Montgomery glad to be Blue

BERKELEY -- A few trophies of past Cal basketball teams remain perched on a shelf. Otherwise, Mike Montgomery's new office at Haas Pavilion is a work in progress. Half-opened boxes. A stack of job resumes from would-be assistant coaches. A pile of messages next to that.

Not two weeks into his job in charge of Cal's program, Montgomery hasn't had a moment to relax. And he's OK with that. "I haven't figured out how to relax yet. It's something I need to be able to figure out how to do," Montgomery, 61, said Thursday, when asked what motivated him to get back into coaching after taking Stanford to 12 NCAA tournaments and getting a two-year gig with the Warriors.

"I had the opportunity to go where I wanted, when I wanted to be there," he said of the past two years as an assistant A.D. at Stanford. "But I had a hard time with that. I was nervous. It was like all those years of having to be someplace with a purpose, and now I didn't really have to be someplace with a purpose."

That place now is at Cal, where already he has retained Gregg Gottlieb as one assistant, and brought on his son, John Montgomery, as director of basketball operations. And Old Dominion University's Web site has announced assistant Travis DeCuire has resigned to join Montgomery's staff.

We talked with Montgomery about his expectations at Cal, his scheduling and recruiting philosophies, Ryan Anderson's big decision, the point guard position and the great mascot debate:

Q. Let's talk about why you're here. What drives you at this point to do this again? A. In doing the TV games, which was very enjoyable, there was a side of me that said let's try to be good at that, let's make a career of that. But it wasn't as fulfilling. There seemed to always be a little bit of a void. The other thing was I did want to have a chance to work with my son.

Q. Talk about your impressions of Cal after two weeks.

A. It's been really interesting. There's been a lot of things that I didn't know and a lot of things that have been fascinating to me. They need some work in facilities. There's a lot of people doing a tremendous job without some of the amenities other places have. The people here really take a lot of pride in just kind of getting it done.

Just the energy here ... call it what you like. You walk across campus and there's just a lot of stuff going on, and it's fascinating to me. You've got to have a little bit of an open mind to what's going on. But this is the world. This is life. This is what goes on in this world, and it's here. It's kind of neat that way.

Q. When you arrived at Stanford in 1986, did you know you would be successful or were you hoping? Does this feel totally different or the same in terms of your expectations and confidence level?

A. I probably feel more pressure here because people expect so much from me. I have a sense that, 'Oh, we got this guy and here's what's going to happen.' I think I understand I give you a little bang for the buck right off the top, but the reality is it's about getting good players and players committing themselves to winning, and I'm not any different than anyone else. There's a lot of great coaches out there.

I feel like I would really like to do it, get us into the NCAA consistently and some of those things they haven't done. I think it would be a great place to be if we could do that.

Q. One common complaint from Cal fans in recent years is what they consider a bland non-conference schedule. What will be your philosophy for scheduling, and will you try to bring in high- profile opponents?

A. I love neutrals against big schools because it's a test against a major opponent in a neutral situation. I like to play good opponents, I just don't necessarily need to go into their place any more than they want to come into our place. It's tough to get home- and-home with biggies right now, because they don't do that.

Q. Let's talk about your players. As a coach watching from the outside this past season, what did you like about Ryan Anderson's game that perhaps the rest of us don't appreciate?

A. I don't think there's anything you don't appreciate. The kid can score the ball. At the end of the day, it's still a skill game. I think there's things he needs to learn, things he can get better at to expand his game. But the one thing he has for a 6-10 kid is he can shoot the ball. So you can move him around and create mismatches with him. And he's pretty consistent. He doesn't have a lot of bad games.

Q. Obviously, he has a decision to make about whether to stay in the NBA draft or return to Cal. State the case for how staying in school could benefit him?

A. The NBA's a lonely place. The money's there and that's the one thing. But it's a lonely place. You've got a lot of time on your hands to figure out what to do. There's a real difference between guys being ready to play and being in the league. Most young people coming into the league aren't ready to play.

Ryan has to like school, like the fact that he's getting an education, like his teammates and look forward to the challenge of trying to get into the NCAA tournament. I think he does feel that way. There's not many guys as sophomores who aren't going to be better as juniors and move up.