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Fox excited for future at Cal

Quick, now. What comes to mind when you think about University of California athletics.

Aaron Rodgers? Jared Goff?

If you’re old enough you probably remember when Cal football’s kick-return laterals beat Stanford while New Mexico native Joe Kapp was coaching the Golden Bears. If you’re older still, you might remember when Kapp was California’s quarterback.

Cal men’s basketball? Kevin Johnson likely comes to mind. “KJ” in 1992 became the first California men’s basketball player to have his jersey number retired by the school, a year before helping the Phoenix Suns reach the NBA Finals against Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

California men’s basketball this decade? If you know that ex-Brooklyn Net and current Atlanta Hawk swingman Allen Crabbe played for Cal, you would probably score 1600 on your Basketball SAT, if there was such a thing. And though Crabbe may be a solid workaday NBA player, his biggest impact on the league has probably been when the Nets traded him to the Hawks this offseason, creating enough cap space to reel in Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.

Cal men’s basketball in 2018-19? 8-23 overall, 3-15 conference. 12th in the Pac-12.

Now tasked with getting Berkeley abuzz about men’s hoops is 50-year-old Mark Fox, a former Eastern New Mexico University player and 1991 ENMU graduate. Fox’s challenge is daunting, but the ex-Greyhound is up for it. And then some.

“I don’t know how you gauge excitement, but I’m really thankful, I’m overjoyed, I’m excited,” Fox said last week in a telephone interview with the Eastern New Mexico News. “This is a great place, we’ve got a storied history. And so I’m really, really excited to be here.”

The feeling is mutual.

“Mark Fox is a man of unparalleled integrity with a proven record of success as a head basketball coach,” Cal athletic director Jim Knowlton said in a statement released after Fox was hired last March. “He is an inspiring leader, a teacher and an exceptional communicator who has displayed a strong commitment to developing the entire student-athlete on the court and off the court.

“We had an exceptional pool of candidates, and through the entire process, one person clearly rose to the top.”

Fox last coached in 2018, when he guided the Georgia men’s basketball team to an 18-15 overall record, 7-11 in the Southeastern Conference. The Bulldogs were 11th in the SEC and at season’s end did not even qualify for the NIT.

So after nine years with Georgia, Fox was gone.

“It wasn’t mutual, they let me go,” he said. “Obviously, that’s part of the business. We parted ways and I moved on.”

Fox was out of coaching during the 2018-19 season, which wasn’t all that terrible.

“I think a chance to recharge was welcome,” said Fox, a married father of two. “I did a lot of stuff for USA Basketball, but it was really a chance to catch my breath and recharge, so that was really healthy.”

While Fox was recharging, the Golden Bears were struggling, and last season was only part of it. They were 16-47 over the past two seasons, so on March 24, Wyking Jones was fired and the program went searching for its 18th head coach. Enter Fox, who had been the Nevada, Reno men’s head coach prior to his Georgia stint, and had a 286-176 (.619) career coaching record.

“The one thing that I told my agent in the last year, I said, ‘I’m not going to have a conversation with anybody that has a sitting coach.’ I just think that’s not the right way to go about it,” Fox said. “Obviously, when this job came about I was excited to have a chance to be involved, and I always thought that this was a special place.”

That impression came from his days coaching at Nevada, both as an assistant and the head man.

“I lived in Reno, Nevada for nine years,” Fox said. “That’s just 3 1/2 hours from here.”

For Fox, the Cal job is another step along a basketball path, another part of a basketball passion that began during his early childhood in Kansas.

“I know I made a basket when I was three years old because I have the rim,” Fox said. “It was always the sport that I was drawn to.”

It didn’t hurt that he grew up in an athletic family, in a state that bleeds Jayhawk blue and Wildcat purple. He knew he wanted to be a basketball coach since elementary school, but he was young and still had plenty of playing years ahead of him.

After high school, Fox continued his basketball career at Garden City (Kansas) Community College. He says he wasn’t yet prepared to take his game to the four-year college level.

“At that time I had never played one game of basketball in the summer. There weren’t camps and weren’t all the opportunities kids have in summer ball,” Fox recalled. “I played at the junior college because that was the only option that I had. I’m thankful for that experience. Ultimately it changed the path of my life because I was just an average player, but it gave me a chance to get a college education and to go to Eastern and finish my degree.”

Fox earned a full basketball scholarship from ENMU and Earl Diddle, who was then just one season into what would be a 10-year coaching run highlighted by a Lone Star Conference Tournament championship in 1993.

“I had a couple of schools in the Big Sky (Conference) that I was considering,” Fox said. “The timing worked out (for Eastern), and one of my teammates (Dennis Chambers) was going there, so it’s where I ended up.”

Fox was a wing in Diddle’s system, but was limited late in his college career after undergoing elbow surgery two days before the start of his senior season, “which really kind of derailed any chance of playing,” he said.

Fox was an Eastern New Mexico teammate of guard Ron Milam, who 10 years after graduation died in the 9/11 terror attack on the Pentagon.

Those ENMU days have stayed in Fox’s thoughts, have helped mold him.

“Your memories are always of your teammates and the experiences you have with them,” Fox said. “At that time Coach Diddle was still trying to reshape the program and put his stamp on it, so he worked us hard. I remember his conditioning; some of those things you can’t forget because they were difficult. I still do a variation of the conditioning drills we did, I still use those today. I think every place you go you have things you learn and draw from.”

Trent Johnson, who would become a longtime friend and coaching colleague, helped Fox get a graduate assistant job at Washington. Fox went on to an assistant coaching position at Kansas State, then to another at Nevada, Reno, when Johnson was the head coach there.

Fox became Nevada, Reno’s head men’s basketball coach in the late spring of 2004, days after Johnson resigned to coach the Stanford men’s team. Fox guided Nevada, Reno into the NCAA Tournament his first three seasons there, and the last two led them into the College Basketball Invitational, a tournament including 16 teams that hadn’t qualified for the NCAA Tournament or NIT.

Five years in Reno were followed by Fox’s nine-year run at Georgia, during which he coached Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, the eventual eighth overall pick of the 2013 NBA Draft who is currently a Los Angeles Lakers teammate of LeBron James and Anthony Davis.

Prior to Georgia’s struggles during Fox’s last season, he did coach the Bulldogs into tournament play the four previous seasons and five times in the previous seven. They reached the NIT in 2014, ’16 and ’17, and the NCAA Tournament in 2011 and ’15.

Now it’s on to California, where Johnson will be one of Fox’s assistant coaches. Fox is already impressed with the players he is inheriting.

“Kids are resilient, first of all, but change is hard for kids at the same time,” Fox said. “But they have been really open to a new coaching staff and hopefully they see a bright future for themselves.”

What will it take for Fox and his staff to elevate those players, to rescue Cal’s program from the doldrums?

“That’s a great question,” Fox said. “We also have an athletic director who had not even been here a year when he hired me, so I think the infrastructure in our basketball program will continue to change. I think as we recruit players we’ll continue to adjust the talent level, but it’s not just players. It’s how we operate, how we’re funded. And hopefully we’ll compete nationally once we have those things checked off our list.”

Even in the challenging early days, it should be an exciting time for Fox, his staff and California men’s basketball.

“Yeah, I hope so, I hope so,” Fox said. “We have a lot of work to do. The team has struggled a bit the last couple of years, so we’ve got a lot of work in front of us.”

 
 
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