One player leaving a collegiate athletic team shouldn't really surprise anyone these days, and the reasons behind the departure of Casey Morris from the Cal women's basketball team seem relatively benign:

Expectations weren't met; styles didn't mesh.

It happens.

Put her decision in context, though, and things start looking a little suspicious.

For one, the Bears just completed their most successful season to date, finishing second in the Pac-10 and reaching the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament for the first time in program history.

In addition, coach Joanne Boyle managed to offset the voids left by graduating seniors Ashley Walker, Devanei Hampton and Shantrell Sneed with arguably the best incoming recruiting class in the country-seven prep players who are all ranked in the top 50 in the nation and four who played in McDonald's High School All-American games.

Overall, by the end of the season, it seemed like things were going well for Cal.

OK, so Morris is just missing out on a tough but promising transition year because of personal needs. But wait-Kelsey Adrian won't be back? Fellow reserve Angelei Aguirre is also leaving?

Maybe this is a case of things happening in threes, a coincidence to which the deaths of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon can attest. But maybe there's more to the story.

This situation is not incredibly worrisome for the Bears, at least in terms of basketball talent. True, Morris led the reserves in scoring last season and provided Boyle's squad with a spark off the bench, but Adrian and Aguirre were not exactly impact players in their years in Berkeley.

Their collective departure becomes a cause for concern, however, because it suggests a fundamental flaw in Boyle's system.

"The basketball part just wasn't a good fit," said Morris, who played in every game last season. "I think it was a different style than I expected it to be.

"Probably, when I was a senior coming out of high school, I should have taken more time in the recruiting process. I didn't take any visits. I just picked Cal because it was close and had good academics. It was partly my fault. I should have taken more time instead of being so closed-minded."

To use an NBA analogy, she was stuck on the defensive-minded Spurs and longed for an up-tempo transition team like the Warriors.

In any case, if Morris was the only one to go, there wouldn't be too many raised eyebrows. But with three players heading for the exit all at once, the Bears send a few disconcerting messages.

Universal wisdom says a winning team needs a strong second unit. Thus, if Boyle can't satisfy her bench players at least enough to keep them around, then Cal, at least in the long term, could be left with starters who haven't been battle-tested in practice. That engenders, even more crucially, a group of players who won't be properly prepared for game play.

Perhaps more importantly, players want to win. So, if Morris and Co. don't believe they can build on the Bears' recent success, one might reach the conclusion that the team's recent achievements were more a reflection of Walker and Hampton's achievements and less an effect of Boyle's coaching abilities.

The departures of Morris, Adrian and Aguirre don't appear to be directly related to playing time, but instead to something more substantive.

"I haven't felt like I played freely and really played my game since I've been at Cal," Morris said.

The dilemma currently facing the Bears appears to fall within the framework of a larger debate.

On one end is the collegiate ideal of freshman-through-senior player retention. On the other end is the debacle surrounding the USC men's basketball program, which lost its coach and several of its current and future players amid allegations of recruiting violations. And even though Cal hasn't broken any NCAA rules, that doesn't mean there aren't potential problems.

Now it's up to Boyle to prove that her program champions the former scenario. Otherwise, her team's recent success might be like Morris's tenure at Cal:

One and done.

Tags: CAL WOMEN'S BASKETBALL, CASEY MORRIS, JOANNE BOYLE