by Morris Phillips and Michael Duca

BERKELEY–The Cal Bears head to St.Louis to face Utah Valley on Wednesday night and they need to have a strong showing in the NIT to put a positive face on their season and they ended the season with nine loses in their last 14 games and they really struggled to shoot the ball and didn’t look anything like the NCAA Tournament team which their not.

This Wednesday night is really a great opportunity to show that they are a quality basketball team, the NIT has them seeded such that they have a chance to go to New York but first the Bears have to get down and win some games. Utah Valley is also the school that a few weeks ago was involved in that incident with New Mexico State where New Mexico players fought back against the fans who stormed the court.

NMS was coming off the floor after a loss and got pushed around in the crowd by the fans at Utah Valley which resulted in some punches and more shoving this was upon Utah Valley winning and this was an ugly incident. From the Utah Valley prospective they would like to put on a more positive showing from their school than what happened at that game.

On offense coming into this game the Bears Tyrone Wallace needs to shoot the ball better that was one of the issues for Cal coming down the stretch and the Bears Justin Cobbs didn’t shoot the ball poorly but with the pressure put upon him by his teammates missing so many shots he didn’t play very well either and it really became kind of a struggle on whether he should be passing or shooting.

Cobbs enjoys his role as the point guard as a shooter and a facilitator, from an invidual stand point there’s a lot of guys on that team to pick up their performance. The six freshman that are suspected next season they all need to put a positive spin on their season because they haven’t been able to help the team in a reserve role.

Cal guard Jabari Parker played over seven minutes in that last loss against Colorado. Cal should enjoy a nice healthy advantage inside and hopefully take advantage of it and Utah Valley is a smaller size team and are less athleitic. This is an opportunity for Cal’s Richard Solomon to put a cap on his college career, a double double machine this year but could have shot the ball better at the free throw line.

The Cal Bears will need everybody to win this game and to advance in these NIT Tournament games.

Michael Duca and Morris Phillips cover the Cal Bears for Sportstalk radio