This is true, and I wouldn't argue it. I would however make a point that Cal has had an enormous amount of talent through his 6 years here. Definitely more so than any other team, and maybe more than any coach has ever had in history. He will need a minimum of two championships with this talent to be considered a success. I know some fans don't like that, but it doesn't matter what they like. He will be judged on title(s) by the collective "basketball society" if you will.
I'd also say lots of the time, the best te actually does win it all. Going back 10 years, you have the best team winning the tile (or close to the best team/subjective) probably 6 or 7 out of ten. If it's not the best team winning it, it's a top 5 usually. When people say "the best team doesn't always win" it's more of an excuse IMO. No one thinks the best team always wins the title, but they absolutely usually do as of late. Cal would probably be the first to admit we've had enough talent to win 2.
To me, anything after two is just hard to make happen. very few coaches can do that. But lots of coaches have won a single championship and have had way, way, WAY less talent to do it.
Not to sound like a hater or Lousiville fan, but it's my take.
::just to add, cal is already a HOF coach. But I'm talking "top 5 or 10" impact. ::
I'm saying though - look at all those seasons, and accounting for both star average and experience, how many years did he have the best roster with nobody else in the vicinity?
I'd argue he didn't once. Sounds crazy, right?
Everybody will say "but what about '10, '12 and '15?!"
Well, let's break it down by season (just using big time obvious examples here off the top of my head - I'm not even getting into those Florida/OSU type teams that I mentioned with star averages well above 4 composed of mostly upperclassmen):
'10 had
Kansas, who had sick talent with much more experience than us and got knocked out by a mid major. There are no good losses, but thank God instead of what KU did, we at least we lost to a 2 seed by single digits on the coldest shooting night we've had since '84.
'12 had
UNC (whom we beat in one of the most awesome games ever but who also had an awful injury at the end that ruined their tourney - same HS star power as us but with more experience) and
UCONN (who sucked and lost in the 8/9 game - but holy %^&* look at their roster). We won the ship, obviously.
'15 had
Duke (won it all under the GOAT coach, tied us for the record with 9 burger boys, plenty of upperclassmen and 3 superstar freshmen) and
Arizona (burger boys down the line, 4 out of 6 rotation guys were upperclassmen, plus 1 soph and the #1 freshman wing recruit). Obviously, we got another F4 and took a down-to-the-last minute loss vs a HOF coach that we knocked out the year before with the same team.
Only
one of those mentioned won the championship, even though all of those other guys are HOF or future HOF coaches.
And that's not even getting into '11, '13, '14, where we were loaded with great freshmen, but so damn young that there were usually something like 5-8 rosters on paper that would be easier to coach to a championship when you factor in both star power
and experience.
