Category: Cal Bears

Morris Phillips on the NCAA

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by Morris Phillips

BERKELEY–The Cal Bears are getting confidence with these non conference games wins like the one Saturday against the Fresno State Bull Dogs 67-56 in an 11 point victory and it’s an opportunity to gain confidence with a young basketball team which is great. The Bears have got new players that haven’t had expereince at the division one level and that’s why home games or pre conference games are so critical so that will help them.

The Bears didn’t see anybody of size this week and obviously when the conference games start they will be seeing bigger teams and taller players and the Bears will have to contend with those teams. At that point Cal will be the smaller team of the group. Especially they played Nevada and Fresno State on Saturday at Haas Pavilion and they saw a pair of undersize teams and that won’t be the case in the Pac 12.

The one thing that’s going on right now for the first time since 2006 the number one team in the country is from the Pac 12 Arizona who won against Michigan to secure that number one spot and the Pac 12 looks to be as balanced and competitive as it has been in years top to bottom and their already getting raves for being one of the strong leagues in the country.

Once again Cal is not in a conference schedule there is nothing compared to what they will see once the conference season starts. Just to run through the team, Arizona is number one, Oregon is ranked, Washington State looks to be much improved, Washington as like Cal a younger team trying to find it’s way.

Stanford is kind of interesting they just lost their point guard Aaron Bright for the season the Pac 12 is going to be a bear and every week it’s going to be tough ball games that are going to be very closely contested. Cal is going to be right there in the mix. They are younger and less experienced than some of the teams that they will face.

Morris Phillips covers Cal basketball and is filling in for Dr.Michelle Richardson this week for the NCAA commentary

Michael Duca on Cal basketball

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by Michael Duca

BERKELEY–What you want to do is construct a schedule that challenges your team and give it the opportunity to give it different kinds of looks. What a way for Cal (8-3) to rack up a win over the Fresno State Bull Dogs (6-5) an 11 point victory on Saturday night at Haas with a 67-56 victory. It’s silly the way you can beat non-conference teams like this but this is the way you get into the NCAA Tournament.

 

Getting there you need to play North Carolina, Duke, Michigan in the pre season and it really doesn’t matter who else you play you can play 11, 12, 13 non conference games and you want to make sure you win most of them and you want to be sure your team is challenged a little bit in the process. 8-0 at home is good, they lost three away from home not so good but that’s how Cal constructs their pre conference schedule so that their almost entirely at home.

 

The interesting thing is a lot people are wondering how Cal would be this year without Allen Crabbe, without a two time Pac 12 player, who was a good shooter, a good scorer who left early for the NBA and is intimately acquainted with the bench up in Portland now. The answer is their doing just fine the Bears are not relying on just one guy to score for them now their spreading that scoring all around.

 

The Bears had six players in double figures earlier this week against Nevada and three of those players came off the bench. You like to have an eight man rotation that has eight guys that can score in double figures and so Saturday night against the Bull Dogs the Bears spread the scoring around quite as thickly but you did have two guys with double figures in rebounds from Richard Solomon and David Kravish both.

 

One night Justin Cobbs comes and gets you 25 points and the next night he gets eight or nine assists so Cobb can find different ways to adjust his game to what needs to be done on the floor. The conference games will be starting soon enough and there are a lot of very good teams in the Pac 12 this year. Washington is always a tough team for Cal, Oregon is a nationally ranked team, UCLA is a nationally ranked team Arizona is a top ranked team.

 

You have just a variety of squads in the Pac 12 that could give anybody fits on any given night and Cal is always going to struggle when they go to places like Utah or Colorado because of the altitude. It’s going to be a very competitive conference, it will not surprise me Cal in the top second tier after Arizona and UCLA who will be right up there with Oregon.

 

The Cal Bears Tyrone Wallace you look at him on the floor and you think he’s a tweener and it’s the same position that former Bear Patrick Christopher used to play he has the scoring ability to rebound like a power forward with Kravish and Solomon and with that many rebounds to be gathered in right around the bucket and paint he is one of those guys like Kravish was a couple of years ago who has a nose for the ball. I don’t know if Wallace studies and scouts down the other team but he’s got a playbook in his mind where to go on the floor.

 

Michael Duca covers the Cal Bears for Sportstalk Radio each week

Cal runs past Nevada in a high-scoring shootout

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By Morris Phillips

Nevada and Cal engaged in an old-fashioned shootout Tuesday with a pair of former prep adversaries turned NBA hopefuls at the center of the action.

For a crowd of nearly 8,000, the Bears’ 92-84 win was satisfying entertainment.  For coaches David Carter and Mike Montgomery, not as much; they immediately harped on the lack of defense.

“I think we’ve got to do a better job of putting pressure on guys and just having that toughness defensively, collectively, and then if they make shots there really isn’t much we can do about it,” Carter said of his Wolf Pack’s defensive effort.

“I thought we made a lot of mistakes defensively,” Montgomery said.  “I think there’s still things we’re learning about how to play defense.  Some of the things that we didn’t do, we tried to talk about.”

Nevada forged an early seven-point lead, 17-10 then watched the floodgates open for Cal.  The Bears went on a huge run, finished the first half with 49 points and shot 55 percent for the game.  The Wolf Pack clearly missed three injured players in their frontcourt, and suffered even more when forward Ronnie Stevens, Jr. was saddled with foul problems.  Senior guard Justin Cobbs had no problem navigating on the offensive end as he racked up 15 points and eight assists, and did a great job of getting his freshman teammates involved offensively.

The Wolf Pack’s Deonte Burton stood as the counterpoint to Cal’s big scoring night as he put up 26 points and led a brief, Nevada second-half run.   Burton, the 6’3” senior, battled Cobbs many times as a prep in Los Angeles, and did so again on Tuesday.   When Burton got inside for a couple of big dunks and drew fouls, it didn’t sit well with Cobbs, eventhough he termed himself and Burton as friends.

“I wouldn’t say he got under my skin,” Cobbs said.  “It’s just frustrating sometimes when the calls were going the other way and myself being so competitive.  He was doing a great job of getting body contact and getting some calls, but it’s just the game of basketball.”

Six Bears finished in double figures, and Montgomery’s tweaking of his starting lineup in the wake of Cal’s disappointing loss at Santa Barbara seemed to work just fine.  Freshman Jordan Mathews and Ricky Kreklow got starts, while Tyrone Wallace and Jabari Bird came off the bench.  Mathews, Wallace and Bird all scored in double figures along with Cobbs, Richard Solomon and David Kravish.

“We just wanted to change,” Montgomery said of the lineup switch.  “If we can keep it competitive, we want to.  We want to keep guys motivated.  We don’t want guys to get stale or take anything for granted.”

The win allowed Montgomery to move up the all-time victories chart with 664 wins, tied for 27th with UCLA legend John Wooden.  When asked about Wooden, Montgomery took the route of humility.

“The number of wins doesn’t mean much to anybody, but when they say that’s John Wooden, all of a sudden everybody perks up.  I have a little work to do.  I’m 10 national championships short (of Wooden).   There’s nothing to compare other than the fact that I’ve got the same number of wins.  That’s the only comparison there is,” Montgomery said.

The Bears face Fresno State on Saturday at 3:00pm at Haas Pavilion.

Michael Duca on Cal basketball

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by Michael Duca

 

BERKELEY–It’s nice that Cal is 6-3 but it would nice to see the Golden Bears start winning basketball games away from Haas they’ve got one victory from their home floor so far this year and that’s not going to work in the Pac 12. The Pac 12 is absolutely loaded this year and for Cal they have shot at a reasonable seeding at a conference tournament.

The Bears could have a 20 game winning season they have a shot at making the big dance, they’re going to have to win some road games.It’s never easy because your traveling which takes a lot of time away from the court and takes a lot of energy. You know how much fun it is to wait for your seat on the plane now imagine these guys doing it all the time.

Your away from home and your in a hostile crowd and your in a building that’s not yours, your depth perception and sight line comes to path through everything. You have to adjust to the building a little bit and for two or three minutes its just enough for the other team to get the crowd moving and make it hard on you.

The time change in Maui didn’t hurt them, or the altitude in Santa Barbara didn’t effect them, they just got outplayed by Santa Barbara and it was bound to happen sooner or later. Santa Barbara has never beaten a Pac 12 team finally all things come to an end, all things change, it just looks on the stat sheet that Cal didn’t shoot very well on the road and if that happens their probably not going to win.

Cal guard Jabari Bird he is Cal’s premier recruit this off season and he played in my hometown of Richmond, Bird is an extraordinary talent there and as you know Cal head coach Mike Montgomery has a little difficult time trusting freshmen and a little difficulty giving them a lot of responsibility on the offense. It gives you an idea how special a talent that Bird is.

Bird is on the floor every game he’s a starter for every game and he’s basically stepped into Cal player Alan Crabbe’s shoes. Bird is not a Crabbe quality outside shooter and anybody in basketball hardly is. Bird has great competitiveness and the rest of his game he’s actually got a more complete game than Crabbe does.

Bird is not necessarily more skilled but he’s played as hard 100 percent of the time, Crabbe was proned to gaging a few plays if his shot wasn’t falling for him. So on those merits Bird is giving Cal everything they could be that they hope to get out of a freshman. Montgomery is getting as much experience out of him that he can before the conference games start because there’s nothing but good teams in that conference.

Michael Duca does commentary on Cal basketball each week for Sportstalk Radio

Santa Barbara’s picturesque, just not for the Cal Bears

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UCSB’s junior guard Zalmico Harmon dished out 10 assists for the Gauchos on Friday night. (Presidio Sports Photos)
UCSB’s junior guard Zalmico Harmon dished out 10 assists for the Gauchos on Friday night. (Presidio Sports Photos)

By Morris Phillips

In the last 30 years, UCLA has agreed to play in the gym of one of the other nine Division I basketball programs scattered across the greater Los Angeles area just four times.  In 1988, the Bruins ventured down the San Diego Freeway to help UC Irvine open their just built Bren Center and went home losers.

They haven’t been back since.

Mike Montgomery’s probably had dinner in Moraga more times than he’s agreed to bring one of his Stanford or California teams to play the St. Mary’s Gaels in their gym (once).  The Cal Bears hadn’t brought one of their basketball teams to beautiful Santa Barbara in 34 seasons. Kentucky plays at Western Kentucky?  Forget it.

There’s a reason for all of this: basketball coaches shrewdly avoid playing in places that are nearby, where an upset is a possibility, and a win for the little guy could make headlines that local, recruitable athletes would undoubtedly notice.

Montgomery knows better; he’s been smartly crafting who his teams play for years.  But the state is struggling financially, so UC schools have been encouraged to play each other more frequently to keep all the money in the system.

Well, in part due to all of that Cal became the first Pac-12 team to venture into the Thunderdome in 11 years and the improving Gauchos and leading scorer Alan Williams were ready.  Williams had 24 points and 12 rebounds, and UCSB pulled away from Cal in the second half to win, 72-65.

“We’ve been so close to breaking through with a big home win in the past and just couldn’t get over the humps, so this was pretty special,” UCSB Coach Bob Williams said.

The Gauchos defeated the Bears for the first time after 10 previous defeats in the series between the two schools.

The Bears’ defense again wilted in the second half allowing the Gauchos to shoot 59 percent and score 45 points.  Meanwhile, the Bears were struggling, shooting just 36 percent for the game and unable to answer UCSB’s firepower down the stretch.

Freshman Jordan Mathews led the Bears with a career-best 22 points.  Justin Cobbs chipped in 13, and David Kravish had 12.

The Bears used a rally to grab the lead, 28-27, at halftime, but UCSB surged in the second half, and hit four big free throws down the stretch to clinch it.

The Bears fell to 6-3 on the season with Nevada up next at Haas Pavilion on Tuesday.

Michael Duca on Cal basketball

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by Michael Duca

BERKELEY–There were a couple of performances from last Monday night’s game at Haas Pavilion against the UC Irvine Anteaters that Cal put on that really didn’t even jump out at you from the stat sheet. That were critically important Tyrone Wallace had a career high 11 rebounds from the lane position last night and he had Justin Cobbs as Cal’s point guard. When they lost in the consolation round to Dayton in Maui David Kravish was just about worn out by them and Richard Solomon was missing his second straight game with a cornea operation.

The Bears had no real post presence they couldn’t go inside outside so all they could do is shoot outside the zone and Cobb put up 31 points and they lost by two or three handful of points about 18. Cal’s Sam Singer had three points but he had three rebounds and Cal assisted on all three quarters of their baskets and things just looked a whole lot better than they did in the game versus Dayton in Maui.

The offense looked pretty good and the defense looked even better in the first half, Irvine missed ten straight and then they hit two out of three and missed eight more and rode in the half so the end of the half shooting hitting two of their last 21 shots and your probably not going to win a lot of basketball games doing that. Solomon is now sporting goggles from getting his eye scratched in the Dayton game and has decided to wear goggles for the rest of the year.

Solomon was not instructed to by doctors he didn’t need to it’s his own choice he doesn’t want to go through that again he doesn’t want to get someone’s finger in his eye. That was a pretty nasty abrasion, Solomon’s eye was swollen shut for two days he could not see and he could not open it. Getting back out on the floor he was rusty and you could tell a week without game action and his timing was not fully there but he set the tone literally from the get go.

Solomon lacked ten inches on Irvine’s center from Senagal, Mamadou Ndiaye who is 7’7 and one of the three or four tallest players ever to play college basketball and Solomon won the opening tip and he did it with climbing athleticism and that is basically how he got Ndiaye to get into foul trouble early in the first half and he picked up his second foul just about 3:50 into the game and sat the rest of the first half. Ndiaye got five and half minutes play in the second half.

Solomon challenged Ndiaye going straight at him early in the game and scored the first five points of the game for Cal and in the second half David Kravish hit Cal’s first ten points and had 12 of the first 16 and he hit six shots in a row and five of them were Ndiaye who was in the game in the second half. So instead of lurking in the backs of too many peoples minds and he is huge and he does have a wing span.

Most big men can get up close to Ndiaye and use their athletic ability and quickness to create some space while he’s trying to back away and make shots and they did. They hit a lot of mid range jumpers.

Michael Duca does commentary on Cal basketball each week for Sportstalk radio

Cal passes big test against 7’6″ Ndiaye and UC Irvine

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By Morris Phillips

The 7’6” sensation known as Mamadou Ndiaye came to Haas Pavilion on Monday night and the Cal Bears needed to quickly determine whether the Senegalese freshman would be an oddity or a menace like he was three weeks ago in UC Irvine’s wire-to-wire victory over Washington in which he had 18 points, eight rebounds and an eye-popping nine blocks.

And what was the answer to the Ndiaye conundrum?  Incomplete.

In Cal’s 73-56 victory, Ndiaye played just 10 minutes due to foul trouble and he and the Anteaters couldn’t shoot a lick early, trailing by double digits for the final 34 minutes of the game.   Consequently, Ndiaye managed to dominate only the post-game quote sheet.

“That guy, when he posts up he has got his hands right at your face,” Cal’s 6’9” David Kravish said.  “You are looking right into his chest.”

“I was staring at his chest the whole game,” 6’11” Richard Solomon said.

“He’s a big dude,” Coach Mike Montgomery said.  “He got into our heads a little bit… just because guys had to figure out what they could do.  We knew that he doesn’t like to come away from the basket very much.”

What could have been a long night and a close game wasn’t in great part due to Kravish, who stepped away from the basket and hit a number of shots on his way to 19 points and 10 rebounds, and Justin Cobbs, who’s never shy about taking his game into the paint, which he did frequently Monday in compiling a game-best nine assists.

Now that the affable Ndiaye–who just last year was tooling around Huntington Beach on his oversized bicycle—has played nine games in his collegiate career, there’s telling tape for opposing coaches to dissect.  Montgomery’s among the best of the practitioners and his Bears took heed, only twice getting too close to Ndiaye and his ridiculous wingspan to have their shots blocked.  Instead, Cal’s ball movement for the most part was crisp and leading to numerous, high-percentage shots.

Meanwhile, Ndiaye had trouble getting out of his own way.

“He didn’t make the adjustments he needed to make,” UC Irvine Coach Russell Turner said.  “He got an offensive foul early, got two rebound fouls.  He needs to avoid those mistakes.”

Cal got a major lift from Solomon’s return from missing the final two games in Maui due to a corneal abrasion.  Solomon wore protective glasses, something he says he will do for the remainder of the season, not wanting to revisit the painful and scary eye injury that took place when an opponent inadvertently caught his eye.  Again it was apparent that Cal’s much better at both ends, but especially defensively, when both Kravish and Solomon are in the game together.

In Solomon’s absence, Syracuse and Dayton both had big shooting nights in handing the Bears their first two losses of the season.

The Bears travel to Santa Barbara Friday night where they will meet the Gauchos before returning home next Tuesday to face Nevada.

Cal regresses in loss to Dayton

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By Morris Phillips

Maybe it was the friendly Hawaiian Island vibes or an abundance of holiday cheer, but either way it caused the Cal Bears to be far too giving at the Maui Invitational on Wednesday.

One night after Syracuse blistered Cal with 53 percent shooting, Dayton was made to feel at home by the Bears as well, shooting 48 percent and finishing off Cal, 82-64.

“They were fired up,” Cal Coach Mike Montgomery said of Dayton.  “I think they were probably a little bit upset with yesterday and losing and giving up a lead.  They were the better team today and clearly the more aggressive team.”

The Bears again found themselves short in the middle without center Richard Solomon, who missed the final two games of the tournament due to an eye abrasion suffered in the opener against Arkansas.  The Flyers found Solomon’s absence right to their liking as they outrebounded Cal, 37-34, and shot nearly 52 percent in the second half to pull away.

But the Flyers really took off when Coach Archie Miller looked to his bench, which produced a whopping 52-8 point advantage over Cal’s reserves.  In the three games in three days format, with fatigued players everywhere, the Dayton bench’s big night was the difference in the ballgame.

“I’d just assume they left their starters in to be honest with you,” Montgomery said.  “They killed us off the bench.  They had 15 fast break points, we had zero.   You can’t win a basketball game if you don’t run a break and get some points off the break.”

Dayton pulled the upset of the tournament in their opening win over No. 11 Gonzaga, and then dropped a heartbreaker against Baylor by a point.  But their hangover wasn’t apparent, as the Flyers pushed the pace, hurt the Bears in the paint, and limited mistakes, committing just four turnovers in the game.

“If we don’t turn the ball over, we’ll have a chance to be successful, and that’s a big thing,” Miller said of his team.  “But to their credit, four turnovers in 40 minutes is an absolute great job.”

Justin Cobbs led the Bears with a career-best 31 points.  Cobbs scored the final four Cal points of the first half, and the first 12 of the second as he single-handedly tried to bring the Bears back.  Cobbs’ final basket in the run left Cal trailing 41-39, but Dayton responded with a run of their own to push the lead back to 13 with 11 minutes remaining.

David Kravish contributed 12 points and 14 rebounds for Cal.    Devin Oliver led Dayton with 21 points, followed by 17 for Jalen Robinson, and 14 for Vee Sanford.

The Bears resume their season Monday when UC Irvine comes to Haas Pavilion.

Cal plays well, but blinks late in loss to No. 8 Syracuse

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By Morris Phillips

Catching the vaunted Syracuse Orangemen a hemisphere away from the Carrier Dome seemed like a good idea for the Cal Bears.

But that’s only if you haven’t checked the numbers: after Syracuse’s 92-81 win over Cal on Tuesday, the Orangemen are a perfect 8-0 at the Lahaina Civic Center, winning Maui Invitational titles in 1990 and 1998.

After beating Cal, No. 8 Syracuse is poised to win a third title, facing Baylor on Wednesday in the tournament’s championship game.  Cal will face Dayton–narrow 67-66 losers to Baylor–on Wednesday in the EA Sports Maui Invitational third place game.

“I thought we played really, really hard, really pleased with the effort,” Coach Mike Montgomery said.  “We had some lapses of things and I don’t think in that level of game you’re going to be able to win if you have lapses.”

In comparison to the Bears loss to Syracuse in last season’s NCAA second round at San Jose, this was a huge improvement for Cal.  Allen Crabbe and Justin Cobbs played tentatively, and the Bears struggled to figure out the Syracuse zone in a six-point loss that seemed much bigger.  This time, Cal played well in transition, and gave the ‘Cuse a battle, shooting 51 percent and scoring 81 points.

“I thought watching Cal yesterday that their team this year is much better than last year’s team,” Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim said.  “I just think (Jabari) Bird is one of the better freshman composure-wise that I’ve seen.”

The Bears played without center Richard Solomon, who had played 22 consecutive games, but missed Tuesday’s game with an eye injury.  Without their big man, the Bears didn’t back down, getting poised performance by five freshman in their nine-man rotation, and trailing 62-59 with 8:54 remaining when Syracuse pulled away.

“I think the problem was we had some lapses in terms of defense,” Montgomery said.  I think as much as anything, the in-line out of bounds hurt as much as anything.  They probably scored 15 points on in-line out of bounds in the zone.”

Cal was led by Cobbs with 18 points and eight assists.  Bird had 17 points and seven rebounds, David Kravish had 15, and Jordan Mathews 12.  Tyler Ennis led Syracuse with 28 points, and Trevor Cooney added 23.

The Bears outrebounded the Orangemen 30-26, but saw Syracuse shoot 53 percent from the field, and 95 percent from the line, missing just one free throw on the night.

“I like the way we fought without our big guy, Richard Solomon,” Cobbs said.  “I think we played hard and gave them everything we wanted.  Just couldn’t pull it out at the end.”

The Bears fell to 5-1 on the season, and their meeting today with the Flyers provides another opportunity for an significant win as Dayton upset No. 11 Gonzaga on Monday.

Michael Duca on the NCAA

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by Michael Duca

LAHAINA, Hawaii–The Golden Bears came out a little edgey in their win over Arkansas 85-77 on Monday night at the Maui Invitational, maybe they were just nervous. The combined records of these two teams in that tournament on before Monday night 30-0. So it’s hard to decide who your favoring. They had a scuffle early on in the game in the sense the Bears were not hitting shots and not making the plays that they wanted to make and it had been rehearsed all week in practice.

It was rehearsed in practice which was a long week of practice and Cal head coach Mike Montgomery said that the team pretty much forget everything they practiced for all week in the first five minutes of the game. A couple of things happened first of all they did start playing the way they were coached to play and the other one that made a huge difference in the past forward Richard Solomon had managed to collect two fouls early in the game and then sit down here Solomon collected a third foul early in the second half.

Montgomery sat Solomon down and in came Roger Moute a Bidias at forward and said to the freshman “you know how to do this I have to trust you and get out there and play” and play he did he played with three fouls for much of the rest of the game and Moute a Bidas fouled out in the final 1:10 of the game collected 11 points and had more than a dozen and half rebounds after that point and began and basically to took over the floor.

The Bears faced Syracuse on Tuesday and their best known for their two-three zone defense and they play that two-three defense better than anyone else in the country. Cal faced them in the NCAA Tournament and did not do well at all and Monty is hoping that those players can carry over because one of the reasons they did not do well is they didn’t really attack the weaknesses of that two three zone.

There aren’t that many of them because the Orange have guys that are 6’8 and 6’9 out on the wings and they make it difficult but their are seams in a two three zone. There are places where you can take the outside it’s going to be up to Cal’s front court to really take advantage penetrating that zone and hit some higher percentage shots.

This was a closer game than the tournament was last year even though they don’t have Alan Crabbe and Crabbe was probably their best outside shooter threat they’re a more veteran club despite Crabbe’s departure and with the inside presence of both Crabbe had a tremendous game and Solomon had a terrific first half on Monday night that indicates that they could play competitive against this Syracuse team.

Michael Duca covers Cal basketball for Sportstalk each week