Tournament Tales ... with Lindsay Gottlieb
Cavs Assistant Looks Back on Her Final Four Run with the Golden Bears
by Joe Gabriele (@CavsJoeG)
3/5/20 | Cavs.com
Just think: in one week, Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse will be neck-deep in MAC-Madness!
That’s right – spring has sprung and it’s tournament time across the land – with mid-minors, mid-majors and major-majors all vying for their Conference title and a crack at the Whole Enchilada this year in Atlanta.
On March 11, the Women’s Mid-American Conference Championship quarterfinals tip off at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, and anyone who’s watched either the women’s or men’s brackets know how incredible the atmosphere will be. The FieldHouse has also hosted the Women’s NCAA Final Four in 2007 – and will do so again in 2024.
As basketball fans nationwide gear up for the Big Dance, Cavs.com gets you ready with our annual collection of “Tournament Tales” – tipping off with first-year Cavaliers assistant coach Lindsay Gottlieb.
Other than Antonio Lang – who won back-to-back titles with Duke – no Cavs assistant has more knowledge of the NCAA Tourney than Gottlieb, who took two schools to the Dance, including seven trips in eight seasons as the head coach of Cal-Berkeley.
The daughter of a New York state judge and whose family consists of several Ivy League graduates, Gottlieb graduated with a political science degree from Brown – where she also played point guard for the Bears.
Before her uber-successful career at Cal, she was the head coach at UC Santa Barbara – leading the Gauchos to a pair of Big West Championships and earning Big West Coach of the Year honors in 2009.
Gottlieb spent eight years as the head coach of Cal-Berkeley, where she led the Golden Bears to seven NCAA Tournament appearances and compiled a .668 winning percentage over that span, leaving the university with the second-most wins (179) in school history.
Under Gottlieb, Cal reached the Elite Eight and Final Four for the first time – including their memorable run in 2012-13, the subject of our first Tourney Tale of the spring …
Lindsay Gottlieb took two teams to the Big Dance -- including seven trips with Cal, reaching the Final Four for the first time in school history in 2012-13.
Photo by David Liam Kyle/via Getty Images
What was your first experience like – getting to the Tournament with UC-Santa Barbara as a 30-year-old?
Lindsay Gottlieb: It was amazing.
We were 15-1 in-conference heading into the Tournament, and I remember calling some of my friends asking: How do you prep a team that's the best team in the conference for the Tournament, because there's so much pressure.
And winning a conference tournament – a must-win game to get to the Dance – it was one of the best coaching moments of my life still, because it was a bunch of mid-major kids who just knew what was on the line.
That was really fun. Lot of celebrating after that one – first time cutting down the nets! Great, great memories of that, of course.
Then, we wind up being a 15-seed, playing Stanford in the First Round. So that wasn't nearly as fun. I was like: Can you send us anywhere else? I had enough of (legendary Stanford head coach) Tara VanDerveer when I was an assistant at Cal.
Was there something special about that first one?
Gottlieb: Well, I think that, like when we were at Cal, many times we knew we were in the Tournament based on our regular season play. So, regular season games matter a lot because you're worried about seeding and if you're anywhere near the bubble, you worry about setting yourself up.
But there's nothing quite like a one-bid league where that's the only way you're gonna get into the Tournament.
Gosh, I was head coach at Cal for eight years and in seven of them we made the Tournament – and each one felt a little different.
There was the year that we were on the bubble and we celebrated like crazy when we got in. In other years we just wanted to make sure our seeding path was as favorable as possible. So, every year it's a whole different experience.
There's nothing quite like the NCAA Tournament. It's really the best thing in sports.
Did coaching with the Cavaliers in New Orleans – the site of your Final Four appearance – bring back any memories?
Gottlieb: Absolutely.
When we were on the plane, it occurred to me that the last time I went to New Orleans, I was on a different charter flight with a different bunch of people, heading to the Final Four.
It was just seven years ago, and it's amazing where life takes you, where your basketball journey takes you. And that was just a really neat moment for me to think about -- the opportunity be there now with the Cavaliers but also having been there in a completely different role with Cal.
It's pretty cool.
"The NBA is incredibly diverse. These guys have really different interests – on and off the court. They come from different backgrounds. And I think that any time that people feel seen and valued as a human being, they're more willing to be coached and pushed in ways that coaches need to push people sometimes."
Lindsay Gottlieb, on applying her coaching philosophy to the NBA
When you were at Cal, you believed in really letting your team express themselves as individuals. What’s the background behind that philosophy?
Gottlieb: Well, when I became the head coach at Cal and looked at the group of young women in the locker room who had been to two straight NITs, I felt like there was more that they had to give.
I remember looking at them and saying: 'This isn't a rebuild. We're not broken. We just need to become a better version of our of ourselves.'
And I believed, at the time, that the way we were gonna do that – and it's also just my philosophy as a coach and, of course, as a human being – is that you have to embrace who people are as individuals. Let them be their full selves in order for them to thrive in whatever they're doing.
What made the 2012-13 team unique?
Gottlieb: That group was so special because I believe that they really played for the 'California' on the front of their jersey – which made us all, I think, comfortable and allowed them to be different.
Some of them wore skinny jeans and some of them wore baggy jeans. You know, Layshia (Clarendon) rocked the mohawk and Gennifer Brandon wore a different hairstyle or different braids for every other game.
And I think that became part of our identity.
I think we showed people that, number one, college athletics is supposed to be fun – that you can have fun and enjoy one another and it doesn't mean you're not competitive. That team, for example, played better defense and played harder than any team I've ever been around.
But also, I think just for women, one thing I'm proud of, is that you look at you look at our Final Four photo that we took at the Salute to Champions Dinner – and this was not intentional, I didn't say: ‘Make sure to dress in your own unique style.’ We said: Dress up for the event in whatever 'dressing up' looks like for you.
And we had a very diverse group of women who represented themselves in that photo as their true, authentic self.
And a lot of people came to me later and said this was an important moment: you showed women could look any number of ways and still be strong and powerful and beautiful. We weren't trying to do anything specific with that photo.
But I think it just became a pretty cool, emblematic thing of what of what college athletics can be when you truly embrace diversity; you don't just tolerate it.
Have you continued embracing that philosophy at the NBA level?
Gottlieb: I mean, as a coach, you're always trying to get players to be better, right? To improve their game, to push themselves a little bit harder.
And I think they're more inclined to do that – and you're more inclined to connect with them – when there's a true human acceptance of who you are as a person.
The NBA is incredibly diverse. These guys have really different interests – on and off the court. They come from different backgrounds. And I think that any time that people feel seen and valued as a human being, they're more willing to be coached and pushed in ways that coaches need to push people sometimes.
Cal made the Tournament as an underdog and later as a heavyweight. Was it hard to manage expectations as a favorite?
Gottlieb: Our theme for (the 2012-13) year – I remember talking about this in a preseason meeting with the team – our theme was: 'We're Ready.'
And what I meant by that – and what we all embraced – was that we're ready to talk about championships, we're ready to talk about expectations. We're ready to meet our goals head-on because we've put the work in for it for so long.
The year before, when I first got the job, I said let's just talk about, you know, being better each day. That was a team that hadn't made the tournament in two years -- so we talked about competing night in and night out.
But I thought that that 2012-13 team was ready to take on some of the lofty goals that were in front of us. We wanted to win a Pac-12 Championship, and we did. We wanted to go to a Final Four, and we did.
How did the conference tournament propel you forward that year?
Gottlieb: Well, we were 17-1 in conference, we hadn't lost since January. But I think one of the things that actually helped us make that Final Four run was a loss in the tournament.
We got to the Pac-12 Tournament and we beat USC pretty handily in the quarterfinal game. We played great. I remember someone telling me: 'Hey, you guys look like a pro team.'
And then the next night, we got completely demolished by UCLA! They sat in a zone. We were impatient and we were pressing.
And that was the best thing that happened to us, because we got to get home a little earlier, regroup and refresh ourselves.
A couple weeks later, in the Elite Eight, we played Georgia and Andy Landers, a legendary coach known for playing man-to-man. And he played the same zone as UCLA, because he watched the film and saw how bad we looked.
But we were able to kind of reference that moment against UCLA to say: Hey, we're better than we were that day. And we were able to come back and beat them in overtime.
Did winning an overtime game to reach the Final Four make it that much greater?
Gottlieb: Talk about pressure, right?
As a coach, I think there's no more pressure than there is on that Elite Eight game. If you lose before that, it's ‘Well, you know, you weren't quite there.’ But once you get there, get close – I mean the Final Four is the pinnacle of every college player's dream.
So, it was it was unbelievable.
It was just such an exciting moment, I think, for the University of California and for the families of our players, many of whom jumped in a car and drove up from L.A. to Spokane, Washington.
So, yeah, to do it in overtime was just pretty unreal.
Looking back, what are your overall memories of the Big Dance?
Gottlieb: Just how unbelievably fun and special the NCAA Tournament is.
I remember getting an at-large bid as an assistant at the University of Richmond, and just seeing the looks on those kids’ faces walking in to the gym – (plus we wound up playing UConn).
Just everything that goes along with it: the selection show, the way that you travel. And I remember looking around -- at the Final Four they wrap all 64 teams around the arena on, like, a ticker – and when you see your name, it's something special.
Hearing your name called on the selection show just never gets old. Hearing the band. The fans cheering and the band playing as you leave the hotel.
It's just an incredible moment and as a college basketball player or coach, that's the epitome of your experience – being in the NCAA Tournament.