By Morris Phillips

Find the open man and trust your teammates doesn’t necessarily include fifth-year graduate student Dwight Tarwater when the game is on the line against an opponent as critical as UCLA.

But on Saturday night at Haas Pavilion with Cal trailing by a point and fewer than 20 seconds remaining, Tarwater’s number was called.  And he delivered.

Tarwater, the Ivy Leaguer who joined Cal’s basketball team this season with his degree in hand and little–in terms of playing time or a role—promised to him by the team’s coaching staff.  But he’s quietly worked himself into the starting lineup coinciding with Cal’s winning streak that now sits at four after the 64-62 win over the Bruins.  In this case, Cal’s leading scorer Tyrone Wallace tried to stick his nose into the lane and was greeted by three defenders which left him to pass to Tarwater in the opposite corner where he calmly sank the game winner with UCLA’s long, athletic Kevon Looney closing fast for the potential game-saving block.

“Me and Jabari [Bird] were supposed to cross and Tyrone [Wallace] got in the paint and kicked it out to me, and then I shot the ball with confidence. It went in- thankfully. Jabari says I shot the ball really high and it just went in. It was great,” Tarwater said.

“I don’t think I could’ve asked anybody else to contest any better than that,” a disappointed UCLA coach Steve Alford said.  “That’s the highest arc shot we’ve seen in a long time.  That was a great contest.  The senior (Tarwater) made a couple threes, I think he’s shooting 20-something percent on the year.”

Tarwater’s actually a slightly more proficient 32 percent shooter from three on the season, but in conference play with everything intensified defensively, the Cornell transfer had missed 15 of his previous 19 attempts from distance.  But that didn’t matter with 17 seconds remaining.  His shot came without hesitation—and after teammates Sam Singer and Wallace had won Cal’s two previous games in the same manner.

“The thing about it, and what I said in the huddle to Dwight was to be ready to shoot the ball,” coach Cuonzo Martin recounted.  “We had what we call a wildcard action, and Tyrone would curl off Dwight and Dwight sprints to the corner, the same corner where we made the shot.  He put a lot of arch on the ball, it went in because that was the only way it was going to get in there.”

After losing six of seven to open conference play, the Bears have won four straight with a winnable game in Boulder, Colorado up next on Thursday.  For UCLA, the loss was a bitter one, coming after the Bruins squeezed Stanford on Thursday.  Now, the Bruins and Bears are basically in the same boat: well outside consideration for March’s Big Dance, but at least Cal has some momentum they would love to maintain.

Leading to the resurgence for Cal is undoubtedly Martin’s ability to find and trust some new faces.  Singer has emerged during the streak and he contributed 13 points off the bench as Cal’s reserves outscored UCLA’s 17-2.  In the starting lineup, Tarwater has found a niche and Jabari Bird has regained his health and provided desperately needed scoring.  Leading up to the game-winning shot, Bird hit a pair of big threes that helped Cal wipe out a five-point deficit with less than two minutes remaining.

Besides Tarwater, the new sources for offense, the Bears dug down and got tenacious defensively as well, all things that bode well for the Bears leading into the final seven games of the conference schedule, only two of which are in Berkeley.  Cal shut down UCLA in the final two minutes much to Martin’s delight.

“I see our guys growing, I said even when we lost six-straight, our guys are making progress. But, it’s hard to see that when we lose the game, but today we competed well, we got our post-double defense that we have been working on going, Kingsley [Okoroh] did a great job one-on-one defending,” Martin said.