Cal Basketball: Wyking Jones out after 2 years as head coach

Let’s look at the coaching career of Wyking Jones while figuring out where Cal  Basketball goes next for their new head coach.

Despite his job security being guaranteed just a few days ago, Wyking Jones has been fired by California after two unsuccessful years as head coach. Jones was elevated to head coach in 2017 after Cuonzo Martin left the program, but failed to compete with the Golden Bears. He was ranked 205th in our early season head coach rankings and certainly didn’t do anything to raise that mark this year.

Jones played collegiately at Loyola Marymount and then spent six years playing overseas before starting his coaching career. He was an assistant at Pepperdine and New Mexico before Rick Pitino added him to his staff at Louisville in 2011. He spent four years with the Cardinals, including the vacated 2013 national championship. He took an assistant coaching position with Cal in 2015, spending two years under Martin before he left for Missouri. Known already as a great recruiter, Jones was elevated to the head coaching position, but his two years in Berkeley haven’t been good.

During his two years as an assistant, Jones helped the Golden Bears to an NCAA bid in 2016 and an NIT appearance in 2017. They were in the top half of the Pac-12 in both seasons and won 23 and 21 games respectively. Unfortunately for Jones, this success did not continue. The Golden Bears were just 8-24 in his debut season, a 2-16 mark in conference play. Even as he filtered through new recruits and new optimism, year two was even worse. They finished 8-23 (3-15 in Pac-12), but lost 15 straight conference games before seemingly figuring things out at the very end of the season, when it was far too late.

This past year’s team did not have a single senior on the roster, but it also had just one top 100 recruit, freshman guard Matt Bradley (10.9 ppg, 3.6 rpg). Players like sophomore forward Justice Sueing (14.3 ppg, 6.0 rpg) and Darius McNeill (11.0 ppg) could develop into solid players, but they could also transfer out and find new homes. This was probably the worst power conference program the last two seasons, and the Golden Bears were just 242nd in KenPom this year. Defense was a major struggle and the next head coach will have some work ahead of him to repair this roster.

Early reports indicate that the Golden Bears will go after former NBA player and head coach Jason Kidd, who played for Cal in the early 1990’s. However, Kidd struggled as an NBA head coach and would be no guarantee to succeed at the college level. Another viable option is UC Irvine head coach Russell Turner, a former NBA assistant who’s already led his Anteaters to an upset over 4-seed Kansas State in this year’s NCAA Tournament. Jones had a large buyout, but the Golden Bears made the move despite this. They’ll need to make a drastic move to resurrect this program, but I don’t see them spending big on a candidate outside of these two.

Jones really struggled at Cal and perhaps he wasn’t ready to lead a power conference team. His hiring back in 2017 came as a bit of a surprise and so now is his firing after just two seasons. It’s understandable that this program wants to avoid another 8-win season, but the next head coach has some work ahead of him. Fresh recruiting and new energy for this team with new coaching could turn Cal around before too long, but this is a young team. We’ll have to see in the coming days and weeks on how many players flee the program. The bottom line is that if they can land Kidd, Turner, or another great candidate, then the Golden Bears can soon compete again in a very weak Pac-12.