MONTY AT CAL? POP THE CHAMPAGNE

A friend of mine was skeptical about Mike Montgomery becoming Cal's

basketball coach. ''Cal settled,'' he told me. ''If Cal really is a good job,

Jamie Dixon from Pitt would have taken it.''

It is always good to be skeptical, especially in the world of sports. But

let's get something straight from the start. Cal will introduce Montgomery

this morning, and he really is the best possible hire, someone to make Bears

fans sing and dance in Sproul Plaza.

To put this another way, Montgomery will bring the Golden Bears to the NCAA

tournament within two seasons, maybe even next season. Got that?

I don't know Jamie Dixon. Maybe he has special needs that keep him in

Pittsburgh. And maybe Cal is not a destination for coaches with a national

reputation -- remember, Ben Braun was ruining things in Berkeley the past 12

years, aided and abetted by an athletic department asleep at the switch, an

athletic department that cared about football but considered men's basketball

a minor dalliance.

Montgomery will change all that. He will make Berkeley an important stop in

the Pac-10, an important stop in the country. Why? Because he is one hell of a

coach.

I can hear my friend buzzing in my ear. ''If Montgomery is so good, how

come he washed out in the NBA? He was abysmal with the Warriors.''

He sure was, but it doesn't matter one bit. The NBA is a different game, a

totally different deal from college. Montgomery never had coached or played in

the NBA, and the players saw him as a rookie, saw him knowing less than they

knew about the league -- probably true -- and they didn't give him their full

attention. Sometimes they didn't listen to him.

That doesn't mean Montgomery can't coach. It means he couldn't coach in the

NBA -- and in case you've forgotten, Rick Pitino and John Calipari, currently

two of the hottest, most respected college coaches, flopped in the NBA.

College hoops and the NBA simply are different, so don't lay that load on

Montgomery.

He is a teacher. The Warriors didn't want to be taught. He is sarcastic --

it is his way of relating, if you can believe that. The Warriors didn't know

what to make of his sarcasm. Bad fit. Bad idea. Forget about it.

At Cal, he will teach -- something Braun forgot how to do, or never knew.

Braun has had so many potentially talented big guys who regressed under his

watch. Montgomery is a whiz with big guys. Under his tutelage, the Bears will

play big and they will play disciplined ball -- all those precise Montgomery

passes -- and they will play hard-nosed defense. Remember defense?

His lifetime record is terrific and he took Stanford to the Final Four in

1998 -- the Final Four, for heaven's sake -- in spite of those nose-bleed

Stanford admissions requirements. Sure, Cal is hard to get into, but not as

hard as Stanford. You know that. Which means Montgomery will have a larger

pool of better athletes than he ever had at Stanford. Which means, if

anything, he'll eventually have better teams at Cal than he did at Stanford.

You can depend on that.

He knows the Pac-10 and he has a million recruiting contacts, and with him

on the job the Stanford/Cal game will mean something again. And get this, he's

a better coach than Trent Johnson, to whom he bequeathed the Stanford program

when he embarked on the Warriors disaster.

If you think Cal is ''settling'' for Montgomery, let me remind you he was

Naismith College Coach of the Year in 2000 and Pac-10 coach of the year in

1999, 2000, 2003, 2004. We are talking elite coach. We are talking Cal just

did for basketball what it did for football by hiring Jeff Tedford.

When I first suggested Montgomery as Braun's replacement, I received

outraged e-mails from Stanford-hating Bears fans who perceived Montgomery as

the eternal enemy, almost as the devil. In this age when coaches move from job

to job, that attitude is outmoded and frankly ridiculous. Get over it.

Montgomery is perfect for Cal.

You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at 521-5486 or

lowell.cohn@pressdemocrat.com.