Martin embraces expectations
The hype around Cal men’s basketball is building as head coach Cuonzo Martin prepares for his second season in Berkeley.
With three returning starters and a top-five recruiting class, the Bears are staring down heightened outside expectations. They’ve appeared in every preseason Top 25 ranking of note, and ESPN recently tabbed them as a team “ready for a turnaround.”
“That means you’re doing something right,” said Martin, whose team begins its official practice schedule Oct. 2 in advance of its Nov. 13 season opener against Rice. “I don’t have a problem with that.”
The coach talked Thursday with The Chronicle about everything from the Bears’ summer trip to Australia to the rotation to offseason conditioning. Here is an edited transcript of the conversation. For the full Q&A, go to www.sfchronicle.com/sports Q: How did you feel the Australia trip went last month? A: I thought the guys did a good job of playing team basketball. Not to say that I thought they’d be selfish, but I thought they did a great job of playing together, sharing the basketball, moving the ball. The goal over there was to try to play everybody, try and average about 25 or 23 minutes for each guy. We didn’t want anyone to get 30 to 35 minutes. Q: When you have so many new players you’re trying to incorporate into the rotation, how important is it to have that game time in the offseason? A: That was good because of that particular competition. I’ve been on tours when I was a player and as an assistant coach, as well as one time as a head coach. On those tours, the competition wasn’t as good. You might’ve run across one team that was solid. In this case, I think we had at least 2½ games that were competitive enough to get our money’s worth so to speak — especially the last game. It was just the way the guys played, with the physicality of the game and the speed of the game. Really what helped us more than anything was the 24-second shot clock. Our shot clock goes down to 30 seconds next season, so the 24-second shot clock helped speed the game up and get our guys more conditioned to understand that this is the way we want to play. Q: Things are quite a bit different from a year ago. You’re in all the preseason Top 25 rankings. How do you handle that? A: I think for us, we go about our day-to-day business. You wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, go to class, have practice, meet with tutors and mentors. Then it’s on to the next day. Whatever presents itself that day, we prepared for it because we went through it. We talk about it as a staff all the time, watching film and working on our games. Because that part, we can’t control that. And I think in a lot of ways, that’s a good problem to have. You’d rather be talked about as a program. … Especially with the social media, you can’t hide that. As a coach, you have to do a good job of making your guys understand the reality of what we’re trying to do. We always go back to defend, rebound, play hard and everything else will take care of itself. Play hard for your teammates. We can’t be consumed with all the things that go around. I think that’s more for our fans to be engaged with. It’s a fun thing to be a part of, but for our guys, it’s the day-to-day work. It never stops.