by Michael Duca

NEW YORK–It’s the tale of the two Cal teams that showed up, the one that beat the Syracuse Orange on Thursday in Brooklyn 73-59, then there was the game against Texas at Madison Square Garden on Friday night where the Bears were blown out 71-55.

The Bears might actually have an idea how to play against good teams and they exhibited that on Thursday against Syracuse. It’s way too early to make pronouncements about Cal head coach Cuonzo Martin’s playbooks success and to determine what he’s doing and what he’s doing differently. I will never be old enough to criticize former head coach Mike Montgomery as basketball coach.

The team is a year older there was a number of players that saw Syracuse last year and this year things just went well. The Bears converted four straight threes late in the first half it was the last four shots in the half that gave them 12 points in the end. Which could give them a 12 point lead at half time and they never looked back.

They did end up winning by 14 and it was a pretty even second half, what was interesting Cal went to the line 17 different times in that game on Thursday and ten of them was by Jordan Matthews and the other seven were by David Kravish. So they didn’t have a lot of inside stuff but they made pretty good use of what they had.

The fact that the Cal Bears made the top story on Thursday night that they beat Syracuse was not because the Bears are the top featured story nationally but because there was very little going on in college basketball. But we’ll see as Martin said “we’re not ranked, Syracuse is ranked 23rd and a 23 ranking this early in the season has a lot more to do with the name in the front of the uniform than the name on the back.

Syracuse might end up being a very good team and they might wind up where people shake their heads and say why did they get ranked 23rd? There’s no question that Texas on Friday who handled Cal well was a top ten team. Texas is a very, very good basketball team. They stopped the Bears in every direction with defense, blocking, rebounds, and on offense their shot was just dropping a lot more than it was for Cal.

That game that Cal lost on Friday told us a whole lot about this Cal squad with essentially one day to prepare after their win against Syracuse. The Texas basketball team has actually played a lot better than their football team in the last few years. It would have been awfully irritating for both teams from the Bay Area if they were to lose to Texas in a 24 hour period. Stanford doesn’t have to worry about that now they face Duke Saturday night.

Michael Duca does commentary on Cal basketball for http://www.sportsradioservice.com