Ben Braun officially fired by California Berkeley

As we predicted a few days ago, Cal-Berkeley head basketball coach Ben Braun was fired after 12 (not 15) seasons as the Chief Bear. Story at Sports Illustrated. More on this story at regional website SfGate.com. And also at the university newspaper, the Daily Californian.

So our first of two predictions came true. Which one was our second prediction? Randy Bennett riding his second wave of NCAA Tournament selection success a few miles down the road to take over Cal-Berkeley.

One of the pluses of Randy Bennett is that he looks a bit like Herb Sendek, and if Sendek was able to reboot ASU in just two years...

Ironically this is the second coach Herb Sendek unintentionally managed to get fired. If it wasn't for Sendek's success in Year Two at ASU, the other coaches (Jay John, Ben Braun) could have gotten more out of the usual excuses (tough conference, not easy to do it, east coast bias, etc). But if Sendek turned ASU into a promising and rising program, what exactly has Ben Braun being doing in Berkeley?

But in our opinion the firing offense was poor recruiting decisions. How can you have a team loaded with big men, and yet fail to get enough guards around them? And why was Jordan Wilkes not even given a chance to play through the season when the team was struggling? And the "Omar Wilkes bolted out a year earlier" excuse does not hold water. Wilkes was a wing. The team badly needed a point guard. Both Knezevic and mini-me Randle are backup guards at best. Christopher is a nice Pac-10 caliber player but he is more of a wing-guard.