Cal has taken baby steps in its first two ACC seasons, improving from 14 wins in 2024-25 to 22 wins, a .500 conference record and an NIT appearance a season ago. Now as season three approaches, coach Mark Madsen is ready for his program to take a giant leap.
And not just into the expanded NCAA Tournament for the first time in more than a decade.
“I love our team,” Madsen told Hoops HQ. “We won 22 games last year, so I tell the guys ‘Let’s put up 30 or 31 this season. Will it be a challenge? Of course it will, because those are lofty goals. Guys have to buy in and really focus on their strengths. But if they do, we’re going to have a chance to do something special.”
Playing to your strengths is a good start. But that’s not the only thing that has to happen for the Bears to continue building on their momentum and end an NCAA drought dating back to 2016.
For starters, Madsen is going to have to find a way to replace his top four scorers from last season. Between them, Dai Dai Ames, Justin Pippen, Chris Bell and John Camden accounted for 58 points per game, nearly 75 percent of the team’s offensive output.
While Madsen knew he was going to lose seniors Bell and Camden, Ames’ departure for Tennessee and Pippen’s transfer to Ohio State after just one season in the program came as more of a surprise. And yet, given the current landscape of college athletics, it wasn’t entirely unexpected.
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To fill the void, Madsen has rebuilt his roster with a combination of portal additions, true freshmen and a core of returning players he hopes are ready to make more significant contributions. “Every single player on the team is going to contribute throughout the course of the season and it’s up to them to be the very best version of themselves to carve out the biggest role possible,” Madsen said. “We expect a lot of guys to step up. In terms of leadership, the players end up deciding that on their own.”
Among the most likely candidates to take on that responsibility, both in the locker room and on the stat sheet, is 6-foot-10 graduate student Lee Dort. Cal’s only returning starter, Dort is already a dominant rebounder. He led the team at 7.8 per game last season, punctuated by a career-best 18-rebound performance against Florida State in the ACC Tournament.
He also averaged 8.1 points per game. But with a career field goal percentage of .600, he has the capability to become even more of an offensive force if can become as assertive on that end of the floor as his coach would like him to be.
“Lee can score with his back to the basket,” Madsen said. “He finishes at the rim incredibly well and he’s coming off a big time experience this summer with the Haiti national team. We’re expecting big things from him.”
Madsen is equally as bullish on fellow returners TT Carr, who handed out 69 assists off the bench as a freshman last season, and former four-star prospect Jovani Ruff, a long-range shooting specialist who sat out last season as a redshirt, along with a four-man freshman class highlighted by top-125 prospect Dionycius Bakare, a 6-foot-5 wing from Canada who originally committed to Penn State.
Even with all that young talent, it’s likely that for the second straight season Dort will be surrounded in the starting lineup by four incoming transfers. This year’s group of five portal additions that has a heavy SEC flavor to it.
Senior point guard Jordan Ross and athletic sophomore forward Jake Wilkins both came from Georgia while Amir Ali played at Mississippi State last season after starting his career at Arizona State. Madsen also brought in versatile shooting guard Nojus Idrusaitis from ACC rival Pitt.
The most impactful veteran newcomer, however, could end up being the one with the least impressive pedigree. Michael Cooper (no relation to the former Laker by the same name) comes to Cal from Wright State, where he showed off a quick release while averaging 13.4 points in 24 minutes per game.
“He’s such a unique player, because he can shoot the three and he can do it off the dribble,” Madsen said. “He was thinking about going to Davidson. They were selling him on the Steph Curry model, but we’re glad he decided to come here.”
While Cal doesn’t currently have many NBA stars to use as a recruiting enticement (Jaylen Brown being the obvious exception), it does have a coach who knows what it takes to get to the league, having won a championship ring with the Lakers during his six-year professional career. Playing as a member of the tradition-rich ACC doesn’t hurt, either, especially now that Madsen and his staff have been around the league twice and have a better handle on how to manage the logistics of being a Pacific Coast program in an Atlantic Coast conference.
“I love the ACC,” Madsen said. “It’s a conference of champions. It’s a conference where if you’re a serious, serious basketball player, you want to go to the ACC.”
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