By Morris Phillips

Cal stepped onto the hardwood Thursday to face a Pac-12 opponent for the first time this season and a likely reoccurring theme emerged: Yeah (fill-in the conference opponents name, in this case USC) isn’t where they thought they’d be, but there still further along than the Cal Bears.

Nick Rakocevic scored a career-high 27 points and Bennie Boatwright contributed 19 in the Trojans 82-73 home win in which they maintained a lead the entirety of the game’s final 30 minutes at the Galen Center.

The Bears finished with a rush, getting within 71-67 with 2:45 remaining after Justice Sueing was fouled attempting a 3-pointer and made all three free throws. But USC’s response was swift, an 11-4 run increased their lead to double digits with 12 seconds to go.

Coming off a disappointing home loss to Seattle–and losing by the exact same score as they did to the Redhawks–didn’t dim Coach Wyking Jones’ appreciation for his team’s readiness and fight.

“The message was to continue to fight. That’s what we’ve been focusing on all week. They’ve got great size. We don’t. For us to even up with them in boards was something we wanted, and we challenged our guys with that all week. I thought the fight was there. We had some open looks that we normally knock down. Had we shot the ball a little bit better, it would’ve been a different game,” Jones said.

The Bears suffered a pair of humbling, 18-point losses to the Trojans last season, both driven by USC’s superior depth and quickness. So the Trojans’ misfortune in having just seven scholarship players available should have tilted the proceedings in favor of Cal. But that math didn’t account for the 6’11” Rakocevic and the 6’10” Boatwright.

Rakocevic previously set a career-best against Cal at Haas Pavilion a year ago with 19 points. But this this time he simply was at his best, shooting 12 of 14 from the floor including 10 for 10 in the second half. And neither Boatwright or Rakocevic relied on their superior height to bludgeon the Bears in the paint. Rakocevic especially took advantage of the Bears from mid-range, by methodically knocking down shots from his preferred spots on the floor.

“We made adjustments at halftime and Nick was able to get behind the defense,” said USC coach Andy Enfield of Rakocevic. “He did a great job of finding the open area. He played efficiently and extremely well in the second half.”

The only blemish on the junior from Chicago’s evening was a dustup in which got tangled up with a Cal player under the hoop. Rakocevic picked up a foul, but fortunately avoided a technical.

“We were playing with great emotion until Nick picked up the flagrant foul. We’re tired of that. He has to act better. He’s too good a player,” Enfield said.

The Bears welcomed center Connor Vanover back after his lingering issues with concussion symptoms, and he played well with 10 points including a pair of made threes in 15 minutes of action. Sueing contributed his first-ever double-double (16 points, 11 rebounds), and Matt Bradley played effectively in 34 minutes off the bench.

But ultimately, the Bears didn’t have enough, in this case, not so much due to their lack of size, but more so the Trojans’ decided edge in experience. For Cal, the issues will crop nightly, even in a year in which the Pac-12 is experiencing an unprecedented downswing that has exposed issues in nearly all of the other 11 programs, most notably UCLA, and now Oregon, who must now soldier on without the services of the league’s most talented player, 7’2″ Bol Bol who has been shelved for the remainder of the season due to foot issues.

Cal’s grim reality? They travel to UCLA on Saturday looking to avoid a 10th consecutive conference road loss, and ninth straight overall in Pac-12 play. Tipoff is set at 1:00 pm PT.