By Morris Phillips

Once again, Mike Montgomery and the Cal Bears had their support staff scouring the record books—looking back more than 50 years—to find parallels to their accomplishments.

Previously, Montgomery led Cal to their first regular-season conference title in more than 50 years, winning the final season of Pac-10 competition in 2010.  Now, after beating Oregon State 88-83 on Saturday, the Bears have won their first three conference road games for the first time since 1957 when they defeated Washington State on consecutive days and Stanford a week later in the old Pacific Coast Conference.

Pretty heady stuff for a team that didn’t do much to distinguish itself from any of the other 345 Division I basketball teams in December.  Now that same team has started January on fire and is stating its case for a NCAA tournament bid.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, there are the injuries (to Ricky Kreklow and freshman Jabari Bird), the lethargic first half on Saturday, the rest of the conference schedule, and Montgomery vowing not to let anyone look to far ahead.

“You don’t think in terms of that, you think in terms of winning the next game,” Montgomery said when asked about the 3-0 start in conference.  “I would have said if you take a couple of players off our squad and send us on the road that it would make it that much more difficult to do.”

What made the task more difficult was a big shooting first half by Oregon State that had them up 45-35 at the half.  The Beavers shot 63 percent in the period and looked a lot like the offensively superior team that dispatched Stanford on Thursday.

But things changed immediately in the second half.  The Bears opened on an 18-7 run and took a 53-52 lead with 14 minutes remaining.   Four minutes later, senior reserve Jeff Powers got into the act, canning a pair of three-pointers in 10-0 run that allowed Cal to maintain at least a five-point margin the rest of the way.

“We made life easy for them in a couple of ways,” OSU Coach Craig Robinson said.  “All season long we have said that we have to stick to our game plan.  In the first half, we did a really good job of doing that.  In the second half, I don’t know if it was nerves or if it was panic, but it got away from us and I couldn’t get them back on track.”

The Bears were led by Justin Cobbs who scored all 20 of his points after halftime.  David Kravish added 16 and Powers 14.  Cal’s 53 percent shooting after the break turned things around, but Cobbs was the obvious catalyst, continuing his strong playmaking and ability to push the ball in transition.

Oregon State got 26 points from Roberto Nelson and 22 from Angus Brandt.

The Bears get an opportunity to continue their winning ways on Wednesday when Washington comes to Haas Pavilion.