Category: Cal Bears

By Morris Phillips

After a Sunday evening meeting of the hapless and the hopeless, the Cal Bears departed with smiles on their faces, not to mention an opportunity to make some school history in the coming weeks.

The Bears made it five straight, and back-to-back road wins, by besting Washington State in Pullman, 80-62. The Bears led from beginning to end, belying their season struggles on the road in an emphatic manner.

Jabari Bird’s 3-pointer less than four minutes in gave the Bears their first double-digit lead at 12-2. The Bears led by nine at halftime, and by as many as 23 in the second half.

Cal moved into fourth place in the Pac-12 with the win, and USC’s loss to Utah earlier in the day. The Bears are just a game behind conference co-leaders Oregon and Arizona with four regular season remaining.

The Bears entered the weekend losers of all five of their Pac-12 road games, but came up with a pair of crucial wins over the Washington schools to re-enter the race for the conference regular season crown. Cal also solidified its hold on an NCAA tournament birth as the Pac-12’s top six schools are likely to qualify.

Tyrone Wallace came up with 15 of his team-best 17 points in a short, second half burst in which he hit three 3-pointers. Cal’s senior leader hadn’t come up with a breakout game in his three games back since being felled by a broken finger. But his big performance Sunday caught the eye of Coach Cuonzo Martin.

“He’s a talented basketball player, so I’m not surprised,” Martin said. “When his 3-ball his falling, it could be a long night for you.”

Cal (19-8, 9-5) also enjoyed double figure scoring from Ivan Rabb (15 points) and Bird (13).  Rabb was a perfect 5 for 5 from the field.  Que Johnson led WSU with 17 points.

While the Bears overcame their road woes, the Cougars (9-18, 1-14) overcame very little. WSU’s loss was their 13^th in a row, and they clinched at least a tie for last place in the conference with three games remaining, all of them away from Pullman.

The Bears return to Berkeley to face UCLA on Thursday in their final pursuit of a perfect record at Haas Pavilion this season. The Bears are currently 16-0 at home.

 

By Morris Phillips

Going 2 ½ months between road wins isn’t ideal, but the Cal Bears probably didn’t even notice the lengthy wait after they survived the frantic, final minutes on Thursday night at the Alaska Airlines Arena in Seattle.

Leading by 10 points with three minutes remaining, the Bears saw their lead dwindle to a point, before pulling out a critical 78-75 victory over the fast-sliding Washington Huskies. The matchup between the Pac-12’s sixth and seventh-best teams promised to decide plenty in terms of the Pac-12’s NCAA tournament prospects, but things remained up in the air until Matisse Thybulle’s missed two free throws with four seconds remaining that would have allowed the Huskies to cap a furious rally and tie the game.

“We gave up a couple of threes in the corner,” Coach Cuonzo Martin said in trying to explain UW’s rally that almost sent the Bears back to the team bus in a state of shock. “When you miss free throws, they get their heads up. If you have a 10-point lead, it has to go to 15. You can’t miss free throws. They make plays. It changes the ball game. It changes the momentum and that is what happened.”

After dropping their first five conference road contests—all by fewer than 10 points—the Bears wake up Friday with a much clearer NCAA complexion. Cal won at Washington for the fourth straight year by riding big performances from their freshmen, Jaylen Brown and Ivan Rabb, and surviving a rash of missed free throws late. Now, a win on Sunday at Washington State will propel the Bears back into the race for the Pac-12 regular season title.

Brown led the Bears with 23 points, and Rabb took advantage down low with 8 points and 14 rebounds.   Cal’s bench outclassed Washington’s with 38 points and 24 rebounds, but the Bears still needed to survive UW’s ability to block shots, force turnovers along with their late surge.

“We missed a lot of easy shots,” UW Coach Lorenzo Romar admitted. “We couldn’t get the ball in the basket.”

Cal limited the Huskies to 33 percent shooting for the game, and held a healthy 50-42 edge on the glass. But in a game this important, those disparities didn’t deter Washington, who was looking to win for only the third time in their last nine games. Washington’s 16-5 surge in the first half left the game tied at the half, and with the Bears near collapse, they were just three points better than UW after halftime.

“We did a lot that they we were supposed to do and we let, what, 12 plus free throws on the board,” UW’s Dejounte Murray said. “You give us at least four or five of those, and it gives us the win.”

Marquese Chriss led UW with 17 points, and Murray added 14, but missed six of ten free throw opportunities.

The ragged nature of the game was no surprise given the team’s different struggles and their youth. Cal started two freshmen, and UW started three. The Huskies had been 5-1 in conference play and in first place before their struggles commenced with a series of narrow losses. Now UW needs a miraculous run to avoid a fifth-straight season without an NCAA bid.

“We have to bring it,” Romar said. “We don’t have very many opportunities to go out and not come out on top right now.”

The Bears resume play in Pullman on Sunday at 5:30pm. Washington State has dropped 12 straight games after a loss at home to Stanford on Thursday.

 

 

 

By Morris Phillips

What a big game on Saturday at Haas Pavilion… for Oregon State.

Unlike the more relevant Cal Bears, the Beavers haven’t made an NCAA tournament appearance in a generation, personified by Gary Payton in attendance Saturday, cheering on his son, Gary Payton II.  The elder Payton was the key figure on OSU’s 1990 tournament team, the last time the Beavers qualified.

Coming off a critical victory at Stanford, Oregon State came in tantalizingly close to breaking their 26-year drought, projecting as a 9-seed if it were Selection Sunday.

Unfortunately for OSU, Saturday wasn’t Selection Sunday.  Instead it was the second act in Cal’s resume building weekend, and the closing act in Jabari Bird’s emergence.

The Bears established an early lead and maintained it in an 83-71 win, their 17th consecutive at home.  Bird followed up his career-best 24-point outing with 23 against OSU.

“We’re trying to make the tournament so I knew I had to step my game up to be a better teammate,” Bird said.  “I’m just trying to be focused every game and be aggressive.”

Bird didn’t just impact the scoreboard, he did so efficiently, inside and out.  Along with a couple of crowd-pleasing dunks, Bird canned four 3-pointers against Oregon State and shot 9 of 14 in both victories over the weekend.

Tyrone Wallace assisted Bird with 17 points, Jaylen Brown contributed 15 points, eight rebounds and Jordan Mathews had 14 points.  The Bears broke open the game early with a 8-1 run that put them up 15-7 just seven minutes in.

The win was Cal’s 10th at home against teams currently ranked in the top 100 nationally, and continued their improbable run to the NCAA tournament that could see them go undefeated at home, but qualify despite losing 11 of 13 on the road.

With just two home games remaining, against USC and UCLA, the Bears (17-8, 7-5)look plenty capable of winning out at Haas Pavilion.  Given that, can they capture one or two on the road with suddenly reeling Washington and downtrodden Washington State up next?  To date, the Bears are 0-6 away from home in conference play.

“In most cases, and you obviously have to give credit for the opposing team for winning their games, but turnovers, key breakdowns, and missed free throws, those things cost you a game,” Coach Cuonzo Martin said.  “You can’t have those mental breakdowns at the level where it’s a close game and all of a sudden it goes from six to eight and now you’re down and you have to fight your way back in it.  That’s been our dilemma on the road, to just really execute every possession on offense and defense, taking good shots and not getting rid of the ball too quick.  We’ll get better at it.”

The Bears aggressively attacked OSU’s zone defenses with unselfish passing and driving the ball smartly, and the results showed in a second straight 80-point outing.  Just as importantly, with Wallace back on the floor, Cal’s free throw shooting slightly improved with the team converting 59 percent of their 44 attempts as the Beavers fouled frequently as a late-game strategy for getting back into the game.

If anything, the biggest surprise of the game was OSU’s defense wasn’t consistently effective as it was on Thursday at Stanford, or on January 9 in their 77-71 win over Cal in Corvallis.

“We were soft defensively, and I think there were some guys who weren’t ready for what this game was going to be,” OSU Coach Wayne Tinkle said.  “We had to play catch up most of the game, and I know we didn’t defend like we were supposed to.”

The coach’s son, Tres Tinkle led OSU with 22 points, but no other Beaver managed more than seldom-used reserve Derrick Bruce’s 11.   The stat-stuffing Payton II finished with 10 points and four steals, but wasn’t the transcendent force he was in the teams’ first meeting.

The Bears visit Washington on Wednesday night.  The Huskies have dropped four of five, including an 81-80 heartbreaking loss Saturday at Colorado.

 

 

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