Category: Cal Bears

By Morris Phillips

This time, what Cal was doing was working… at least for a little while.

Then the prevailing reality sprung the surface, and Cal was cooked by top-seeded Arizona once again, this time in the Pac-12 tournament quarterfinals on Thursday afternoon.

Led by Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Stanley Johnson, Arizona raced past Cal for the third time this season, 73-51.  The Wildcats advance to face fourth-seeded UCLA in the tournament semis on Friday, and the Bears return to Berkeley unsure if they will get a phone call from the NIT or another post-season tournament.

“On the offensive end, we did a good job of being patient, finding the next guy, and we were able to get some shots down,” Tyrone Wallace said of the Bears solid first half effort which had them down just 33-27 at the break.  “The second half, not as many shots went down.  They played good.”

“They played well in the first half and we kind of stagnated.  Credit Cal for that, but we made the plays when we needed to,” Arizona point guard T.J. McConnell said.

In each of the regular season matchups, Cal was overwhelmed by Arizona, especially in attempting to find quality scoring opportunities against the bigger, broader Wildcats.  But this time, at least in the opening half, the Bears pushed back.

Cal’s shooting was any better—33 percent in the opening half, 34 percent for the game—but early on, the Bears held their own on the glass, limited Arizona’s second shot opportunities and short-circuited any big runs.  Arizona coach Sean Miller felt the Bears’ intensity might have surprised his team early on.

“There’s always a feeling-out process in March when you get into these tournaments because teams are desperate,” Miller said.  “Individual players are kind of playing with house money or playing with a lot at stake, depending on which team you’re on.”

Cal’s “house money” man, senior David Kravish had his way with Washington State in the tournament opener, scoring a career-best 25 points.  But against Arizona, Cal’s big man had to battle 7’1” Kaleb Tarczewski and 6’10” Brandon Ashley.  Kravish grabbed 12 rebounds, but couldn’t get going offensively, scoring just six points while missing 10 of his 13 shots.

Meanwhile Arizona’s “high stakes” guy undoubtedly was Hollis-Jefferson, a defensive wizard able to guard Cal’s leading scorer Tyrone Wallace as well as their other threats, Jordan Mathews and Jabari Bird.  When Arizona made its push, scoring 14 of the first 20 points after halftime, Hollis-Jefferson delivered the spirit-raising, offensive plays as well.

Hollis-Jefferson had a dunk and a layup in transition during Arizona’s 9-0 run that put them up 46-32 with 15:50 remaining.

Freshman Stanley Johnson led the Wildcats with 19 points and Ashley added 15 points and seven rebounds as Arizona advanced to the tournament semis for the fifth straight year.

Wallace led Cal with 19 points, but needed 20 shots to reach that total.  Mathews was bottled up by Hollis-Jefferson, T. J. McConnell and others, finishing with three points on 1 of 7 shooting.

Cal (18-15) hadn’t scored as few as 51 points in a game since January 24 when Arizona came to Berkeley and held the Bears to 50 in a 23-point rout.  The Bears dropped six of their final eight games following a five-game win streak.

Kravish broke the school record for games participated in with his 135^th on Wednesday and now has 136 under his belt.  Wallace moved into 25^th place on the school’s all-time scoring list with 1,196 points.

By Morris Phillips

For now, being the eight-seed represents a tremendous opportunity for the California Bears.

At least it does, until their high noon in the desert meeting with top-seeded Arizona commences on Thursday.

The Bears did all they could on Wednesday at the Pac-12 tournament in Las Vegas, dispatching ninth-seeded Washington State, 84-59, with a massive run spanning halftime that turned a close contest into a blowout.  Cal began their big roll, trailing by one, then after Christian Behrens’ layup led 47-30 with 15:21 remaining.  The Bears missed more free throws (3) than shots (1) in the run, hitting 13 of 14 from the field.

“We established David (Kravish) in the post.  I thought that set the tone for us offensively—if we’re able to do that, then our perimeter guys could play,” Coach Cuonzo Martin explained.

Cal’s senior post epitomized the fast turnaround; Kravish missed his first six shots, then commenced his big finish during the run, hitting 10 of his last 11.  He finished with a career-best 25 points, a distinct signal that the Bears’ leader is locked in for a big finish to his collegiate career.

“It’s just one of those things you play the game for so long, you can’t dwell on something in the middle of a game,” Kravish said of his in-game switch.  “You don’t really worry about the misses.”

Washington State surprised Cal January 4 in Berkeley, then the Bears won the rematch January 29 in Pullman.  In both Cal wins, the Cougs let the normally pedestrian Bears offense jump into a Ferrari.  Cal ranks 197^th (out of 345) in Division I scoring at 66.5 points a game, but they averaged 80 points in the two wins against WSU.

Jabari Bird didn’t envision himself as a defensive specialist when he signed with Cal in 2012, but he was one Wednesday, shutting down WSU’s leading scorer DaVonte Lacy.  The senior guard was held to two points in the first half and finished with nine in his final appearance as a collegian.

The Cal sophomore also capped off the first half, hitting a three-pointer as a pair of WSU defenders froze, unwilling to contest Bird’s shot four feet behind the arc as time expired.  The Bears led 37-26 at the half.

Washington State hasn’t won a Pac-12 tournament game since 2009, Klay Thompson’s freshman year.  They’ve lost seven in a row since, including the March 2011 thriller in which Thompson scored a tournament-record 43 points but saw his Cougs fall 89-87 to Washington.  WSU and Cal had never met in this tournament prior to Wednesday.

The Bears got 19 points from Jordan Mathews and 12 from Tyrone Wallace.  Ike Iroegbu led Washington State with 17 points.  The Bears enjoyed a healthy 37-22 edge on the glass and hit 8 of 12 from distance.

Cal will need more of the same against Arizona; they fell to the Wildcats by 23 in Berkeley, and last week in Tucson, Cal was embarrassed, losing by 39. Making their task that much more difficult is the significant improvement of 7’0” Kaleb Tarczewksi who anchors the middle for the Cats, and was terrific last week limiting Cal and Kravish.

By Morris Phillips

On the occasion of Arizona’s clinching of a second straight Pac-12 regular season championship, the Cal Bears were like a 30-second commercial spot needed to defray costs of the fancy celebration.

Instead of 30 seconds, the Bears were afforded the first five minutes of the game to compete, make plays and look respectable.  After that, the No. 5 Wildcats made all the plays—mostly inside, but also out—in a 99-60 rout of outclassed California.

The Bears were hoping for a magical weekend in which they would sweep their final two regular season games, even their conference record, and put themselves on the fringes of the NCAA tournament conversation.  Instead, they were just reminded of how far off they are from their post-season aspirations.

With the game tied at 12, the Wildcats took off, scoring 29 of the next 37 points to take a commanding 20-point lead with a couple minutes still to play before halftime.  Things got worse after the break with Arizona pushing their lead to 30 with 12 minutes remaining in the game.

Arizona shot 57 percent for the game, persistently working the undersized Bears over in the paint.  Only an off-night from the free-throw line where the Cats missed 13 of 32 attempts kept Arizona from totaling 110 plus points.  As it was, the 39-point margin was the biggest of the season for Arizona, as well as the biggest loss margin for Cal.

Coach Cuonzo Martin, a defensive specialist as a player at Purdue and then later in NBA, of course pointed to Arizona’s defensive effort in trying to explain the whipping suffered by his Bears.

“I thought they did a great job of battling, taking away passing lanes,” Martin said. “When you talk about the No. 5 team in the country, not necessarily are they a good defensive team, they’re a sound defensive team.  You have to be able to go inside and out.  If you don’t have low post production, low post scoring and low post offensive rebounding, that can be tough.”

Cal’s only legitimate post threat, David Kravish, had his hands full with Arizona’s 7’0” Kaleb Tarczewski.  That matchup allowed power forward Brandon Ashley to take advantage of smaller defenders on his way to a career-best 21 points. Still, Kravish succumbed to foul trouble, playing just 17 minutes.

Leading scorer Tyrone Wallace led Cal with 16 points but missed 11 of his 18 shot attempts.  The Bears’ other two threats to put up decent numbers, Jabari Bird and Jordan Mathews, converted just four of their 14 shot attempts.

Once the rout took hold, so did the personalities in the sold out crowd at the McKale Center.  Four ultra-serious historical impersonators, complete with the fake white hair and a hand-written plaque called the “Declaration of Rondaependence,” appeared pleased when their accomplished leader, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson recovered his lost dribble and spun around Cal’s Sam Singer for a dunk that put the Cats up 39-18 with 4 minutes remaining in the opening half.

“Learn from it.  Keep moving.  You don’t have time to dwell on it,” Martin said when asked if his Bears would easily recover emotionally from the lopsided affair.

Hollis-Jefferson was one of six Wildcats to finish in double figures led by Ashley’s 21 points and Tarczewski with 14.

The Bears (17-13, 7-10) conclude the regular season on Saturday afternoon in Tempe where they will face Arizona State, who got past Stanford, 67-62, on Thursday.