Cuonzo Martin, Cal Agree on Contract: Latest Comments and Reaction

California Golden Bears men's basketball head coach Cuonzo Martin has agreed to a new contract, athletic director H. Michael Williams announced Monday.

Martin has coached at Cal for two seasons after having spent three as the head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers. He led the Golden Bears to a 23-11 record last year along with a spot in the NCAA tournament.

Terms of the new contract were not announced.

This decision comes after Martin led Cal to its highest NCAA tournament seed in program history last season at No. 4. 

Williams went into further detail on the decision to retain Martin in a statement:

"

Cuonzo is a tremendous educator and unparalleled leader who has helped redefine a culture of excellence here at Cal. Since he arrived on the University of California campus in 2014, Cuonzo has had a transformational influence on all of us. He has demonstrated that he is an educator, first and foremost, and cares deeply about developing young people into responsible and productive adults. Not only have we seen outstanding results on the court, his teams have also shown a deep commitment to their work in the classroom and we couldn’t be happier with the trajectory of the program.

"

The Golden Bears saw a five-win improvement in Martin's second year and also finished third in the Pac-12. Though Cal was a No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament, its March Madness run came to an early end in the first round thanks to the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors.

Martin also coached a potential top-10 pick in this year's NBA draft on June 23—freshman forward Jaylen Brown—along with a potential first-round pick in 2017 in power forward Ivan Rabb.

Each team Martin has coached has improved over each passing year. As the head coach at Missouri State, he went from winning 11 games in the 2008-09 campaign to winning 26 by 2010-11. At Tennessee, the Volunteers went from 19 wins in 2011-12 to 24 wins and a spot in the NCAA tournament two years later.

If these trends are any indication for what's to come next year, the third season of the Martin era at Cal could be a historic one.

Stats courtesy of Sports-Reference.com.