Is Mark Madsen headed to the Pac-12 after all?

Before the NCAA Tournament began, it was widely assumed that Stanford would fire head coach Jerod Haase after seven nondescript seasons in Palo Alto, and that UVU head coach and Stanford alum Mark Madsen would replace him.

But amid the talk, Stanford athletic director Bernard Muir publicly stated that he would not be firing Haase, and so it was assumed that Madsen would likely stay at UVU.

According to a report from college basketball insider Jon Rothstein on Sunday, however, not only could Madsen leave UVU, but he may be headed for Stanford’s biggest rival.

Rothstein reported that Madsen “has emerged as a leading candidate for the head coaching vacancy at Cal.”

Madsen, 47, has been tremendous at UVU since getting hired in 2019. In his first collegiate head coaching job after he was an assistant with the Los Angeles Lakers for the six years prior, he has a record of 70-50, including a 48-20 record the past two seasons.

After going 25-8 this season and losing in the semifinals of the WAC Tournament to SUU by a point, UVU has marched its way to the semifinals of the NIT, where it will face UAB on Tuesday in Las Vegas.

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Should Madsen go to Cal, he would take over a program that has been very bad for the last six seasons, with the last four coming under head coach Mark Fox, who was fired this spring.

Since going 21-13 in the 2016-17 season, Cal has a combined record of 54-134, including a woeful mark of 3-29 this season.

Numerous up-and-coming coaches have been linked to the Cal job, but many have opted to stay at their current positions rather than move up to the Power 6 ranks because of the difficulty of the job in Berkeley.