by Michael Duca and Morris Phillips

BERKELEY–The Cal Bears (10-2) only two loses if you compare them they were equally important coming on the heels of a loss from Monday night to the Wisconsin Badgers (11-1) 68-56. One was not having a credible outside threat in the game with guard Jabiri Bird still on the bench for who knows how long. Without Bird it was difficult to have the offensive output and against Wisconsin your going to lose games against teams who are bigger and better than you are and as athletic as you are.

Wisconsin is a very, very good basketball team and they just outplayed Cal on Monday. When Cal goes back to look at the film the coaches and the players will realize they were missing a lot of easy shots early in the game and that was the problem. For the Badgers it was getting the easy shots, they were getting clean looks at the basket up close and lay ups that were uncontested. The Bears were working on ball strength and they just weren’t getting the results.

For Wisconsin they were getting the results much easier than it was for Cal, the Badgers head coach Bo Ryan was very complimentary he said that Cal head coach Cuonzo Martin’s career was in the Big Ten and he always said that he was always a tenacious defender and played always hard on the court and Ryan hoped that he would coach teams that would be the same way and that’s a very excellent compliment coming from an excellent coach.

The Badgers have beaten Cal in the last three years and they’ve met Wisconsin in a tournament within the last three years. This is an interesting season Kravish came on with great things that were expected and he’s had a great career and has been steadily improving. You thought “wow he’s got all that experience” on the team and you would have high expectations for him. This is not the coach that recruited him and this is not the coach that he’s had the last three years.

There is an adjustment going on here everybody is saying the right things, but Kravish misses Montgomery’s offensive sets and he misses the offense that goes through him under Montgomery. I have to be honest with you this is a hard system to readapt to and Kravish misses Justin Cobbs. The Bears get ready to battle the CSU Bakersfield Raodrunners (2-10) on Sunday night and if it’s competitive for over ten minutes the Bears are in deep trouble. Bakerfield was a national champion as a Division two team a few years ago but since they arrived in Division one ball they are now in waters that are way over their head.

The Roadrunners are ranked 305th amongst the D-One schools in the nation, if this game is competitive for ten minutes I think that coach Martin will pull out the one hair he has left. With the Badgers coming last Monday and how do you prepare for them, how do you put a scout team out there with 6’8, 6’9 players when you don’t have it yourself. The Bears starters are not even that big, so how does Cal get ready to play and prepare offensive sets against a team that big.

The Badgers are not really burly but they transition well, they don’t turn the ball over and neither team turned the ball over and both teams had six turnovers. Wisconsin was averaging over eight per game, which is on of the best in the nation, they don’t commit fouls, they have the five lowest foul call teams. They were number five in the nation with calls against them add the fact that everything that Cal got earlier and they were only getting tough shots you could actually see evidence of that on the stat sheet. The Wisconsin Badgers were a big and tough opponent for Cal on Monday night at Haas Pavilion.

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