The Bell Tolls for Thee, Ben Braun

After a second-round NIT loss to the Ohio State University, Cal finally dropped the axe on Ben Braun. Reactions are varied, from respectful to torn to jubilant, but I'll admit I don't know how I feel about the move. On the one hand, 219-154 seems like a pretty good record over the past 12 years (of course, I'm no mathematician). On the other hand, this is my most enduring memory of Cal basketball:

March 2002 was a pretty glorious time in my life. I was living about twenty minutes outside of Amsterdam, and making the most of it. My friends and I were planning a massive St. Patrick's Day bash, as if we suddenly needed a reason to get intoxicated. As a Cal fan, still stinging from a 1-10 football season (the only victory a 9/11-rescheduled cupcake game against Rutgers), I was elated to my Golden Bears reach the second round of the tournament. It really wasn't a difficult decision: I'd head into Amsterdam ahead of my friends to watch my sixth-seeded Bears take on the third-seeded Pitt Steelers Panthers.

Perhaps I should have been concerned when I couldn't round up any of my friends to go with me (None of them Cal students, hardly any Americans, but still). I definitely should have been worried when I realized the game was in Pittsburgh. Nonetheless, I went happily into the city, with a pair of shamrock-shaped sunglasses, ready to celebrate Ireland and Cal's inevitable advancement to the Sweet Sixteen. The game started off pretty well. I befriended a few other Americans in the bar. The waitress was cute and, I thought, flirting with me with that Dutch-accented English I enjoyed so much. The halftime score: 25-26, bad guys. An upset was brewing, I could feel it. This was going to be the best St. Patrick's Day.

Three minutes into the second half, Cal's up 32-28. I'm sending drunken, random text messages across an ocean and a continent to my friends back in Berkeley, celebrating the Bears and arguing about the best way to pick up a waitress. (Full disclosure: I am a jerk.) My new friends in the bar are planning to come out drinking in the Dutch suburbs with me. Right about then, the wheels fall off:

The next time our waitress comes by, I get the 'are you sure you want another beer?' treatment. I do, and she is not impressed. And then:

Pittsburgh held California without a point for 9½ minutes during a decisive 16-0 run, which began with Cal leading 32-28 with 16:40 remaining and ended with Pitt up 44-32 with 7:08 left. The Golden Bears went more than 11 minutes without scoring a basket, and 15-plus minutes with only one basket.

(Thanks, ESPN.com archives, for ripping my heart out anew.)

Pitt went on to blow the Bears out of the water. Final score 63-50. My new friends offered feeble condolences; the waitress couldn't have ignored me more if I didn't exist. (By then, I was wishing I didn't exist.) I paid my tab in then-cheap Euros, and ventured out into the cold, Dutch night. I got lost on the way to the train station, and a walk that should have taken 15 minutes took 30. When I finally reached Amsterdam Centraal, only two of the 15 or so people were there, the rest having begged off for one reason or another.

After as much sympathy as an English girl and her disinterested American boyfriend could offer, we set off for an Irish bar, hoping to drown my sorrows in Guinness. We had all been to this bar before on several occasions, but tonight, for some reason, none of us could find it. After much wandering around, and not a few stops into other bars and coffee shops in the area, we were ultimately reduced to walking up and down the streets, vainly searching for an Irish pub that seemed to no longer exist. I walked up to an indescribable cast of skeevy hash dealers and generally crazy people, asking directions in the sort of horrendous faux-Irish accent that only a drunken, pissed off American can manage. Oh, and I was still wearing my giant shamrock sunglasses, courtesy of the good folks who make Killian's Irish Red. Needless to say, these people I was talking to were not anxious to help me.

We never did find the bar, and I'm pretty sure that's the night I lost my hat.

All of which begs the question: If this is what comes to mind when I think of Cal Basketball (Well, that and watching Tony Gonzalez push opponents around and saying to myself 'Hm, he should probably play football.'), can I possibly consider the departure of Ben Braun to be a bad thing?

OK, one last link: Goldenblogs has some thoughts of the future of Cal Basketball that are worth keeping in mind as this search goes forward.