by Michael Duca

BERKELEY–Cal’s season opening night win was one for the books with a very healthy 34 point win over visiting Alcorn 91-57. Cal head coach Cunozo Martin was pleased with his offense and I’m sure that would be true with the Bears taking on Kennesaw State on Sunday at Haas Pavilion.

Also it should be noted that Martin and former Cal head coach Mike Montgomery who now works for the Pac 12 network have had many conversations off the record about coaching when Montgomery works Cal games for TV. Martin is in the process of learning about the players and who better to get a few tips from than Monty himself.

Not so much of those discussions were about the skill sets that they have but about the off the floor issues and some of the personalities that the players have during the course of a season. For the Cal offense on Friday coach Martin is very happy with the performance. The pre conference schedule is something that you have to figure out what you got so you can set your eight man rotation for the conference schedule.

Martin pretty much knows who his eight man rotation is already after practices it’s always good to see how guys work together on the floor in competition to see how guys have worked together independently in the off season and how they refine their games. These games are more important than they appear.

The smart basketball folks are there watching because they learn a lot and they learn a lot because they watch what’s coming down the road. Martin won his 125th career game which Montgomery has 677 career games. It’s a work in progress but its a pretty good start for Martin at the Cal basketball program.

Martin is young enough if he’s willing to coach long enough he can coach for 50 years he might be able to set some all time record. The Cal pre conference schedule is very heavily skewed towards home games. Which gives the local fans plenty of opportunity to come out and have good seats and see young teams develop.

We’ll see what happens in these early games which is hard to do as there will be very much breaking down of Cal or Kennesaw State for Sunday’s game. You’ve got coaches who are looking at their squads and looking at their players. They got freshman, they got red shirts on, who have not competed at the college level. Their giving them the opportunity to do that and want to see how much the game is faster paced.

The coaches want to see how well the players respond to those playbook situations, to see how they react out on the floor. Some of these kids even if their playing before a small college crowd and maybe the biggest crowd they’ve every played in front of. You got a lot of things for the kids to learn other than who does the back cut when somebody sets the screen.

Michael Duca does Cal Bears basketball commentary each week on http://www.sportsradioservice.com