Category: Cal Bears

by Michael Duca

BERKELEY–The Cal Bears came away this past week with wins over Oregon and Oregon State and averaged 92 points a game, the Bears hosted Washington on Wednesday night and will face Washington State on Saturday night. The Bears Justin Cobbs whose averaging 15 plus points a night was voted player of the week in the NCAA and the way he’s playing he could end up being player of the year.

You hope that people around the league are paying attention to when you don’t jump to another league after your freshman year when you actually decide to get an education in the classroom but also an education on the court. That basketball education really pays off too it’s not that unusual to make adjustments at half time. Teams will come out and scheme on you a little bit that you didn’t see something on film or on the scouting report.

The great coaches understand how to adjust and you can overcome a halftime deficit, you could overcome a situation where your team can see what it expected to see and that’s a lot of what went on and Cal head coach Mike Montgomery challenged Cobbs to be more aggressive in shooting the basketball and he still does what he does distributing the ball and grabbing a few key rebounds.

This is a young man who can also score the ball substantially, Cobbs can go out and get you 20-25 points a game a night, those players are not a dime a dozen, you have to take advantage of their skill sets. Going into the season it was thought that the top three were Oregon, UCLA and Arizona, UCLA has stumbled a bit, Oregon has stumbled a bit losing three straight including to Cal.

Cal seems to be consistently improving as the season goes along which is a hallmark of a Mike Montgomery. There’s a lot of conference basketball to play yet, there’s only three games in the books but if Cal is able to take care of things this week against the two Washington schools coming into Haas Pavilion. If Cal gets into a really solid undefeated conference start then we have to begin considering Cal becoming a third member of that three in the Pac 12 conference.

When they look at the original six rotation that are injured right now one of the teams that are currently playing with a solid eight man rotation it’ll be interesting to see how Montgomery deploys that talent and how’s he’s able to rest guys and respond to different defensive looks that the team sees. There isn’t anybody in the conference whose a better tactical coach than Montgomery.

Montgomery has a full quiver of arrows this year were going to see some more unexpected results out there out of that team just like they did in Oregon. So the Bears can’t go down if they win and as simple as that sounds it’s something to remember as the conference began this season if you keep winning nobody is going to get past you.

Michael Duca covers Cal basketball with Morris Phillips for Sportstalk radio

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By Morris Phillips

Once again, Mike Montgomery and the Cal Bears had their support staff scouring the record books—looking back more than 50 years—to find parallels to their accomplishments.

Previously, Montgomery led Cal to their first regular-season conference title in more than 50 years, winning the final season of Pac-10 competition in 2010.  Now, after beating Oregon State 88-83 on Saturday, the Bears have won their first three conference road games for the first time since 1957 when they defeated Washington State on consecutive days and Stanford a week later in the old Pacific Coast Conference.

Pretty heady stuff for a team that didn’t do much to distinguish itself from any of the other 345 Division I basketball teams in December.  Now that same team has started January on fire and is stating its case for a NCAA tournament bid.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, there are the injuries (to Ricky Kreklow and freshman Jabari Bird), the lethargic first half on Saturday, the rest of the conference schedule, and Montgomery vowing not to let anyone look to far ahead.

“You don’t think in terms of that, you think in terms of winning the next game,” Montgomery said when asked about the 3-0 start in conference.  “I would have said if you take a couple of players off our squad and send us on the road that it would make it that much more difficult to do.”

What made the task more difficult was a big shooting first half by Oregon State that had them up 45-35 at the half.  The Beavers shot 63 percent in the period and looked a lot like the offensively superior team that dispatched Stanford on Thursday.

But things changed immediately in the second half.  The Bears opened on an 18-7 run and took a 53-52 lead with 14 minutes remaining.   Four minutes later, senior reserve Jeff Powers got into the act, canning a pair of three-pointers in 10-0 run that allowed Cal to maintain at least a five-point margin the rest of the way.

“We made life easy for them in a couple of ways,” OSU Coach Craig Robinson said.  “All season long we have said that we have to stick to our game plan.  In the first half, we did a really good job of doing that.  In the second half, I don’t know if it was nerves or if it was panic, but it got away from us and I couldn’t get them back on track.”

The Bears were led by Justin Cobbs who scored all 20 of his points after halftime.  David Kravish added 16 and Powers 14.  Cal’s 53 percent shooting after the break turned things around, but Cobbs was the obvious catalyst, continuing his strong playmaking and ability to push the ball in transition.

Oregon State got 26 points from Roberto Nelson and 22 from Angus Brandt.

The Bears get an opportunity to continue their winning ways on Wednesday when Washington comes to Haas Pavilion.

By Morris Phillips

If you used defense as a barometer for Thursday’s Cal-Oregon game, only one description would apply: Oregon just didn’t have it, and even if they did, it may not have stopped the Cal Bears.

Cal enjoyed its best offensive evening of the season, getting a career-best 32 points from Jordan Mathews and shooting 52 percent in a 96-83 win over the No. 17 Ducks.   The Bears finally have a NCAA-resume building win, but more importantly, they improved to 2-0 in conference with two, impressive road wins to start the campaign.

The Bears placed all five starters in double figures, fended off foul trouble late and ran away from Oregon in the final five minutes to create a comfortable margin from what had been a tight game over the first 30 minutes.  California led 76-74 with 5:15 remaining, but got a big three from Mathews on the next offensive trip and finished the game on a 20-9 run to pull away.  Mathews and Justin Cobbs each had seven points in the run.

For the Bears, the win was proof that the depth-challenged team is capable of big accomplishments even if the bench contributions are few, but significant.   Cal got just one of their 32 baskets from a bench player.  Christian Behrens’ powerful tip-in of Cobbs’ missed jumper that capped an 8-0 run that put Cal up 67-60 with 10:15 remaining.   Cal also survived serious foul trouble at the end that saw five of the eight Bears that saw action saddled with four fouls at the game’s conclusion.  But somehow, none of the five fouled out and Oregon never wrestled momentum away from the visitors because of the fouls.

For Oregon, their second loss after a school-record 13 straight wins to start the season had Coach Dana Altman using some pretty frank language afterwards.  His Ducks appeared to lack Cal’s intensity at either end, and their inability to match up defensively in transition may have been their biggest flaw of the evening.

“Defensively, we’re not very good,” Altman admitted.  “There’s no other way to put it.  I’ve got to do some soul-searching and put us in some different positions, we’ve got to figure out the rotation.”

Cal defeated Oregon for the 12^th consecutive time, and the Bears have never lost at Matthew Knight Arena, the Ducks’ new home that opened in January 2011.   The Bears limited Oregon to 41 percent shooting and won the battle on the glass, 36-30.

Oregon was led by Joseph Young with 29 points, Mike Moser with 15 and Jonathon Loyd with 14.  The Ducks didn’t get much of a boost from their deeper bench, as the five Oregon reserves that saw action shot a combined 3-13 and 0-5 on threes.

Cal got 20 points, 11 assists from Cobbs, 16 points, nine rebounds from Richard Solomon and 14 points from Tyrone Wallace.

The Bears look to go 3-0 in conference on Saturday when they travel to Corvallis to face the Beavers.  Oregon State got a big win on Thursday as well, beating Stanford 81-72 at Gill Coliseum.

by Michael Duca

BERKELEY–The Cal Bears (10-4) next game coming up in Eugene against Oregon (13-1) is a very ranked team and they seemed to conserve every bit of it. I was up there when Cal was up there a few years back.Oregon has built this team up to be a successful club but dont look no further than Arizona (15-0) who is number one in most poll ratings in the country and they could be the Pac 12’s top winner this season.

UCLA (12-2) has an extremely good team this year, USC (9-5) were beat by UCLA 107-73 last Sunday and UCLA’s total score is like the combined score of some NCAA games. The Bears who beat Stanford (9-4) last Thursday 69-62 is always a good thing coming away from Maples Pavilion to come back with a W. Maples is a tough, tough place to play.

If its not your band being shouted down by one that doesn’t seem to actually be playing beautiful notes but still manages to make a lot of noise or your tiny contigent of fans tucked up in a corner completely outnumbered by the Stanford fans. Stanford is a hostile place for Cal to go play even though its their shortest road trip.

Its their tougest game and its a very positive thing to come out with that win at Stanford last Thursday going into this game. Two years when I was up in Oregon they had a enthusiastic crowd with a maybe a half built arena. No matter how good basketball gets in Oregon it’s never going to beat football and football is the sport they live and die for.

You can’t buy a football ticket ten years out but basketball tickets you can walk up and get, if they don’t sell out they never will because Oregon has an awfully good team. The best thing about Cal’s offense is balance lately Tyrone Wallace has been the guy whose been doing the scoring and led the team last Thursday with 20 points.

Nobody at Cal is upset to see that, there going to be a better team and they can develop a lane based offense and get some outside shooting. They have the big guys inside, they can go inside but their going to open up the floor a lot more and turn it into an inside out game taking a low post pass and repeating out to an open man once the defense starts to collapse towards them.

For Cal in this game scoring is not going to be the issue as getting stopped by the Ducks. Oregon is a team that you don’t want to try and catch when your ten or 15 points behind.

Michael Duca and Morris Phillips cover Cal Basketball for Sportstalk Radio

By Morris Phillips

Every good basketball team needs a point guard.  On Thursday, Stanford found out how bad it can get without one.

The Cal Bears got the jump on their Bay Area rival, winning 69-62 over Stanford at Maples Pavilion in the Pac-12 opener for both teams.  And while Cal followed the lead of their playmaker Justin Cobbs, especially late in a tense ballgame, Stanford bogged down minus injured point guard Aaron Bright after they took their final lead with five minutes remaining.

“Our kids held their poise, they made some shots.  We made some big plays down the stretch and we were able to come out ahead,” Coach Mike Montgomery said.

Both coaches downplayed Bright’s absence as a reason for Stanford’s struggles, but the statistics told a different story.  The Cardinal managed just seven assists—a season-low–juxtaposed against 11 turnovers, and seemingly all 58 of their shots were of the tough, contested variety.  Stanford led for the final time, 56-54 with 5:17 remaining.  But in their ensuing possessions, the Cardinal missed four shots, committed four fouls and a turnover while going scoreless for more than three minutes.

“At that point we just need to calm down more,” Stanford forward Dwight Powell said.  “We had a couple of turnovers that led to them scoring.  They took advantage of the mistakes we made so we have to be more solid and more patient, be aware of the time and score.”

Bright compiled 315 assists as Stanford’s starting point guard for three seasons.  But this season, he played off the bench as Coach Johnny Dawkins settled on a bigger, defensive-minded starting lineup.  After seven games, Bright was lost after separating his shoulder in practice.  In Bright’s absence, the Cardinal have turned to 6’9” Dwight Powell as a playmaking forward, and been effective in their 2-3 zone that stymied Connecticut in Cardinal’s big upset.  But against Cal, the defense was good—not great—and their offense, minus a penetrating playmaker, was tentative down the stretch.

Cobbs was the beneficiary of Stanford’s off night on the defensive end.  The Minnesota transfer finished with 18 points and five assists.  But he saved his best for late, scoring 11 of Cal’s final 17 points.

With Cal clinging to 60-56 lead, Cobbs slipped into the lane for and converted a jumper.  Then the next time the floor, surrounded by defenders in the lane, Cobbs patiently laid the ball off to Richard Solomon for the dunk and a 64-58 Cal lead with 1:04 remaining.

“A lot of times I got the ball in my hands it just worked out for me,” Cobbs said.  “I got the ball in the rights spots and was able to make plays.”

“In the second half, Justin Cobbs played like a senior.  Down the stretch he made every big play and every big shot,” Dawkins said.

Powell led Stanford (9-4, 0-1) with 16 points, but he also had three assists and four turnovers.  Chasson Randle added 15 and Anthony Brown had 14.

The Cardinal shot 41 percent for the evening, and only 36 percent in the second half.  In a statistically even game, free throws stood out as a difference-maker.  Stanford missed 10 of their 20 attempts, while Cal converted 16 of 22.

Tyrone Wallace led Cal with 20 and Richard Solomon had 14 points and 13 rebounds despite persistent foul trouble.

Cal (10-4, 1-0) won for only the second time at Maples under Montgomery after losses at Stanford in each of the last three seasons.  Afterwards, Montgomery if there was any significance to him returning to his home for 18 seasons as Stanford’s iconic coach.

It’s been 10 years…naw,” Montgomery said.  “What made its special was the kids I coached.  And they’re long gone.”

The Bears next take on undefeated, No. 10 Oregon in Eugene next Thursday night.