By Morris Phillips
SAN FRANCISCO–Trailing 8-0 and scoreless for nearly four minutes to start, the Cal Bears were in desperate need for some continuity against No. 18 UCLA on Tuesday night for the Empire Classic championship game at the Chase Center.
Unfortunately, continuity was hard to find for both teams, each looking for a big win but flailing against a familiar opponent.
Cal did what it could, piecing together some competent individual play that fit almost seamlessly and put the Bruins on their heels.
Chris Bell seized momentum first with a series of made threes on his way to a game-best 22 points. That burst gave Cal a 20-12 lead that minutes earlier seemed unlikely.
Bench players Rytis Petraitis, TT Carr and DeJuan Campbell, in his season debut, picked it up from Bell, and helped Cal survive UCLA’s best stretch of the evening leading to halftime. The trio combined for 14 points, almost all off aggressive play to the basket, and that helped keep Cal in reach, down 41-36 at the break.
Bell and leading scorer Dai Dai Ames controlled the second half with Ames scoring all of his 14 points as Cal pulled away for an 80-72 win that ended a streak of 12 Cal losses in 13 games to their former Pac-12 rival.
Afterwards, Cal’s announcers lauded reserve post Milos Ilic, Bell highlighted Justin Pippen (13 points), and Coach Mark Madsen pointed to Campbell. A love fest prompted by the first big win of the season?
You bet.
“Every single player stepped up,” Madsen said.
“We have a bunch of guys that make us dynamic on offense,” said Bell, who scored at least 21 points for the third time in his first seven games as a Bear after transferring from Syracuse.
The Bruins fell to 5-2 with a four-point loss to No. 2 Arizona as their only other blemish. But something greater seems amiss in Westwood as coach Mick Cronin again expressed his frustration with his team, which he feels isn’t competitive enough or defensive-oriented as he would prefer.
“Our team attitude was terrible. It’s been a problem for a month,” Cronin said. “It affects performance. You get in a ring against somebody that wants to fight, you give them confidence early, you’re in for a fight aside from the fact that we can’t make a free throw.”
The Bruins missed 10 of their 23 free throw attempts, shot just 41 percent from the floor, and allowed Cal 20 more points than their average of 60 allowed coming in.
Donovan Dent, thought to be UCLA’s brilliant pickup in the transfer portal from New Mexico, struggled again shooting 1 for 7 and committing seven turnovers. Cronin, already verbal regarding his teams’ performance, may have added a little extra for Dent, who in today’s game is also a highly-compensated “amateur” acquisition.
“Until we get some leadership on our team at the guard position, it would help, and not panic with the ball,” said Cronin, thinly veiled. “Things don’t go well, we try to go one on five, get our shot blocked, get our fourth foul, we go one on five and get six, seven turnovers.”
The Bears have a few days of Thanksgiving and recuperation before hosting Utah on Tuesday.
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