by Michael Duca and Morris Phillips

BERKELEY–The Cal Bears in the middle of seven straight home games with non conference teams. The Bears are 9-1 and it’s still hard to get a handle on this team their playing without their guard Jabari Bird and that really does change the team. Bird gives them another outside shooter, another perimeter option and it gives a more inside game for David Kravish.

With Bird out there on the perimeter that gives them basically one good outside shooter on the team and that makes it a little easier for defenses to collapse. On Kravish in particular the Bears forward Christian Behrens has picked up a little bit of the load and he’s playing better than anyone thought he would. You were kind of laughing about it after the game Cal maybe the worst 9-1 team in America we just don’t know. Their certainly putting up extraordinary numbers but it’s hard to know how that’s going to translate.

The Bears are not the walking wounded their without Bird whose the only player out but that’s 20 percent of your line up that’s out and in this case it changed a lot. It allows defenses to concentrate on guard Tyrone Wallace, guard Jordan Matthews who has not been having great outside shooting performances. It makes it a little harder all the way around for head coach Cuonzo Martin to game plan and work things out.

Both teams Princeton and Cal played that game Saturday like it was a tournament game both teams only used eight players. It’s kind of interesting that they were out there really getting down to their final season roots this early in the winter time. Also we have talked to coach Martin about Kravish more than once and his position on David is he’s a fine low post player and a fine mid range shooter.

He does not demand the ball from his teammates enough, so the offense doesn’t go through him as much. When you take Bird out of the mix you lose the ability to spread across the floor that much, you loose the outside threat and it allows them to double on Wallace and collapse in defensively on the low post, that makes it difficult for Kravish to maneuver for room down there.

It wouldn’t surprise me to see Kravish move a little away from the basket he’s got a good mid range shot at 13 feet and they may try and do a little more of that coming up and at the same time Martin is scratching his head about Bird. It was a possible one game injury and maybe he would play in the next game and he’s still in the boot and there is no word whatsoever about the condition of his foot.

They had a classic former coach Mike Montgomery style interchange with Martin and we asked if Bird had an MRI or an x-ray and what did it show? Martin answered “it showed a foot” so there you go the Bears are being very closed mouth about Bird’s foot injury. The Bears at the beginning of January are going to open up against Washington and Washington State at home. The season is about the conference and winning as many games as you can and getting the best seeding in the conference tournaments.

Michael Duca and Morris Phillips do Cal Bears commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com