California Basketball: 7 candidates to replace Mark Fox as head coach
By Joey Loose
Joe Pasternack
The Golden Bears want someone with talent and experience; they aren’t just going to hire some random coach who can win games at one of these smaller schools. Pasternack isn’t just some low-level head coach though, he’s been successful and has experience coaching both in the Pac-12 and on this very campus.
Born in New Orleans, Pasternack was a student manager at Indiana under Bob Knight before joining the Cal staff over two decades ago. His first head coaching job came back at hometown New Orleans, though he’d leave for a spot on the Arizona staff a few years later. Since 2017, he’s been head coach at UC Santa Barbara, leading the Gauchos to a pair of conference titles and an appearance in the NCAA Tournament back in 2021.
Pasternack has worked at Cal before and he’s been one of the best coaches in the Big West for half a decade now. There is a bit of a jump up from the Big West, but he’s not the only coach from that league on today’s list. He’s had more than a decade as a Pac-12 assistant, he’s won important games as a head coach, and he knows how to coach and recruit in the state of California. As long as you’re satisfied with that, you can’t go wrong in bringing him to Berkeley.