By Morris Phillips

BERKELEY–In the East Bay, winning all your home games is old hat. Just ask the Warriors, who haven’t lost at Oracle since January 2015, or ask the St. Mary’s Gaels, who’ve ripped off 15 in a row at McKeon Pavilion. But going undefeated at home for an entire season as an unlikely platform for snagging an NCAA tournament berth, well, that would have to be an approach uniquely pursued by the California Golden Bears.

Or so it appears, with three, big regular season home games remaining.

The Bears made it to 15-0 at Haas Pavilion on Thursday, beating Pac-12 leader Oregon, 81-61. Now the list of Cal’s victims in Berkeley this season includes four teams (Ducks, Utah, Arizona and Colorado) currently sitting in the real-time RPI top 30 as well as No. 52 St. Mary’s.

Independent of all else the Bears have and haven’t done this season, the list of home victims is pretty impressive, especially after the dominating performance against Oregon. Winning against a top-15 team by 20, getting top scorer Tyrone Wallace back, and enjoying a big game from Jabari Bird gives the Bears a nice boost heading down the final stretch.

“It’s a big confidence booster,” Bird said after leading Cal with 24 points. “We got Tyrone back. We got a big win over a good conference team at home, and we continued our home winning streak. So we’re just looking to keep it rolling to Saturday for our game against Oregon State.”

The 15-game win streak is already tied for the fourth longest in school history. If it continues on Saturday against the Beavers, the Bears (16-8, 6-5) will remain in the upper half of the Pac-12 standings, where all six top finishers figure to qualify for the NCAA tournament as things stand today.

Cal has home games remaining against USC and UCLA after Oregon State.  Sweeping all three, and finishing 18-0 at home along with avoiding a bad loss at Washington State on February 21 would give the Bears a 20-11, 10-8 record, no sure thing in terms of the NCAA’s but a pretty strong case given Cal’s marquee wins and the feathery soft nature of this year’s tournament bubble.  Cal would finish 2-11 away from the comforts of Haas Pavilion under this scenario making it an unlikely, but ultimately satisfying path to March Madness.

No surprise given the resounding result, the Bears were uncharacteristically offensive on Thursday. Cal’s 83 points were the most they’ve managed in Pac-12 play, and the barrage started early as the Bears took a 12-2 lead in less than three minutes of the first half.

Their lead ballooned to 18 at half, and as many as 25 points in the second half. The Bears shot 55 percent from the field for the game, and placed three starters and Wallace, in a reserve role, in double figures. Cal’s nine made 3-pointers gave the team a nice balance to their attack, inside and out.

The Bears canned their first five 3-point attempts to establish a 21-9 lead with 14:04 remaining.

From Oregon’s perspective, the loss was especially sobering given the Duck’s impressive play coming in. Oregon entered Thursday’s game with a six-game win streak and a two-game lead over second-place USC in the Pac-12. But the Ducks were buried early by the threes, and didn’t show much resolve inside either, where Cal held a 46-22 edge in points in the paint.

“They got the threes to go and when we did get pushed out, we didn’t come back and get the ball… Offensively, we were standing up. Defensively, we were standing up,” Coach Dana Altman admitted. “We just didn’t have much bite.”

Things got out of hand so quickly for Oregon that Altman seemed to forgo his tool for controlling surges, by failing to call any of his allotted four time outs. Was Altman trying to get his Ducks to fight through the early adversity without him intervening? According to him, that wasn’t the case.

“I definitely take the blame there,” Altman said. “I should have used all four of them. We’ve stayed away from those early timeouts and our guys have usually bounced back.”

Dillon Brooks led Oregon with 17 points, but 15 of those came after halftime. Chris Boucher added 11, and Dwayne Benjamin had nine. The Ducks missed 13 of their 18 3-point attempts, and nine of their 21 free throw opportunities.

Wallace returned after missing Cal’s previous five games, and he did so a week earlier than most original estimates for his broken hand. With his 10 points, Wallace stands just 16 points shy of 1,500 for his career, good for 11^th on the school’s all-time scoring list.