On Basketball, On Cal

Mike Montgomery is the head coach at Cal. Cal is also known as the University of California, some refer to it as Berkley. Others as Cal-Berkley. The Berkley California campus is the main campus for the University system of the state of California.

There is also Ucla (University of California at Los Angeles), Cal-Davis, Cal-Northridge and many others. Our opponent on Thursday is the Cal Berkley Golden Bears.

Cal is located right outside of San Francisco. In fact, from the top of the football press box, you can see San Francisco Bay. Cal’s arch rival, their Duke, is Stanford. Stanford is probably 60 miles south of Berkley.

So back to Mike Montgomery. He was the head coach for the Stanford Cardinal for years. They went to the 1998 Final Four. He got them as far as the final 8 in Anaheim in 2001. The Terps won that game. That was really the last we saw of him.

He left Stanford and went on to coach in the NBA for the Golden State Warriors. That gig did not last long. Mike was out of coaching for a while.

The interesting part is that he stayed in the Bay area. Cal had reached national prominence with Todd Bozeman as coach in the 90’s. (yes the same Bozeman that now is the coach at Morgan State. What a tangled web we weave.)

The star player was Jason Kidd. The arch rival was Mike Montgomery. Cal had some success a few years ago with super talented small forward Sharif Abdur Rahim. Also Leon Powe went to Cal and he is now a Celtic.

So with the job in Berkley open, Cal entices Mike Montgomery to come in a and right the ship. It would be like having Coach K come to Terpland 7 years from now to help us out.

In his first year at the helm, the Golden Bears are headed to the tournament. They face a like-minded, high profile, academic powerhouse of the east. They are similar in academic profile and economic impact on their respective regions. Cal having a slightly higher academic reputation and the Terps having a higher athletic reputation.

Both have huge rivalries with snooty, wealthy private schools. Cal has Stanford and the Terps have Duke. The MD-CAL rivalry should grow. It could be one of the best bi-coastal showdowns in America.

On full disclosure, I have to admit that my favorite teams, aside from the Terps, are: Cal, Ga Tech and Miami. I have been on campus at Berkley. Toured the ancient basketball facilities, aging football stadium and generally gorgeous campus. If I did not live in the DC metro area, my next choice would be the Bay area.

.