At Least He Won’t Be Standing Out Too Much

Posted by: Avinash on Thursday, September 6th, 2007

Max Zhang is ready to conquer Pac-10 basketball with CalCal football is in full swing these days, and I’m happy–these are the best months of college, chilling on Saturdays, an event at hand, and the possibilities of craziness endless. For most people. Who aren’t me.

But let’s move from our dreamy weekends to the interesting realities lying ahead. That’s right, I’ll be talking about college basketball for a brief second, because there just seems to be this unwritten rule that every time a seven foot Chinese star migrates to our team, I just have to blog about it. Consider it morbid curiosity, or if you want a more respective term, subconscious Confucian fusion. But it’s time to meditate.

– Xu “Max” Zhang, a 7-3 center from Yantai, China, has signed to play with the California men’s basketball team this season, Golden Bear head coach Ben Braun announced today.

The tallest player in school history and only the fourth seven-footer ever to play at Cal, Zhang only began playing basketball when he was 15, but by the time he graduated from high school in 2006, he was selected to China’s high school all-star team.

“It is very rare to have a skilled student-athlete with Max’s size,” Braun said. “He has improved significantly over the past two years and is still developing physically. Max has the ability to change games and alter opponents’ shots, and he has the potential to score inside and outside. He can run the floor and is an adept shot blocker.”

Zhang first played in the United States when he attended an adidas camp in the summer of 2005. He returned to the U.S. in the fall of 2006 to study at the American English Academy in Monterey Park, Calif. As a member of the California Supreme AAU team, Zhang ranked third in both rebounds (43) and blocks (10) at the 2007 Cactus Classic this past May in Tucson, Ariz. He also played briefly with the LA Impact team over the summer.

Zhang adds to an impressive front line for the Bears that includes returning 6-11 senior center DeVon Hardin, Cal’s fifth all-time leading shot blocker who averaged 10.7 ppg and 8.4 rpg in 11 games last year before being sidelined with a foot injury, and 6-10 forward Ryan Anderson, a Freshman All-American and member of the 2007 Pac-10 All-Freshman squad after contributing 16.3 ppg and 8.2 rpg.

Zhang’s signing also provides insurance, as several Cal post players have incurred significant injuries in recent years, including four different players who had surgery in the last year. In addition to Hardin, they are 7-0 sophomore Jordan Wilkes (knee), 6-10 sophomore Taylor Harrison (knee) and 6-6 junior Theo Robertson (hip). Former big men Leon Powe (knee), Rod Benson (knee) and Sam Rayburn (knee) also missed all or part of seasons since 2004-05.

I have not followed Cal basketball with much compunction, simply because the artist currently known as Ben Braun retains the distinction of injuring all his big men. Hopefully he will take better care of this one, knowing that the wrath of the Red Army could fall on his doorstep. (Not that Berkeley would mind–I fully believe they will be greeted as liberators).

Too Much Max Zhang! [California Golden Blogs]
7-3 Max Zhang Signs with Cal basketball [CSTV]



Topics: Cal Basketball, Sports, UC Berkeley

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bobgnote · 916 weeks ago

See the 7% fee hike, predictable since the 2001 power deals cooked the books, by Gov. Davis' announcement to Lay et al, of 20 year deals, tendered Dec.2001-the May-June 2001 nuclear refurbishings, a grid bottleneck, that incited the providers to general grid witholding?

NO YOU DIDN'T, even though NHL struck in 2004 and all the CBAs thereafter mean pro sports AND schools and all service districts are doomed to fail from either or BOTH taints and illegal costs.
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bobgnote · 916 weeks ago

What's all that ethics talk mean?

Before Max gets the ball for the Bears, the school could be forced to CLOSE, for fraud.

You know! The same kind of fraud, the Chinese shoot you for and bill your family 50 cents.
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Avinash · 916 weeks ago

What the hell are you talking about?
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1 reply · active 816 weeks ago
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Bob · 816 weeks ago

See the 2009 Fall elections coming up, after Alice Cooper's mobster kid;s second-gen corporate overproduction flunkie rockers played SCHOOL'S OUT, for his 2009 graduation party, AT HIS DORM?

That tune got copped from Barrington Hall, c.1971. Alice (Vince Furnier) knew this and all about taking gas by syphon, in Berkeley. This and COLD ETHYL were among his NSA-style corporate crank, from the same site as MAYOR RON DELLUMS was House Manager, in the 1960s.

I was workshift manager in early 1974, to assign replacement shifts to blonde Alison, who had tricked off and made the house pay a fine, for her Shattuck romps in 1973, quite funny when she turned up at the FINAL WINE DINNER, May 1989, tall and blonde and near then-US Rep Ron Dellums, whom I told about the impending crash from deregulation of energy, then merely touted, and about how Bill Graham and WB had used W.E.S. to make overproductions, AC-ZZ. That included JACKO.

Dellums let the whole party crash, as did Obama, and look what happened when Bam tried to lose the election to Joey Plumber and block the Burris appointment, by Blago! Mehserle shot Grant, Mixon shot five, four fatally, and lost his life in the riot.

I am talking about CPC 404.6.(a) incitement to riot and 18 U.S.C. 371 conspiracy to interagency fraud. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, how to get me through to Eric Holder, on your phone card? Come on back, to California!
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The Big Boards at Bears Necessity

[...] Once we reached Pac-10 play, you could see the problem was the same–pretty good frontcourts, abetted by inconsistent backcourt play. I caught glimpses of the UCLA and Arizona games, and there are just too many annoying kinks. We average plenty of assists, but mostly on kickins to the post. There’s just not enough ball movement to spread the defense late in games, and the defense crowds and that’s that. In addition to that, you’d see the frontcourt not getting the ball often, the backcourt taking awful 18 foot jumpers, the perimeter defense ok, but plenty of points being scored inside and out (Cal is near the bottom in scoring defense up to this point). It doesn’t help when Ben Braun decides not to address these problems–instead of fixing the point guard problem this summer, he goes out and finds a 7 foot Chinese project. [...]
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Bob · 816 weeks ago

Heard of the WHITE FLEET?

Max is the hottest possible class action plaintiff since Dr. Meat I mean Amit.

China has a claim to neglected US territories and to abused persons, thereon, if City of Berkeley and the State of California continue to neglect civil rights so despicably and to fund so irrationally, and to fail to protect evident jurisdictions, to ground Chinese intervenors.

Got MAX? Hey now! Does he just shoot around? Here comes business thinky-tanky.
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Bob · 816 weeks ago

Boy, howdy! Of course you know, we have a funny dos-y-dos going with those Cards.

You know which ones. And then comes Ollie Ollie oxen-ffree, see also USF and SCU football programs, deceased. The fault line will send the As 24 miles south. Where will CAL go? SJSU. Or go figure a way to beat the Hayward Fault AND your foundation corruption in favor of Israel. Turns out, Jews are from Ethiopia, and F-16s do NOT belong in Palestine in service of IDF pirates.

Disneyworld and erzatz Israfels need to find a lawful transactional grounding, having refuted due process, to effect profiteering. GOT FLEET STREET? Hey Coach.
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Bob · 816 weeks ago

IF people keep messing the funding infrastructure to push Israel past Iran, a wave will issue from not only La Palma in the Canaries but also from the Marianas' Trench, in the way of the Marrriott and Ritz bombings, recently and severally, by sculpting landslides and nuclear explosions, at once, in the 7-mile deep abyss.

The waves have to go through Hawaii to get us, but ya-da-da-da-DA, something can get up to the bridge and past, and come to see CAL, up University Avenue, pick up effluents, and fizz up some HazMats. Lose all the water, and then, BOOOOM. The Baba Channel blows up. The water tables get spiked with bad stuff.

And THEN any military targets get a surprise, how cruise missiles can come right out of nowhere, to completely disrupt any wiseguys who wage war, and pretend to keep peace. Berkeley is on dangerous ground, upcoming.
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