By Morris Phillips

There’s no mystery to California Coach Mike Montgomery as to why his Bears have followed a six-game win streak with three straight losses, the latest loss in overtime to Arizona State on Wednesday, 89-78.  According to Montgomery, it’s simply life in the grueling Pac-12.

“Teams are playing better than we are,” Montgomery admitted.  “It’s the game of basketball.  You’ve got to make plays.  You’ve got to make shots, you’ve got to defend.”

Once again, the Bears started slow, trailing 17-7 to the Sun Devils just seven minutes in, and found themselves fighting uphill the rest of the evening.  A spirited rally led by Justin Cobbs and Tyrone Wallace got the Bears a 72-69 lead with 26 seconds remaining, but ASU’s Jermaine Marshall forced overtime with a 3-point basket with 19 seconds left.  In overtime, all the energy expended getting even caught up to the Bears as they were outscored 17-6 in overtime. 

“Emotionally, we have a hard time when things go wrong,” Montgomery said of the overtime.  “We have a hard time adjusting and reacting to that.  They made some plays and we got down four.  Then our body language kind of goes down.”

The Bears fell to 14-7, 5-3 in conference play with the loss.  But now, the only thing standing in between Montgomery’s young team and a four-game skid is No. 1 Arizona who visits Haas Pavilion on Saturday night.  Against the top-ranked, undefeated Wildcats the Bears won’t have the luxury of a slow start or a sluggish finish.

Win, and the Bears will have temporarily righted the ship.  Lose to Arizona, and the Bears tenuous hold on an upper-division finish in league play and the possibility of an NCAA tournament bid will be lost.

Cal will need to shoot better than they did against Arizona State in order to have any success.  The Pac-12’s worst 3-point shooting team missed 9 of 13 attempts from distance and fell behind early when they didn’t get any offense in the paint.  David Kravish and Richard Solomon provided quality options, combining to shoot 10 of 17 for 24 points, but the interior duo didn’t see the ball much as the game slipped away in overtime. 

The Bears were led by Cobbs and Wallace with 21 points and 20 respectively.  Cal lost the battle of the glass, 38-32 and missed 8 of their 20 free throw attempts, which was significant in such a close game. 

ASU got 29 points from Jahii Carson and 22 from Marshall as the Sun Devils’ backcourt got the best of Cal with its’ quickness in transition and early offense.  The Sun Devils were picked to finish ahead of Cal in most pre-season polls, but ASU started conference play with losses in three of their first five games.

The Arizona-Cal game is slated for a 7:30pm tip on Saturday but the game is officially sold out.