Category: Cal Bears

by Michael Duca and Morris Phillips

TUCSON AZ–The Arizona Wild Cats are going to be looking to stay ahead of UCLA in their meeting with the Cal Bears tonight Arizona University in the conference race. That situation is still open to possible outcomes there so we’ll see how it goes. Arizona lost to Cal in their last meeting at Haas Pavilion that’s the only team that’s beaten them in the Pac 12 or anywhere for that matter.

The Wild Cats will have to reasert and reestablish for this game in Arizona tonight in order to get that number one seed. Meanwhile for Cal the goal is very simple between now and the end of the season they need to finish somewhere in the top four. The Bears really want to avoid adding two extra games in the conference tournament.

Arizona just doesn’t lose at home and let’s be honest about that, the last time Cal won a game at Arizona Hubert Hoover was in the White House 1929-1933 and it feels like that long ago anyway. The Wild Cats don’t lose at home, this is a very good team and they were missing a key player when they were in Berkeley.

The Bears came within one Justin Cobbs step back shot at the buzzer of winning that game. The Wild Cats aren’t terribly worried about their chances in this game, they feel their in pretty good shape. As far as Justin Cobbs is concerned he’s one of those rare people in college basketball we call them “seniors.”

You don’t get a lot of guys who stay and play for four years and the majority of the experience show at crunch time. If it weren’t for the fact that Cal had the top player in the conference in the last four years you would think that you could end the discussion for that so is Richard Solomon.

The truth is politics gets involved, your just not going to see having player of the year four out of five years it’s not going to happen. Arizona State is coming up next for Saturday night and ASU is a real interesting team they’ve spent most the time above or around Cal in the standings.

They were we’re very spotty and Cal was a very up and down team, they’ve lost to Stanford and Utah so Cal has a chance to do alright on the road and they have a chance of splitting these two games tonight and Saturday.

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

By Morris Phillips

Last place USC without their leading scorer versus NCAA tournament hopeful California sounds like a 40-point win for the host Bears. Right, Mike Montgomery?

“That’s a natural expectation,” Montgomery sarcastically opined.

The iconic coach was dropping his one-liners upon entry to the post-game press room as usual. But his game plan for the Trojans was dead serious. Montgomery’s Bears need all the wins they can get, having lost five of their last eight, including an embarrassing 20-point loss to UCLA on Wednesday. On top of that, USC, a big, physical opponent sensed an opportunity against the Bears, the last team USC beat over a month ago.

So throw out the records. In this one Cal (18-9, 9-5) had to make the adjustments to pull out a 77-64 win that keeps them in a third-place tie with Stanford in the Pac-12 race.

The Bears trailed at the half, 30-27, and things were still tight with 10 minutes remaining, when Cal took off behind Justin Cobbs and Jabari Bird, who contributed eight, quick points to create some separation late. A subtle adjustment by Montgomery was the answer to USC’s not too subtle size and strength.

“We spread the court,” Montgomery said. “We changed what we were doing. We opened up the court a little bit and it made it easier for (Cobbs) to go. In the stuff we were trying to do earlier, they were really jamming the paint. We got the post up away from the basket and it opened up some driving lanes.”

On the defensive end, the Bears needed to find away to keep USC from running their offense through 7’2″ Omar Oraby, a Ben Braun recruit at Rice, who left after two seasons to come to Los Angeles. With David Kravish fronting, and a quick double team when Oraby touched the ball, the Bears limited the Trojans’ big man to one basket and two assists.

Cal’s 60 percent shooting in the second half produced 50 points and the Bears ran away late. The majority of the Bears’ nine blocked shots and 10 steals came after halftime as well as Montgomery got the jump on Andy Enfield, the breakout coach of the 2013 NCAA tournament who got his Florida Gulf Coast squad to the Sweet 16. While the Trojans were engaged and capable, ultimately their lack of offense in the absence of leading scorer Byron Wesley who served the second game of a team-imposed suspension led to their demise on Sunday.

The Bears were led by Justin Cobbs with 22 points on 8 of 10 shooting. Ricky Kreklow added 12 and Tyrone Wallace and Jabari Bird chipped in 10 each.

Point guard Pe’Shon Howard led USC (10-17, 1-13) with 17 points. The Trojans fell for the eighth straight game since beating Cal 77-69 on January 22.

The Bears travel to Arizona this week where they will face potential No. 1 seed Arizona and NCAA-bubble team Arizona State.

by Morris Phillips and Michael Duca

BERKELEY–For Cal in the post season will and as it always has depends on seeding and placement, last year was the first time in memory that Cal didn’t wind up playing a 9 AM game in College Park Maryland under something equally absurd. They typically go in with a nine or ten seed and get shuttled across the country and get the 9 AM game.

Or at least a game that feels like a 9 AM game to Cal because they’ve gone from west coast to east coast. If they can stay on the western half of the United States and they can get to a place where they can travel a few fans and get a favorable match up they can certainly get to the round of 16. They’re good enough to have proven to beat anybody and they’ve also proved they can lose to anybody.

They lost to USC proving they stunk up the joint proving they can lose wire to wire losing down there 77-69 on Wednesday January 22. It’ll be interesting to see how Cal and USC match up on Wednesday night at Haas. They made the game at Washington State a lot more exciting then it needed it to be.

Justin Cobbs for Cal was named as one of the 23 finalists for the Bob Cousy Award and it’s well deserved, Cobbs is a senior and he acts like it on the court at all times. He looks to distribute, the Washington State game is where he handed out seven assists before half time and then scored about a million and half points in the second half in order to win that game.

Cobbs is one of those kids that just does whatever is required of him at any given time and he seems to have a high basketball IQ. Duca hung him with a basketball name that he really liked Mike calls him the “Iceman” now because it just doesn’t seem to matter what’s going on. He was out there watching the Syracuse-Pitt game before Washington State the other night and Cobbs was excited when he heard that Syracuse had won the game in the final second on a final 33 foot three point shot, his first question was “was it a step back?” The step back is the best way to put a dagger in someone’s heart.

Cal is as good as good as the 2010 team and the conference is better than the conference was in 2010. Arizona is a better team than they were in 2010, UCLA has a lot of talent and Cal is as good as they were given the fact that they don’t have a Patrick Christopher. They don’t have a swing man who can step out on the wing and drill 22 foot shots all night long.

That 2010 team could just light it up on the outside, this 2014 Cal team is not as skillful a shooting team as the 2010 team was.

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

By Morris Phillips

This time Cal’s sluggish start didn’t result in an undesirable outcome.

The Bears stormed back from a 13-point, first half deficit and shocked Washington, winning 72-59 in Seattle behind Tyrone Wallace’s 20 points.

Cal rebounded from a poor stretch of four losses in five games by sweeping the Washington schools on the road despite the challenging weather and travel issues transpiring in the Northwest.   Had the Bears lost either contest to teams in the bottom half the standings, their NCAA aspirations would have taken a severe hit. Now with four of their final six games in Haas Pavilion, the Bears could follow a reasonable and logical path to a berth in the field of 68.

The critical minutes before halftime were the pathway to an eighth conference win for Cal just as they were on Wednesday at Washington St.  The Bears closed on a 14-2 run Wednesday and followed that up Saturday with a 19-2 burst before halftime that allowed them to catch and past the Huskies.

“Any road game is big–we need wins—and they jumped on us like you said,” Wallace said.  “They were rebounding the ball, pushing us around but we got back aggressive and made it happen at the defensive end.”

“We got some loose balls, we created some turnovers and got out on some breaks and that made a huge difference for us,” Coach Mike Montgomery said.

Washington did their part to fuel the closing run by coughing up 10 turnovers in the first half.  The Bears converted those into 14 points and didn’t look back.  In the second half, the Huskies did a better job holding onto the ball, but missed all 10 of their 3-point attempts.  For the game, UW missed 17 of 21 from distance blunting any chance for a comeback or a spark to ignite their home crowd.

Once Cal got going, Justin Cobbs began to stuff his stat sheet as the team’s reliable ringleader.  Cobbs finished with 10 points, seven assists and six rebounds.  Post threats Richard Solomon and David Kravish were often the recipients of Cobbs’ passes as the pair combined for 26 points on 12 of 20 shooting.

Sophomore guard Andrew Andrews led UW with 21 points.  But according to Montgomery, C.J. Wilcox was the guy to stop, and the Bears did, holding the senior to 8 points and 0-6 shooting from distance.

The Bears improved to 4-0 when starting their “veteran” lineup of Cobbs, Kravish, Solomon, Wallace and Ricky Kreklow.  The Missouri transfer looked healthy after missing more than a month and returning for the last three games.  Kreklow played 32 minutes but missed six of his seven shot attempts.

Cal hosts UCLA and USC next week and probably needs to win four of their final six to grab an NCAA spot.  But it’s just as important to avoid bad losses as it is to win so Cal’s meeting with the last-place Trojans will be just as important as their March 1 tangle with Arizona State.

The Sun Devils are currently tied with Cal for third place, and like the Bears, they own an eye-catching victory over No. 2 Arizona.

By Morris Phillips

Desperately needing a win, and willing to go just about anywhere to get it, the California Golden Bears found themselves in remote Pullman, Washington on Wednesday night fighting tooth and nail with a stubborn bunch of Cougars.

And in such a contentious battle, it wasn’t a surprise that the Bears turned to Justin Cobbs to pull it out.

Cobbs scored all 22 of his point after halftime, including seven in overtime to propel the Bears past Washington State, 80-76.  The narrow win allowed Cal to stay in a three-way tie for third place in the Pac-12, and averted a damaging loss to the conference’s 11^th place team with only two Pac-12 victories to date.

With Cal looking to step above a number of similarly-situated teams regionally and nationally in regards to making the NCAA tournament, a win against WSU was a necessity.  But the Cougars DaVonte Lacy single handedly kept the possibility of a major upset alive with a career-best 39 points, 26 of those after halftime.

Both teams landed blows in the first half that saw WSU led by nine, then trail by nine after Cal finished the first 20 minutes on a 14-2 run to seemingly take control.

But with Lacy bombing away from outside—he would finish with eight made 3-pointers—and forward D.J. Shelton working the interior, WSU clawed their way back in, drawing even at 56 with nine minutes remaining.  Shelton would finish with 18 points and a career-high 19 rebounds.

The Bears came in losers of four of their previous five games and looking for answers—especially at the offensive end where the Bears couldn’t shoot straight in losing to Stanford a week ago.  But Cobbs fell back to his familiar role as closer, getting into the lane for point blank looks or getting to the foul line where the senior guard converted nine of 11 attempts.

The Bears got a big lift from David Kravish and Richard Solomon who combined for 29 points on 12 of 19 shooting.  Ricky Kreklow returned to the starting lineup, playing 23 minutes and contributing 8 points and 3 rebounds.

Washington State lost a third straight and dropped both meetings with Cal for the first time since 2010.

Cal next faces Washington after another day of rigorous winter travel to Seattle.  The Bears and Huskies face off Saturday at noon in Alaska Airlines Arena.

by Michael Duca and Morris Phillips

BERKELEY–If you watched the Arizona game with something other than your heart in your mouth and you stop and looked at the stopped and looked at the stats as the game was developing Cal was shooting over 50 percent for the first 32 minutes of the game. Arizona missed their first three shots and did not shoot above 25 percent at any point in the first half.

Part of that is defense is just a cold shooting night on the part of the Wild Cats through all of that. Arizona was shooting 21 percent in the first 14 minutes of the game and Cal was shooting over 50 percent they still had a six point lead at the time. They are not a dominant offensive team unless and until Cal’s Justin Cobbs decides he’s going he’s going to be a shooter from the moment he falls out of bed to start every game they don’t have the outside threat to run the outside game.

The question that I asked Cal head coach Mike Montgomery after the game against Arizona while everyone else was focusing on the last seven minutes of the game was about Cobbs scoring the last 12 points of the game and so on. What was really intresting was the fact that the six point lead barely eight minutes into the game against Arizona Montgomery had three true freshman on the floor.

He said part of that was just due to the match up that he thought that there are a few teams that the Wild Cats Shawn Rooks could have a very solid effect against and Arizona is one of them with their taller inside game. It’s also indicative of the fact that whether he likes it or not and we know he doesn’t particularly like it Montgomery has been forced to rely on more inexperienced freshman than he normally has.

One indicator is that Cal is an NCAA team for the tournament if they lose to USC at home they will not get into it no matter if they win the seven other games. Even if they beat Arizona a second time, if they have two loses to USC at home nobody is going to be able to stomach that. The Bears have to go 6-2 the rest of the way to insure a spot, 5-3 their going to be a bubble team

The thing you have to look for in games like this is the hangover effect after a game like Arizona you may not be coming out thirsting for blood early on. Monty said it was crystal clear in the Arizona game that he had kids in there at ten o’clock in the morning and you could tell that they were already hyped up for the game and you knew they were going to be absolutely ready when the whistle blew.

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