the game only to collapse in the final minutes.
That’s why last Saturday’s game at Stanford was so crucial for Cal. It was a golden opportunity for them to end their losing skid and get back on track. All while completing a regular season sweep over their rival. Instead, they laid a massive egg as Stanford dominated them like Joan of Arc against the English.
After the loss, Mark Fox was clearly frustrated and not the least bit happy with how the night had gone, having what I believe was his shortest press conference of the season. He was clearly eager to get back on the team bus to Berkeley.
“Disappointing loss obviously,” Mark Fox said after the game. “In the previous two games, we dominated with our offense. In game one of the year, last year, we dominated with our defense and tonight we didn’t play well at either of those ends and give Stanford credit for playing with a more physical edge to them tonight and I thought our defensive frustrations carried over to the offensive end and give them credit, they made a bunch of baskets, we couldn’t string together any stops, and you can’t win that way on the road.”
What adds insult to injury is that Stanford was coming off a challenging game against Chicago State. A game they won 72-65. Chicago State, a team that is independent and fighting for D1 survival was able to put up a better fight on The Farm. A much better fight. Stanford actually trailed by double digits in the second half before coming back to win. As for Cal, they were down 31-20 at halftime and got outscored 44-26 in the second half. They needed garbage time to crack 40 points.
If Cal had gotten destroyed by a Stanford team that was on cruise control and leading the Pac-12 or something, that would be one thing. But to get blown out on the road by this Stanford team has to ignite at least a flame under Fox’s seat as it had to have done for Haase after his team's performance at Cal. Especially since Cal has now lost five games in a row, clearly not able to build on the huge win they had over Stanford at home.
As far as how hot Fox’s seat is, I don’t know what’s going on in the mind of Cal Athletic Director Jim Knowlton as is the case with Stanford Athletic Director Bernard Muir and how he’s viewing Jerod Haase. It’s certainly possible that if he can get the Bears to win 2-3 more games in league, Fox’s seat won’t be warm at all.
Knowlton was really happy for Fox after the win in Berkeley and in general seems to have a really long leash for his coaches. As a prime example, women’s volleyball head coach Sam Crosson is still at the helm despite having back-to-back winless seasons in the Pac-12. He did fire Wyking Jones after just two seasons as head coach of the men's basketball team, but after how long he's been patient with Fox, Crosson, and other mediocre coaches on campus, it's hard to know how much of Jones getting fired was really about results and how much of that was Knowlton just wanting to have a signature hire. Fox has been a signature hire for Knowlton, just not the kind of signature hire he was hoping to have. Given all that, it’s really hard to know what kind of standards Knowlton has for measuring success.
That being said, on paper, Stanford did no favors for Fox on Saturday night. They blew the doors off his team and had a greater margin of victory than his Cal team did in Berkeley. It’s certainly possible that this loss is the moment where even Knowlton has to come to terms with the fact that maybe his decision to hire Mark Fox wasn’t the right one.
On top of having disastrous performances on the court this season, Fox doesn’t have the recruiting cushion to sit on that is giving Haase at least a little bit of comfort. The two incoming recruits he has, Devin Curtis and Rodney Brown, are both 3-stars ranked outside the Rivals150. Recruiting has been the biggest issue for Fox since his arrival in Berkeley and it continues to be. It’s not like there’s any risk of losing anyone good for Cal if they part ways with Fox after this season.
The things that Fox does have going for him is that he runs a clean program, is a well-respected head coach amongst his peers, and by all accounts is a really good guy. From a pure coaching/teaching perspective, he knows what he’s doing.
“I have a lot of respect for the Cal program,” Jerod Haase said on Saturday night. “Coach Fox, the whole bit. They do it the right way.”
The other major factor in all this is the contract situation. Fox has two years left on his contract, getting an extra season due to COVID. Cal will not want to buy it out if they can avoid it and considering how things went for them the last time they fired coach before his contract was up (Wyking Jones), it might be hard for Knowlton to convince Cal donors to pony up the money needed to fund a second buyout.
If there is one wild card in all of this for Fox it’s injuries. His Cal team has been really hampered by injuries. Guards Jalen Celestine and Jarred Hyder have not played at all this season. Hyder has been ruled out for the season and it’s looking increasingly likely that Celestine may miss the entire season as well. While neither of those guys were expected to set the Pac-12 ablaze, they’re both solid guards who could have made a real difference this season. And then as has been mentioned before, DeJuan Clayton missed much of the season while leading scorer Devin Askew has been in and out of the lineup, dealing with injury issues of his own.
Fox has never had his team even close to full strength and that seems to be something that might help him survive into next season. While Fox critics are quick to say injuries aren’t an excuse and that he brings them up too much, it is an objective fact that the injury bug has really hurt his team. Especially with all the injuries happening to the backcourt.
With much of the season still left to be played, we obviously need to see how the rest of this season plays out before we can know for sure just how hot the seat is for Fox. If they are able to bounce back from last Saturday’s loss and win a few more games in league, he very well could save his job for next season.
And the same can be said for Stanford and Jerod Haase. There’s a possibility that they are now turning the corner and starting to find a real groove, but they’re not out of the woods yet by any stretch. Haase needs his Stanford team to pick up all the wins they can get after the way this season has started. And while it was certainly nice for his team to get payback over Cal, given how bad Cal has been this season, it’s not a win that should move the needle much in terms of his job security. That’s why I lumped the past four games into one batch. Haase needed his team to win all four of those games to make the hot seat cool a little and to his credit, they did.
As I said at the beginning, rivalry games matter and you never want to be embarrassed by your rival. After getting embarrassed by their rival, Stanford has found a way to bounce back, get revenge, and get things trending in a positive direction. One has to wonder if Cal will be able to do the same as they are now the ones who are down. If they can’t, it’ll be intriguing to see how things shake out for Mark Fox. The loss to Stanford very well may be viewed as the nail in the coffin or at least a pivotal turning point in his coaching tenure if this is indeed his final season in Berkeley.
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