Overview:
Pasternack, a former Cal assistant coach, guided the Gauchos to two NCAA Tournaments and a 132-53 record in six seasons
UC Santa Barbara lost not only a basketball game of consequence Friday, it also might be losing a very consequential coach.
Joe Pasternack, who led the Gauchos to their second NCAA Tournament in the last three years, is the leading candidate to become the new head coach in Berkeley for the University of California.
Leave it to an older sister to raid her sibling’s closet.
One of the last questions that Pasternack fielded during the news conference after UCSB’s 74-56 defeat to Baylor concerned “the rumors flying around” about the Cal job.
“Is your first intention, desire to stay at UCSB?” he was asked.
“Yeah, I love UC Santa Barbara, the community and everybody else,” Pasternack replied, “and I’m going recruiting tonight.”
But the rumors of his probable departure from UCSB have being growing.
Sources in touch with Golden Bears’ athletic director Jim Knowlton acknowledged to Noozhawk that Cal has been in serious discussions with Pasternack’s representatives.
Pasternack, who assisted Ben Braun at Cal from 2001 to 2007, was high on the Bears’ list the last two times they searched for a coach.
He now tops that list, according to Connor Letourneu of the San Francisco Chronicle.
“He will have significant donor support to get the job this time,” Letourneu reported March 9.
“In addition to being a dogged recruiter, he has experience coaching in Berkeley and leading a program in the UC System.”
That ranks high on the Berkeley checklist. Its last few coaches struggled to hurdle Cal’s high academic standards when recruiting.
The lowly financial support they received, by power-conference standards, also has been a tripping point.
Haas Pavilion, an 11,877-seat arena built in 1999 on the site of old Harmon Gym, is in need of another rebuild. Attendance there dropped to an average of just 2,155 per game this season.
The Pluses of Pasternack
Cal is well aware of the miracles that Pasternack has worked at UCSB even beyond his six-year record of 132-53. His personal efforts in particular have brought an aging Thunderdome back to life.
“The community has really jumped behind us and poured in a lot of private donations,” he said during Friday’s post-game presser. “We’ve redone the Thunderdome with chair-backed seating, video board, locker rooms, weight rooms.
“It’s been amazing what the community has done to help our program.”
Pasternack also made a point to revive fan support. He stirred increasing interest from the student body with marketing ploys and giveaways.
He also got the community involved by engaging his players with off-campus organizations.
“We’re really big on volunteering and having our players go out into the Santa Barbara community, whether it’s the Boys & Girls Club, whether it’s the fire station, the hospitals, the zoo,” Pasternack said. “We want our players to be visible.
“With the youth basketball, they’re in there doing camps and clinics. That was a really big part when we took over at UCSB. We wanted to really make it Santa Barbara’s team because there’s no NFL team, NBA, Major League Baseball in Santa Barbara.”
Several hundred Gaucho fans made the trip to Denver to cheer the 14th-seeded Gauchos to a halftime lead against third-seeded Baylor in Friday’s South Regional opener.
The players and coaches put the disappointment of their loss aside and approached their rooting section to applaud the fans just moments after the final buzzer.
“UCSB is a family,” point guard Ajay Mitchell pointed out. “We’re so grateful to have all those people come to those games, especially in the tournament.
“I mean, it’s kind of us thanking them for being there the whole season, and just happy for them to see us play in that tournament.”
Pasternack would leave UCSB with a heavy heart. He spoke on Friday of the emotional relationship he’d formed with his players the last few years.
“We’re all going to be connected for life because they hung two championship banners,” he began. “They broke the record for all-time wins by four games (with a 27-8 record).
“That’s really hard to do in college basketball, and we’ll all be connected forever with that record.”
Back to the Bay
Pasternack’s real family — wife Lindsay, son Joe IV, and daughter Lilly — has also involved itself in the Santa Barbara community.
But here’s the caveat: Lindsay is from the Bay Area, and her large family there would make this transition a truly familial one.
Transitioning Cal into a winning basketball program would be no easy task.
Mark Fox had a four-year record of 38-87 when the Bears fired him 10 days ago. This season was a 3-29 disaster that began with a 75-65 home defeat to UC Davis, a team that finished in the middle of the pack of the Big West Conference this year.
Pasternack, however, fears no task. He faced one of the biggest challenges in college basketball history when he left Cal to become the head coach at the University of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
UNO had to close its heavily damaged campus. Even the roof on the Privateers’ arena had been blown away.
But Pasternack made sure they still had a basketball team.
When New Orleans no longer could afford an NCAA Division I athletic program, dropping down to Division III, Pasternack moved on to Arizona to become coach Sean Miller’s right-hand man.
His recruiting prowess helped stock the Wildcats for three Pac-12 championships in six years. His contacts in the Bay Area, especially with the Oakland Soldiers AAU program, dates back two decades and make him an especially attractive option for Cal.
Beyond UCSB’s Pay Grade
UCSB previously pulled out all stops to keep Pasternack happy. It boosted his pay to $519,499 after his Big West Conference championship season of 2021 — more than double his original salary of $240,567 when the Gauchos hired him in 2017.
Athletic director Kelly Barsky was widely applauded by UCSB fans last year for keeping baseball coach Andrew Checketts from accepting offers from USC and the University of Washington.
But this is a whole new ball game that is, financially, way out of UCSB’s mid-major ballpark.
The Cal job would undoubtedly triple Pasternack’s paycheck. Fox was making $1,661,874 a year when he was fired. Little sister doesn’t have that kind of piggy bank.
Several other good coaching candidates, however, could take advantage of this Bear market.
San José State coach Tim Miles, who took both Colorado State and Nebraska to the NCAA Tournament in the last 11 years, was interviewed by Cal four years ago after being fired by the Huskers.
Knowlton is interested in Miles again after he turned historically woeful San José State into a 20-12 winner this season in the tough Mountain West Conference.
Other possible candidates being floated in the media are Washington State coach Kyle Smith, who previously coached at USF; Montana coach Travis DeCuire, a former Cal assistant under Mike Montgomery; former Cal coach Cuonzo Martin, who was fired by Missouri last year after a five-season record of 78-77; and Amir Abdur-Rahim, who just took Kennesaw State to its first NCAA Tournament with a record 26-8.
Former Cal guard Shantay Legans, who grew up on the courts of the Goleta Boys Club and Dos Pueblos High School, has also been mentioned.
Legans recently finished his second season at the University of Portland after having led Eastern Washington to the NCAA Tournament.
But from all reports, this job is Pasternack’s to take, and the decision will probably be made this week.
The UC System normally moves at a painfully glacier pace, but the urgency of recruiting has accelerated this hiring process with the velocity of a toboggan ride.
And it’s likely to carry Pasternack away from UCSB.