by Morris Phillips and Michael Duca

BERKELEY–For the Cal Bears (8-1) Tyrone Wallace who finished up Wednesday night’s performance against the Wyoming Cowboys (8-2) with 17 points, eight rebounds, and five assists.Wallce is the guy that carries the team. Wallace is a very versatile player. He rebounds, he shoots, he scores, and he can pass. He’s not afraid to take big shots at crucial times during the games. He’s the one who has succeeded in the last nine games for the Bears. He’s developed himself on the team as a coachable guy.

The Bears will get better when point guard Brandon Chauca develops like former Cal Bear Jerome Randell, When Chauca gets established like he did so in the first six games he will . The Bears miss Jabari Bird and he’s Cal’s third best player.

There’s a lot of good confidence with Cal we have to remember the Bears enthusiasm and expectations given that their competing against Arizona whose the second best team in the country competing against UCLA. The Washington Huskies have got off to a hot start their undefeated there’s a lot of tough outs in the Pac 12 and with the Bears at 8-1 you can’t complain about that.

The game on Wednesday was really an ugly game. Part of it was that Wyoming slows the pace. They really know how to run the 30 second clock down as far as they could, before even shooting and both teams play great defense. It’s highly unusual to see two teams shoot below 30 percent and just for the first half somebody gets above one or two teams for the second half.

Rarely you see a half end 16-15 and both teams shoot so poorly, you could credit the defense but rarely two college teams should be more efficient than that. This is not the kind of performance that you want on offense especially at home and your trying to establish a program and get fans to watch these games and have people get excited about the team. That’s why most college teams play fast and try to entertain people without sacrificing and you want to play faster and be more entertaining.

Cal head coach Cuonzo Martin realizes on offense that these players are learning to win basketball games even when things don’t go well. On Wednesday night that was the case of Wyoming and over the weekend in Nevada. The Bears in Nevada trailed in the second half and also when they faced Fresno State in Fresno where they managed to pull it out. These were not Cal’s best performance and remember they don’t have a legitimate point guard. This is something that you can expect Martin to address and he will have to explore and address the issue of a point guard. They are without Bird who is a 20 point scorer.

The Cal Bears face Province (3-7) on Saturday night at Haas Pavilion for a 5:30 PST tip.

Morris Phillips and Michael Duca cover Cal basketball for http://www.sportsradioservice.com