by Michael Duca and Morris Phillips

BERKELEY–The Cal Bears Tyrone Wallace went 40 feet with the ball and went from goat to hero in three seconds. This whole thing occurred because he had possibly the worst night at the free throw line in his career where he went three for nine. The last miss was in front of a one one plus Cal trailing by a point when the game winner came. USC had control of the game in the last seven minutes, Cal led almost the entire game. Cal head coach Cuonzo Martin said there are going to be some guys working on their free throws into the night.

The Bears went on a nine to zero run sparked by a seven points by David Kravish and a 29-0 run and they had a 14 point lead in the first half. Right at the end of the first half the Trojans closed it to nine and half points. It was one of those very strange games where USC couldn’t hit the ocean if they threw the ball out of a row boat in the first half. The Trojans were 6-24 to start the game from the field.

Then the Trojans got 13-15 shots 16 of 24 shots and later 22 of their last 31, so it was really a tale of two games and the Trojans came back and took the game with eight or seven minutes in the half. Then they began to stretch it out and the Trojans went up by five with two minutes to play and it did not look good for the Bears. I could tell you up and down press row Wallace hit that shot and we all just kind of looked at each other and we had to start all over on the scoring.

Mistakes was the flavor of the day in this game the Bears committed nine turnovers in the second half they had a stretch where they ha one basket and committed seven turnovers and went 1-7 in those turnovers when the Trojans went from five behind to five ahead. This is the 13th game this year they’ve had ten turnovers. They had a stretch where they hit one basket with seven turnovers and were only five points behind during that sequence. The difference for Cal in winning three straight games is that every coach in the history of the game have told their players it’s 40 minute game or it’s a 32 minute game.

If anyone had to tell the Cal Bears about playing all 40 minutes in the last two games they were sound asleep and they won both games in less than five seconds on the clock. Both games came down the last shot at the buzzer and that included both Washington and Thursday night’s USC game. Basically last night’s game the lights went off and the horn sounded and all was on it’s way downward.

Were sitting directly across from the basket and from that angle we all thought the shot was going to be short, somehow it wasn’t and it was like a San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum pitching motion and the last second there was a little hop which managed to clear the iron. These are character building games, these are games that will get Cal to come out with a little bounce in their step. The Bears play UCLA next on Saturday.

Michael Duca does Cal Bears commentary and podcast each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com