It’s getting late very early in the San Francisco Bay Area. Stanford and Cal basketball are facing the very real possibility that they might have to fire their head coaches.
We can talk about how the pandemic hurts recruiting and the transfer portal. We can talk about how Cal has limited resources and will need UCLA to pay some money to Berkeley when the Bruins leave for the Big Ten. New media rights dollars will help cover the costs for the Bruins, so that Cal has more cash on hand to keep the lights on. We can talk about so many other things which limit Stanford and Cal basketball right now. Yet, none of this can be viewed as remotely tolerable.
One would have to think that in Palo Alto and Berkeley, changes are about to come. Two programs can’t be this dead, this adrift, this lifeless, this flat.
Stanford — which led by four points with 3:45 left — didn’t make another field goal in the remainder of regulation time and lost to Colorado to fall to 5-8 for the season, 0-3 in Pac-12 play.
Cal scored just 43 points and lost by 15 to Utah. Cal and Stanford are the only two Pac-12 teams to be 0-3 through three conference games. Cal has won only one game this season.
It’s not as though Jerod Haase of Stanford and Mark Fox of Cal are new coaches, either. Haase has been at Stanford since 2016. Fox has been in Berkeley since 2019.
Even with limitations existing at both schools, it’s hard to see how either coach will be around for the 2023-2024 college basketball season.
Let’s look at other notes around the Pac-12 in both basketball and football: