By Morris Phillips

A game featuring coaches with a combined 2,400 career wins figured to be fiercely competitive.  That Mike Montgomery and Larry Brown sniffed out the other’s intentions on the biggest possession of the night in itself was fitting.  This time, Brown’s execution was a step ahead of Montgomery’s anticipation as Nic Moore’s 3-pointer with nine seconds remaining won it for SMU, 67-65.

The Cal Bears finish their season at 21-14, one game short of a NIT semifinal appearance in Madison Square Garden.

SMU will make the Garden appearance, and continue a renaissance season under Brown, who is making the 13^th stop in his Hall of Fame coaching career.  The Mustangs were the most notable NCAA tournament omission, and they’ve displayed their worthiness, by winning three straight in the NIT.

But this one was whisker-close, and had it gone the other way, could have easily stood as the biggest win in Montgomery’s exemplary six years at Cal.

The Bears played without Richard Solomon and Kameron Rooks and saw Ricky Kreklow compete bravely with a broken nose, but never backed down from bigger SMU, which lost only one game all season at sold out Moody Coliseum.  With three lead changes in the final 90 seconds, this was a crowd pleaser, well above typical NIT fare that pales to the bigger NCAA bracket.

“The environment, the atmosphere was terrific,” Montgomery said.  “It’s great to see the job Larry has done here and got the excitement back up.  It was loud.”

Cal shot well early and led most of the first half, only to see SMU respond in the final minutes to lead, 32-29 at the break.  Spearheaded by Jabari Bird, who scored 15 of his 20 points in the second half, the Bears erased SMU’s seven-point advantage and led 18 seconds remaining.   That’s when the Bears abandoned the zone look they’d used for most of the night. The 67-year old Montgomery knew SMU would solve a zone in that situation and create a quality look to win.  But the 73-year old Brown was a step ahead.

“I thought they would play man, they had played zone the whole time, and fortunately they played man and Markus (Kennedy) set a good screen and we got a wide-open look,” Brown said.

Sophomore guard Moore raced along the three point line from the baseline and caught and shot the game winner in a flawless sequence.

“(Brown) called the one that I wanted to hear and Nick Russell found me and I hit the shot,” Moore said.  “Moody magic came out.”

“I thought it was the right decision,” Montgomery said of the defensive change.  “We were switching all the ball screens…everybody was prepared to do that. Tough shot…good result for them.”

Justin Cobbs raced up court when Cal eschewed a final timeout, but his three attempt at the buzzer just missed. The senior guard had just given Cal a led with 18 seconds to go, on a shot from distance, but this one was barely off.

”It felt good actually,” Cobbs said. ”It just didn’t go down.”

Cobbs helped lead Cal with 18 points in his final college game.  Bird had his best game of his young career, scoring in double figures for the third straight game for the first time.   In the absence of Solomon, David Kravish gamely played 38 minutes, scoring 12 points with eight rebounds.

Markus Kennedy had 19 points for SMU and Moore added 11.  The Mustangs enjoyed a huge disparity on the glass, 35-22.