NCAA Basketball: Top 10 impact head coaching hires from 2008 offseason

5. Mike Montgomery (California)

When you think about California, you don’t really think of the Golden Bears as a power in college basketball. While this program does have an NCAA Tournament title some six decades ago, it’s also been a pretty decent program throughout time. Even as head coach Ben Braun was fired in 2008, necessitating a new head coach, the Golden Bears weren’t in terrible shape and just needed the right voice to stay on track.

With his experience, Mike Montgomery was more than a solid choice. Montgomery had been in coaching for four decades already, with a long stretch of success as head coach at Montana and Stanford. Montgomery made Stanford one of the nation’s best programs before spending a few years leading the Golden State Warriors.

Back in the college game, Montgomery did solid work in six seasons leading the Golden Bears. California won at least 21 games in all but one of those seasons and made four NCAA Tournaments. They were above .500 in Pac-12 play every year and ended each season with a postseason bid. Montgomery retired in 2014 and today this program is a shell of its former shelf.