High school experience?

Yeah, but it sounds like he was successful at it. Whether he can recruit and deal with university politics will be determined.

Good move. All those HS King fan players will appreciate someone who played in the NBA for their favorite team.

Good hire. That should help the attendance in the new gym. So when UCD and Sac State play each other now it will be a match-up of coaches who played guard for the Kings in different decades.

Hopefully he will be good for recruiting more talented relatively local players. The basketball team relies too heavily on foreign players and transfers, so it's difficult for them to carry success into multiple seasons. And nothing against the foreign players, but no one can deny the game is different outside of the U.S.- some different rules + the strength of competition isn't as good. Evaluating them as potential U.S. players while they're playing international competition has its limits.

Now their best player this year-Jacob Holt- happens to be both Canadian and a transfer, but he actually got decent playing time at Santa Clara before transferring. This makes him an outlier. They currently do need to get a bunch of transfers because Sac State is a commuter school + that doesn't make it stand out to potential recruits. One CSU or another. Why Sacramento over say- Fresno if you know little about one or the other ? Hopefully Bibby can change that.

I recall many years ago when the kings first came to sac. That Bibby and his wife were looking to buy a home in davis. Yes! Then suddenly it disappeared. I suspected the bee and the new king’s management said “absolutely no to that” and that was the end to that. Just an interesting little thing from the past. I think the DE actually did a column on this. Oh well, who at this plot really cares except us boring people. Always liked Bibby"…..

Another style over substance move. I would have preferred he get at least a year of D2 HC or D1 assistant coach experience first. Especially after being fired from his previous High school position for some concerning allegations. Sac state just hired him for the name and show.

Davis has to counter this with a new HC for men's basketball. It's time. Coach Les has had a great run, but the program needs new blood.

Sac didn't fire their coach in order to bring in a former high school coach (granted, a well known name in Sac); their coach left and and was replaced by an 'interim' coach for a year.

I’m aware. However, the basketball team needs a new coach. The program is stale.

Mike Bibby, hard pass

I love Coach Les and we should not even bring up firing him. The guy brings stability, character, and grit to our program. We need to see the value in what we have. The guy has never brought reproach on the school or team.

Then go follow Sac State. In the 20 plus years I have been affiliated with the school Coach Les has brought character and stability to our program. UC Davis is not a Potemkin Village like Sac State.

I’m a UCD alumni. Don’t get upset because change is suggested. The fact is we are moving up in competition. Coach Les has done a fair job at the school, but it’s time for new blood. New leadership can be scary but you have to embrace change. If Coach Les had a more significant record you could justify keeping him, but he has been avg for his competition.

Give Jim the tools and he will produce.

He seems to have a lot of player turnover, which doesn't happen w WBB and FB.

His success comes when he lands a breakout star - Hawkins and Moneke.

Although the program is in need of a shake-up, I don't think that needs to involve a new coach.

It seems like more of a recruiting issue. From the 2023-24 team they lost Kane Milling and Elijah Pepper. They didn't even come close to replacing even Milling offensively with any, or a collection of,the new players. They just spread the shooting opportunities around to existing players like Tamba and DeBruhl. The 2024-25 team was a shell of the previous year's even before it played a game. And the 2025-26 will be a weaker shell of this year's team, unless it brings in some dynamic new talent

How do they fix recruiting ? That's above my pay grade, but I think there's something wrong if UCD is pinning it's hopes of rebounding (pun intended) on which players they can get out of the transfer portal. UCD is not getting top players from there for the most part (TY Johnson being a rare exception). The rest of the portal is like the $5 DVD bin that Wal-Mart used to have. One also has to consider that many of the players entering due to lack of playing time aren't playing at their initial colleges because they're just not that good in the first place.

I will say that Les' retention of HS recruits needs to improve. If players are leaving after their freshmen or redshirt freshmen years, it often has to do with lack of playing time. If they're not playing it's because the coach thinks they're not ready for bigger roles. This is a big problem with younger people. They get bored, they feel under-appreciated, they say f#$% this, and they leave. It's tougher for them for them to fully buy into the idea that they will have to earn their roles and playing time over 1 or 2 seasons.

If the freshmen in Les' judgment aren't ready for significant playing time there's no merit in just giving it to them. That makes the team worse. What can he and his staff do ? Aside from doing a better job of evaluating the players they want to recruit (so that they have more than just benchwarmers when they get to UCD) I don't have a solution.

I don't think Les needs to go; he and his staff just need to do a better job at recruiting.

I completely understand where you're coming from. Coach Les is a good man, and his staff has done a solid, consistent job since he was hired in 2011. His early years were promising, and he coached some competitive teams with success.

That said, since 2018, his teams have not finished higher than third in the Big West Conference. Between 2018 and 2025, his record at UC Davis stands at 195 wins and 199 losses, bringing his overall career coaching record to 349 wins and 339 losses. That's an average performance, even in a weaker conference. If you compare his record to Coach Gross, who was also hired in 2011, it's clear that the women's program is in a much better place than men's basketball. Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking we can’t be competitive — we don’t necessarily need the best athletes in the world. We need good athletes who also want a great education, and as Coach Gross has shown, you can win with those players. If I believed Coach Les was moving the men's program in a direction similar to UCD football or women’s basketball, I’d be on board with him staying. But I don't see that happening.

We’ve had enough time and data to evaluate Coach Les, and it seems that he’s a solid but average coach. If you’re okay with that, then fine, keep him. But I don’t think that’s going to lead to any championships. Sure, we may be competitive in some games, but once we transition to the Mountain West, I believe the weaknesses will be exposed.

Sacramento State’s move to bring in a name like Bibby will shake up recruiting in the area. He’ll attract talent that wouldn’t normally consider SACST, and we need to recognize that. If we don’t make a change, we could find ourselves chasing them for a while. I’m not saying we need to bring in someone like Mike Brown or an NBA-level coach, but we need some fresh energy. Right now, sticking with Coach Les isn’t going to cut it.

We’re UC Davis — one of the top universities in the world, committed to excellence. Changing coaches doesn’t have to be seen as a bad thing. It’s about striving to be better. Coach Les has done some great things, but complacency is dangerous, especially if we want a truly competitive sports program. It’s not personal, it’s just business. He’s had a great run since 2011, but consider that students on campus today have never seen the team in the NCAA tournament. We’ve been close, but we should be aiming higher than simply being “okay.” Why would a young undergrad care about a men’s basketball program that doesn’t win anything?

It’s time to get a young, up-and-coming coach who can inject some energy into this program. Right now, I don’t see that urgency or direction, and that’s a real problem we need to address if we’re serious about building a winning basketball team.

I 100% agree.

besides Manjon, what contributor have we lost over the years?

Beasley left but that was an unusual case - left to join his brother.

He seems to have a lot of player turnover, which doesn't happen w WBB and FB. — movielover

I don't think that Les has a higher rate of players leaving the program than other mid-majors like us or higher than the other Big West teams either. It's a new age in the college sports nowadays and players leave for a whole lot of reasons most of which have nothing to do with their coaching staff. I remember Darius Graham once saying that he'd "run through a brick wall for Les."

I actually think Les does a remarkably good job of retaining his best players who stay here because they feel connected to the team, the coaches and the university, for example, Pepper and TY coming back because they simply didn't want to leave even if it meant getting significant NIL elsewhere and playing on a larger stage.

I for one do not agree with any moves Sac State is doing. To me it seems like it’s all marketing and no substance.

Mike Bibby was an excellent point guard for the Kings. That’s doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be a great coach. If only we can get our hands on another ex Kings point guard with proven ability to be a head coach.

Also, just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t make them “upset”. I respectfully think showing Les the door would be a huge mistake. I mean do the “big schools” not have turnover? I’d argue that because of NIL that it’s the norm now. Disruption isn’t always a good thing.

Showing Les the door without making other changes is not a winning strategy. Sac State is taking big wild swings because the president needs to in order to make a name for himself. Davis isn’t in that situation. There’s no need to counter crazy.

Exactly, and we already have an ex Kings point guard with a proven track record in Les

plus Bibby comes with some baggage from his high school coaching a career. Didn’t end well.

PHOENIX — The Phoenix Police Department is not recommending charges for Shadow Mountain basketball coach and former NBA player Mike Bibby after a colleague accused him of sexual assault.

Police launched an investigation into Bibby in February after a Shadow Mountain teacher said he groped and rubbed his genitals on her in 2017.

"The investigation did not reveal probable cause to recommend charges against anyone in this case," Sgt. Vince Lewis with the Phoenix Police Department told 12 News Thursday.

Police took on the case the Monday after Bibby led the Phoenix high school boys' varsity basketball team to a state championship victory on Saturday, Feb. 23.

A lawyer representing the victim said the school was first notified of the alleged assault shortly after it happened but didn't do anything about it.

Paradise Valley Unified School District, however, says administrators "unequivocally had no knowledge and were not informed" of the alleged assault until Feb. 25, when police delivered a copy of the injunction against harassment.

Though, the school did say that administrators received a third-party tip and began to look into it earlier that month.

"I have a deep seeded concern that school officials and school district officials may have looked the other way knowing that they had this kind of problem on their hands," the woman's attorney Tom Ryan told 12 News in February.

Whole article here: https://www.12news.com/article/news/shadow-mountain-coach-former-nba-player-mike-bibby-wont-be-charged-in-sex-assault-case/75-05a135ff-9929-4c37-9fc7-e3a913908174

I don't have time now, but he tanked his ugly first year and pushed out some serviceable role players.

2010 - 2011: 10 - 20, 4 - 12 - Gary Stewart
2011 - 2012: 5 - 26, 3 - 13 - Jim Les

FTR, in 2010 - 11 Coach Stewart 'subpar' team battled both Cal and UCLA (7-point loss). (23-11 UCLA made it to the 2nd round of the NCAA tourney.)

In Les' first year we were hammered by UCLA (by 43 points), UCSB (27 pts), LBSU (28 pts), UCSB (47 pts), and LBSU (34 pts).