By Morris Phillips
BERKELEY, CA–Make no mistake: Arizona is heating up. After a puzzling three-game losing streak in November, the Cats went undefeated in December and they’ve only lost once so far in January.
And the Cal Bears? They’ve–at the least–stopped the slow starts. Now they’ve got work to do on the scoring droughts and the uncompetitive finishes.
On Wednesday at Haas Pavilion, Arizona stayed hot, and Cal was saddled with another essential, remedial homework assignment, as the Wildcats cruised to a 79-58 victory.
The Bears weathered the impending storm early, leading 16-15 with 10:12 remaining in the half. But their anxiousness surfaced, their shot selection deteriorated and Arizona ran away, leading by 10 at halftime and increasing their lead from there.
“Marcus takes a jump shot and Don takes an ill-advised shot,” coach Wyking Jones said. “We could have had better shots, and that lead to them going up by 10 at the half.”
Starting the second half, the Bears couldn’t summon a rally. Playing without starting guard Rawle Atkins, Arizona (15-4, 5-1) coughed the ball up early, but they eventually started making shots.
“Cal’s zone is very extended,” Arizona coach Sean Miller said. “You watch it on film, I think it’s one of those defenses sometimes players have to get into a rhythm and understand and get a sense of how to move the ball against it. … Once we got through that stretch, no doubt turnovers plagued us throughout but we also had some good moments.”
Individually, the Bears had their hands full with 7’0″ Deandre Ayton. The freshman phenom is freakish in his ability to dominate in the paint, but also step away and make jump shots. Ayton led the Cats with 20 points, 11 rebounds, but his 9 for 11 shooting was merely the headliner for the Cats’ 62 percent shooting for the game that masked any other deficiencies they displayed on the stat sheet.
With Cal’s zone defense confounding Arizona only for the opening minutes of the game when they forced six turnovers, the Bears needed to capitalize with some offense. But a 1-for-10 shooting drought followed their final lead at 16-15 and their shooting didn’t get any better after halftime.
Justice Sueing led Cal with 19 points, but missed all six of his 3-point attempts. Don Coleman and Darius McNeill combined to scored 14 points, but they missed 14 of their 18 shot attempts.
Marcus Lee didn’t succumb to foul trouble and played 31 minutes, but couldn’t impact the scoresheet with only four points and two rebounds. Kingsley Okoroh scored 10 points but struggled to contain Arizona’s Dusan Ristic when the two were matched up in the paint, and Ayton when he stepped outside.
After five, consecutive losses, and at least one double-digit deficit in all six of their Pac-12 contests, the Bears are searching for at least one, confident player. Right now, it’s not apparent that they have one.
“We can’t get our backs up against the wall,” Sueing said. “We have to continue to move forward and keep pushing because we know how good we can be. We haven’t shown it thus far but we have to keep pushing so we can catch that break soon.”
Cal (7-12, 1-5) returns to the hardwood on Saturday night to face Arizona State at 730pm.
