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OREM — Utah Valley's historic men's basketball season led to the next career step for the man leading the program.
Mark Madsen has agreed to a deal to become the next head coach at California, as first reported Wednesday by Stadium's Jeff Goodman, CBS' Matt Norlander and a host of other national college basketball reporters. The 47-year-old native of Walnut Creek, California, replaces Mark Fox, who was fired by the Golden Bears after capping a four-year, 38-87 run with a 3-29 record in 2022-23 that included just two wins in conference play.
The Golden Bears haven't finished above .500 since 2017, and posted just two double-digit win totals in the past six years.
Utah Valley confirmed the move Wednesday afternoon, after Madsen had told his players in a closed-door meeting. Associate head coach Todd Phillips will lead the program while a national search for Madsen's replacement is conducted.
"Mark Madsen has taken our program to unprecedented never-seen-before heights," Utah Valley athletic director Jared Sumsion said. "I appreciate how much he cared about our student-athletes and we thank him for his service to our program. We wish him and his family the very best in his new role at Cal."
Madsen, who prepped at San Ramon Valley High School — located just 19 miles from the Berkeley campus that serves as the flagship institution of the University of California system — was also a collegiate star at Stanford. A two-time All-American who led the Cardinal to four NCAA Tournament appearances and a Final Four berth in 1998.
Many had pegged Madsen to take a new job at his alma mater. But when Stanford opted to retain Jarod Haase after a seventh-straight season without an NCAA Tournament appearance, the Bears moved quickly to bring in the one-time Bay Area rival.
The No. 29 overall pick by the Los Angeles Lakers in 2000, Madsen spent nine seasons in the NBA, won two championships, earned the respect of the late Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal, and captivated all of Los Angeles with his dance moves and fluency in Spanish learned from a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Spain.
After retiring from the NBA, Madsen served as an assistant coach for the Utah Flash in the NBA Development League and head coach of the Los Angeles D-Fenders before being promoted to a Lakers assistant under Byron Scott and Luke Walton prior to the latter's dismissal in 2016. That's where Madsen got his start in the collegiate ranks, succeeding BYU coach Mark Pope at Utah Valley in 2019.
Madsen signed a four-year extension with the university that pushed his base salary over $200,000 annually in 2021, according to public records obtained by KSL.com at the time, after the Wolverines' first Western Athletic Conference title in his four-year tenure (the Wolverines shared the WAC regular-season title with Grand Canyon in 2021 due to scheduling irregularities and cancelled games resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic).
Though a first-time college head coach, Madsen finished at or above .500 in three of his four seasons in Orem, capped by a program-record 28 wins in 2022-23 that included a WAC regular-season title and the program's first-ever berth in the NIT semifinals, an 88-86 overtime loss to UAB at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas.
The 2023 WAC Coach of the Year departs Orem with a 70-51 record, including a 39-25 mark in WAC play.
Madsen is the third college basketball head coach from the state of Utah to move to a new job, after Utah State's Ryan Odom reportedly accepted an offer to join Virginia Commonwealth and Southern Utah's Todd Simon moved to Bowling Green.
