Category: Cal Bears

by Morris Phillips and Michael Duca

BERKELEY–The Cal Bears Richard Solomon was out with a concussion that he suffered in practice earlier this week and the line up was changed to a smaller quicker line up and they shared the ball with 20 assists in the game against Utah Valley last Wednesday night at Haas Pavilion. The Bears hit 32 baskets and they played well, which they haven’t done in weeks.

Even when Cal beat Colorado in their home finale in the regular season they won a game missing the last ten shots that it took and the win which was an opportunity for a rebirth for the team and so far so good as the Bears take on Arkansas on Monday at Haas.

The Bears look good at home now winning their last two games at Haas Pavilion and Arkansas is not a team you want to play in Arkansas with the homecooking in that arena they got down there. Cal has already beaten Arkansas this year at the Maui Invitational in November that was one of their marquee wins at that point of the season prior to beating Oregon and beating Arizona in the conference.

Both of these teams were on the NCAA bubble and they just didn’t win enough down the stretch to get into the NCAA Tournament there dangerous teams in the NIT. Whoever wins this game has got a strong chance to get to New York and win the whole thing.

The Bears coming into Monday’s game have to protect the ball that’s going to be the key thing when you play Arkansas your playing a team that’s quick that provides pressure that will attempt to create turnovers, if you can handle the pressure you can get to the basket. It will be a real challenge just to handle a team that is far more athletic and quick and jumps a whole lot better than what Utah Valley was able to do.

If Cal is on their game then they should be okay if they fall into their old patterns of being competitive with their shooting in previous games guys haven’t been making their shots and their not moving the ball and they could be in trouble.

The Bears host the Arkansas Razorbacks on Monday night for a 8 PM tip at Haas Pavilion in Berkeley

Morris Phillips and Michael Duca cover Cal Bears basketball for Sportstalk radio

By Morris Phillips

A little old, a little new… and Cal showed that they’re not yet through.

After nine losses in their final 14 games caused the Cal Bears to miss the cut for the NCAA tournament, a new look was in order for the team’s NIT opener against Utah Valley.  Center Richard Solomon’s absence due to a concussion didn’t figure to help the Bears, but it did give Coach Mike Montgomery an opportunity to inject new life into a lineup that had lost confidence with all the critical losses.

Montgomery promoted Jabari Bird into Solomon’s spot giving the freshman his first start since before Christmas and the freshman was one of five double-figure scorers in Cal’s 77-64 victory that moves them into a second round rematch with Arkansas at Haas Pavilion on Monday night.

“You’re getting younger players an opportunity to play, getting them some excitement,” Montgomery said.  “The young guys have been excited all year long.  They’ve stayed enthusiastic about things.  You can see them make mistakes, but they are trying to do the right thing.  This will help them long term.”

The second-seeded Bears defeated the Razorbacks at the Maui Invitational in December.  Arkansas advanced in the NIT on Tuesday by blowing past Indiana State, 91-71 in Fayetteville.   The winner will move within a win of a semifinal date at New York’s Madison Square Garden the following Monday.

Cal’s smaller lineup in the absence of Solomon and injured freshman center Kameron Rooks displayed improved ball movement, producing 20 assists on their 32 made baskets.  Senior Jeff Powers saw 21 minutes of action and was more than capable with his shooting and playmaking, totaling 10 points and three assists.  Bird added 11 points and three assists, and the Bears were led by David Kravish with 14 points and five blocks.

Holton Hunsaker, son of Utah Valley coach Dick Hunsaker, led the Wolverines with 22 points.  Utah Valley was an automatic qualifier for the NIT as the regular-season champ in the WAC that failed to win the conference’s tournament.

by Morris Phillips and Michael Duca

BERKELEY–The Cal Bears head to St.Louis to face Utah Valley on Wednesday night and they need to have a strong showing in the NIT to put a positive face on their season and they ended the season with nine loses in their last 14 games and they really struggled to shoot the ball and didn’t look anything like the NCAA Tournament team which their not.

This Wednesday night is really a great opportunity to show that they are a quality basketball team, the NIT has them seeded such that they have a chance to go to New York but first the Bears have to get down and win some games. Utah Valley is also the school that a few weeks ago was involved in that incident with New Mexico State where New Mexico players fought back against the fans who stormed the court.

NMS was coming off the floor after a loss and got pushed around in the crowd by the fans at Utah Valley which resulted in some punches and more shoving this was upon Utah Valley winning and this was an ugly incident. From the Utah Valley prospective they would like to put on a more positive showing from their school than what happened at that game.

On offense coming into this game the Bears Tyrone Wallace needs to shoot the ball better that was one of the issues for Cal coming down the stretch and the Bears Justin Cobbs didn’t shoot the ball poorly but with the pressure put upon him by his teammates missing so many shots he didn’t play very well either and it really became kind of a struggle on whether he should be passing or shooting.

Cobbs enjoys his role as the point guard as a shooter and a facilitator, from an invidual stand point there’s a lot of guys on that team to pick up their performance. The six freshman that are suspected next season they all need to put a positive spin on their season because they haven’t been able to help the team in a reserve role.

Cal guard Jabari Parker played over seven minutes in that last loss against Colorado. Cal should enjoy a nice healthy advantage inside and hopefully take advantage of it and Utah Valley is a smaller size team and are less athleitic. This is an opportunity for Cal’s Richard Solomon to put a cap on his college career, a double double machine this year but could have shot the ball better at the free throw line.

The Cal Bears will need everybody to win this game and to advance in these NIT Tournament games.

Michael Duca and Morris Phillips cover the Cal Bears for Sportstalk radio

By Morris Phillips

The Cal Bears didn’t look like the guy pushed up to the craps table downing free drinks until 6am, but they didn’t appear well-rested either.

In a season where making baskets and finding offense became increasingly more difficult, things picked up where they left off last week when the Bears won a close one but missed their final 10 shots.  And Colorado—Cal’s last opponent as well as their opponent in Thursday’s Pac-12 quarterfinal—showed up with a chip, determined not to get edged by a Cal team that beat them despite not making a single shot from the floor in overtime.

Whether it was poor shooting or lack of energy early, the Cal Bears scored just 22 points in the first half of their 59-56 loss to Colorado.  While most saw Cal’s 16 points in the first 16 minutes as poor shooting, Coach Mike Montgomery saw something more troubling in a game the Bears had to win if they intended to go dancing in the NCAAs.

“I thought we didn’t play hard enough in the first half,” Montgomery admitted.  “I thought they competed harder than we did, probably coming off the fact that they lost to us.  We were kind of back on our heels a little bit.  They out rebounded us pretty substantially.”

Whatever the concoction, it wasn’t satisfying.  The Bears trailed by 13 near the end of the half, then surged briefly starting the second, only to fall late to the Buffs.  The loss was Cal’s 9^th in their last 14 games and most of those were punctuated with poor starts and bad shooting.  Montgomery mentioned the rebounding (Buffs held a 38-29 edge) and it appeared only Richard Solomon was a willing board guy as he grabbed 16 of those 29 and all but three of Cal’s total in the first half.

While the team attempts to remain upbeat, Thursday’s loss likely sealed the Bears fate as an NIT entry.  Even a win would have only set up a date with projected No. 1 seed Arizona, and they merely opened the tournament’s Thursday session with a 32-point win over a good Utah team.  A pessimist might even say that Cal’s tenuous place on the NCAA bubble at this point is only indicative of how few teams this season have a chance to build a tournament resume at this late date.

Justin Cobbs led the Bears with 21 points, the 16th time he’s led California in scoring this season.  Tyrone Wallace added 13 and David Kravish had 10.

Cal’s freshman contingent had another rough afternoon as Sam Singer, Jordan Mathews and Jabari Bird combined to miss eight of their nine shots.  Bird played only seven minutes and barely registered statistically.

For Colorado, Askia Booker led with 17 points and four Buffs’ starters finished in double figures. Xavier Talton was a Bear killer with 13 points, including 3 of 5 shooting from distance.

by Morris Phillips and Michael Duca

BERKELEY–As a group the Cal Bears are tired and they shot only 39 percent in beating Colorado by one point in their last regular game of the season 66-65. The game before they shot 39 percent against Utah in that loss and like Stanford they go into that conference tournament having lost three out of four and the Bears Justin Cobbs hasn’t played as well as he could play.

In spots he’s been incredible down the stretch and on Saturday he was great and the game in Arizona Cobbs was outplayed by Jahid Carson and Nick Johnson. Those are his contemporaries that not only Cal fans are hoping that he can outplay but NBA scouts in evaluating Cobbs looking how he fares in these individual match ups. With other players who project to be NBA players.

So for Cal it’s not been such a good stretch for them and the composition of the team would suggest just as much with half the team being freshman and half the team that plays. Half the rotation players are freshman and the injuries to Jabari Bird and Ricky Kreklow during the season didn’t help as well. You could argue that Cal head coach Mike Montgomery has got more out of this group than anybody else could have.

This year it doesn’t look like whatever he got out of them is going to be good enough to put them in the NCAA. In the recruiting class there’s one of the top players nationally in Oakland and we keep hearing that Ivan Rabb of Bishop O’Dowd is their key target and as well he should be.

Rabb is 6’10 and a great jumper and has great athletic presence in the paint right here in their own back yard and he’s on a list of 12 and Cal would like a shot at him. That’s been the issue for Cal of the six years of Montgomery the team has had good players, not great players and the results have been just about the same.

Michael Duca and Morris Phillips cover Cal basketball for Sportstalk radio

By Morris Phillips

After appearing languid in their loss to Utah on Wednesday, the Cal Bears—with everything to play for—expected to be much more in step against Colorado.

But for much of Saturday afternoon there wasn’t much difference.  The blown defensive assignments and poor shooting were still very apparent so much so that down the stretch of a close game, several Cal players could be seen passing up open, makeable shots.

It may be March, but after dropping 8 of their previous 12 games, the Bears and its skeptical Haas Pavilion crowd were operating several notches below madness.

So how did the Bears come from behind late, force overtime, and then pull out a heart stopping 66-65 victory?

“The guys were on the same page.  That made all the difference in the world,” Coach Mike Montgomery said.  “We made some bad plays and missed some shots.  I just told them going in, ‘team, team, team.’  Not everybody was perfect but they did a pretty good job.”

While the Bears (19-12, 10-8) won a game they had to have—securing the fourth-seed in the Pac-12 tournament with the win and a bye into the tourney’s quarterfinal round—they did little to impress the NCAA committee or probably even themselves.  Remarkably, the Bears missed their final 10 shots from the field—0 for 7 in overtime—but pulled it out because they managed to make nine of their final 11 free throws.  Justin Cobbs’ pair of makes with just 21 seconds remaining in the extra session gave the Bears a slim one-point lead that held up after Askia Booker and Xavier Talton both missed threes with less than 10 seconds remaining.

Despite shooting just 35 percent for the game and failing to hold a lead for nearly seven minutes after Richard Solomon scored the Bears’ final basket with 2:45 remaining in regulation, the Bears survived.  Far from an NCAA team at this juncture, the Bears maintained hope with the win.  A couple of more wins next week in Las Vegas—one of which would have to be over regular season-champ Arizona in the semis—and the Bears could still dance.

“You can’t look too forward to even the NCAAs or the Championships for the Pac-12,” Solomon admitted.  “That’s why we have to take it one game at a time and just focus on that and worry about getting a ‘W’ as they come.”

“It’s going to give us a little more confidence going in and a little feel good,” Montgomery said.  “We still have 19 wins and we’re still fourth in the league. Are we a top 10 team?  Probably not. But this is where we are.”

Had Colorado’s Xavier Johnson not cooled slightly, the Bears wouldn’t have forced overtime.  Johnson scored 21 of the Buffs’ first 42 points, as he deftly beat bigger Cal players with his quickness and smaller ones with his powerful frame.  But down the stretch, Johnson cooled and the Bears hung around.  But it wasn’t easy:  Cal was outrebounded by 10, allowed 14 offensive rebounds and saw its three perimeter starters—Cobbs, Ricky Kreklow and Tyrone Wallace—miss 30 of their combined 37 shot attempts.

Cobbs finished with 21 points, Solomon and David Kravish added 14 each.  Johnson led Colorado with 24 points aided by Askia Booker with 11 and Josh Scott with 10.

The Bears now await the winner of the Wednesday’s USC-Colorado opening round matchup with Cal’s opener scheduled for 2:30pm on Thursday.  The Bears finished in a five-way tie for third place at 10-8, but got the better of several tie-breakers that placed them behind third-seeded Arizona State, but ahead of fifth-seeded Colorado, sixth-seeded Stanford and seventh-seeded Oregon, which won its final seven conference games.

by Michael Duca and Morris Phillips

BERKELEY–The Cal Bears (18-12) finally put an end to a very disappointing season and one that is one of the most disappointing teams that head coach Mike Montgomery has had since being at Cal. To give you an idea how underachieving his team is three days ago the Brooklyn Nets signed former Cal star Jorge Gutierrez to a ten day contract and you can be assured that Gutierrez will end up sticking with that team.

Gutierrez was the first player that Montgomery ever recruited at Cal and he has turned out to be a quintessential Montgomery player who wakes up in the morning with rug burns on his elbows from nights where he has dived on the floor from many falls. For some reason you don’t see that from anyone on this Cal team this year. You don’t see the intensity from this team who ran a six game losing streak after beating Arizona at home and who started another losing streak at three games after beating USC in the last meeting of the season between the Trojans and Bears.

They let other teams take advantage of the Bears athletic ability on the floor and take away their skill sets play after play, game after game particularily after that Arizona win at home, the Bears have been simply very disappointing to watch. This is without question the most inconsistent and disappointing Cal team that has ever played under coach Montgomery.

They’ve got the ability that doesn’t materialize, that doesn’t show up, they had incredible intensity against Arizona at home and beat that perfect team by a Justin Cobbs buzzer beater, but doesn’t have anything against Arizona State and they lost to Utah. It’s no knock on Utah but Utah who has won only three road games in the conference in three years and while Cal was never more than six points behind them during that game.

The Bears never ever, ever had a defense and put on a little polish and took over the game, and they were out rebounded, they we’re out boarded, they were out played, all night long by the Sun Devils and at Haas Pavilion. That was embarrassing and that was really embarrassing at home and it’s super embarrassing on Senior day.

The Bears needed that win against Colorado on the last regular game of the season and you would think with two seniors graduating you would think they would want to come forward and make some kind of threat against Colorado of some kind. The Bears should have taken some kind of control against Utah and neither one of them did. It was just simply deplorable to watch.

The Golden Bears had some great moments earlier this season and it’s just a waste of talent to watch them finish up the season this way. You had Richard Solomon averaging a double double, and Solomon is one of six players in the country that is averaging a double double and if you got one of those players at the very minimum you should have been unbeatable at home.

If we’re not mistaken the Bears have lost three conference games at home and Cal never loses three conference games at home. Maybe they can make hay out of some of the tournament games.

Michael Duca and Morris Phillips cover Cal basketball for Sportstalk Radio

by Michael Duca and Morris Phillips

BERKELEY–The Cal Bears have lost three of their last four games going into the final two home games this season, Cal is just not playing well, and then there’s the three loses all of them by double digits. The Bears lost in Arizona on Wednesday by 25 points. Cal is just not playing well and of all of the final eight games they had Arizona State on Saturday night had to be the one that stuck out.

The Sun Devils resume to the NCAA Tournament is so similar to what Cal did, Saturday night was a game to win and Cal came up by 18 points. It’s frustrating for Cal and the NCAA Tournament is obviously looking and most people are expecting that Cal will be in but they could easily slip right back out.

The other issue is that Cal’s Justin Cobbs hasn’t been winning his indvidual match ups, Wednesday was a great game for Arizona’s Nick Johnson who scored 22 points to lead the Wild Cats and then on Saturday with Arizona State’s Jahii Carson the point guard who is being declared for the NBA draft and is a really good player. Make no mistake Justin Cobbs is just as good as those guys are but right now he has to play up to par.

It’s been a frustrating season for Cal in as such that it will be up and down, there’s just so much youth on the roster with six freshman, a couple of sophomores, and the team doesn’t score consistently. At times they struggle with their offense, and other times they’ve been incredible in terms of scoring and winning big games.

Overall this has been a wonderful season for Cal given who they have coming back and who they brought in, that could change a lot if they don’t come home next week and win both of their remaining home games left against Utah and Colorado.

The Arizona Wild Cats for the last three weeks have been playing great basketball and after they lost that one point game to Cal they’ve stepped right back into it, the Wild Cats just worked their way to the rim offensively so that was not a bad loss per se for the Bears. The fact they lost by 26 points is frustrating they should have been more competitive and at some point your in the game. When they played at ASU on Saturday they lost by 18 points and the reason why they did is because their just not playing well.

So when Cal faces Utah and Colorado for the last two games of the season at Haas they should be beatable, Colorado is still playing without their key player Spencer Dinwiddie who was lost on January 20th. Meanwhile the Utah Utes have really had Cal’s number over the last couple of seasons. You would imagine that they would not be showing up Cal at Haas and it would be a surprise if they did although Utah is an emerging team.

Morris Phillips and Michael Duca are filling in for Michelle Richardson this week for the NCAA report