Tag: Grant Anticevich

No Shot: Bears’ offense disappears in lopsided Pac-12 opening loss at Stanford

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By Morris Phillips

STANFORD, CA–The Stanford Cardinal aren’t physically imposing, blessed with great depth, foot speed or rebounding acumen, but they consistently carry themselves as a formidable defensive team.

So far–with non-conference play complete and the Pac-12 schedule in front of them–their portrayal of themselves holds weight. Stanford ranks 13th (out of 350) nationally, allowing just 58.8 points per game, while forcing opponents into 39 percent shooting from the floor.

On Thursday night at Maples Pavilion against rival Cal, Stanford posted even better numbers in their conference-opening 68-52 drubbing of the visiting Bears. Beyond the points allowed and Cal’s 30 percent shooting for the game, Stanford forced 18 turnovers leaving Cal literally in shambles.

“Our team has had an epidemic of turnovers throughout the year,” said coach Mark Fox. “It wasn’t just tonight, and that’s taking nothing away from Stanford, which has a very good defense. We have to get it fixed.”

Cal started fast, seeing results from their pressure defenses that propelled them to an early 7-2 lead. But as quickly as things came together, they fell apart, as Stanford responded with an 11-0 run and never trailed again.

Daejon Davis led Stanford with 20 points, Tyrell Terry added 14, and Bryce Wills 10, as the Cardinal carried through on their intention to attack the Bears in the paint. An early timeout seemed to get the Cardinal refocused.

“We were literally jacking 3’s and not being aggressive going to the basket,” Davis said.

For the second straight game Cal held the edge on the glass, outrebounding Stanford 41-30, but it mattered little once the Bears’ shots weren’t falling. Leading scorers Matt Bradley and Kareem South fared the worst, missing 18 of their combined 24 shots.

“That’s tough for our team to overcome because we just don’t have a lot of other firepower around (Bradley and South),” Fox said.

The Bears have lost 8 of 10 following their 4-0 start, and have yet to win away from Haas Pavilion. What’s worse was the Bears’ paltry point total. They’ve now matched their season-low in points (52) not once, but twice, also in losses to Santa Clara and Duke.

Cal hosts their Pac-12 home opener on Thursday against Washington State with Washington visiting Berkeley on Saturday.

 

 

 

Winter Break Tutorial: Harvard schools Cal on the finer defensive points at Haas, wins 71-63

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By Morris Phillips

BERKELEY, CA–Harvard visited Haas Pavilion on Sunday. It wasn’t supposed to be the educational experience for the Bears it turned out to be.

Chris Lewis scored 19 points, Christian Juzang had 14 as the Crimson compensated for the absence of leading scorer Bryce Aiken with a strong defensive effort in beating the Cal Bears, 71-63.

Harvard held Cal to 37 percent shooting in the first half, 35 percent for the game and never trailed. The visitors from the Ivy League led by 15 at one point in the second half and were never really threatened. Cal’s one statistical advantage–a 13-3 edge on the offensive glass–was merely a mirage. Often Cal missed shots, rebounded and missed again.

Tommy Amaker, the former Duke star and Harvard’s head coach, loved what he saw from his team defensively.

“Our defense is our calling card for our program,” Amaker said. “We’ve built our program around our defense. Our guys give great effort. We play a lot of players so we should be pretty fresh out there. I would love for us to be able to do that on one end and be a little more efficient on the other end. That’s the goal. But certainly was pleased with the team defensive effort that we gave.”

If losing as a Power 5 to an Ivy League opponent wasn’t disconcerting enough, the Crimson did it in a very un-Ivy League manner. They blocked shots. Harvard turned back 11 Cal shots, seven by their starting posts, 6’8″ Mason Forbes and the 6’9″ Lewis.

Aiken, averaging a team-leading 16.7 ppg, was in a walking boot before the game. Amaker didn’t divulge many details regarding his injury, but he was a surprise scratch. Cal was unaware of Aiken’s unavailability until the opening tap.

The Bears have lost seven of nine after a 4-0 start, and now look to their Pac-12 opener at Stanford on Thursday with the conference’s only losing record (6-7) at this juncture. Eight of the 12 members have lost either twice or three times, including Stanford (11-2). Cal is trying to avoid a third, consecutive season in the Pac-12’s basement.

Defense has been a major issue with the Bears, and it was again Sunday. Harvard shot 57 percent before halftime to jump to 34-24 lead at the break. The offense was absence as mentioned, especially from leading scorer Matt Bradley, who missed 10 of his 14 shots, including all six of 3-point attempts.

“We don’t have a ton of guys who are consistent scorers and so the focus of the defense is going to be geared towards certainly Matt. And he’s going to have to really work to move without the ball, and learn to be more efficient,” head coach Mark Fox explained.

“He’s learning how to play the role of a lead role player, and he’s having to do that on the fly. And there’s a lot that comes with that.”

Bradley led Cal with 15 points. Kareem South added 13, and Grant Anticevich had 12.

Harvard cut Cal off at the point of attack as well. Starting point guard Paris Austin and his backup Joel Brown were a combined 2 of 12 shooting, and compiled just five assists.

Cal opens Pac-12 play with three of their first five on the road with a trip to Los Angeles following a homestand against the Washington schools. Given the Bears’ desire to jump out of the conference basement, their conference home opener against the WSU Cougars is an opportunity not to be missed.

Why? When you’re struggling, you don’t run across too many, beatable opponents. That’s Cal’s reality at the moment.

 

What’s New? Gaels are good, Bears are work in progress in St. Mary’s 89-77 win

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By Morris Phillips

BERKELEY, Calif. — Aggressiveness, experience and nerve–the Saint Mary’s Gaels brought so much of those elements through the Caldecott Tunnel on Saturday night, they probably needed two team buses to transport it all.

The Cal Bears were left to experience all three, to their detriment in a 89-77 loss. In a December filled with hard lessons, the Bears fell to 6-5 with all five losses by double digits, this one the first of the five at Haas Pavilion.

St. Mary’s–on the cusp of the nation’s Top 25 with a 10-2 record, but coming off a loss to notable mid-major Dayton–shot 54 percent for the game and led by 19 at one point. The Gaels hurt the Bears from distance, hitting nine 3-pointers in the first half, and 10 of 15 for the game. Leaving shooters open has been an issue for the Bears in their streak of five losses in their previous six games, and that didn’t dissipate against the Gaels, who lead the nation in 3-point shooting percentage at better than 44 percent.

“I felt like we got off to a very good start and then we let some offensive struggles impact our defense in the last half of the first half against a very good offensive team and we obviously can’t do that,” coach Mark Fox said. “Saint Mary’s shot the ball extremely well as we knew they would and we didn’t do the job defensively to slow them down.”

The game featured a trio of outstanding, individual performances starting with St. Mary’s senior forward Malik Fitts, who scored 21 of his 28 points before halftime. With the Bears deploying Juhwan Harris-Dyson on Fitts in the second half, his scoring slowed, but Jordan Ford’s surged. The St. Mary’s guard scored 25 of his 32 points after halftime, including a three with 4:32 remaining that re-established the Gaels’ double-digit lead, 75-64.

“It’s kind of a pick-your-poison type of deal. One of us is probably going to have a good game, hopefully both of us,” Ford said of Fitts’ performance and his own.

Andre Kelly put up a career-high 26 points for Cal, 20 of those after halftime as the Bears found a way fight back offensively, if not defensively. Kelly had success against St. Mary’s bigger post players, Mathias Tass and Aaron Menzies, so much so that coach Randy Bennett elected to go with reserve Dan Fotu for a long stretch. But with the game in the latter stages, Kelly got the ball in the post and was tied up by Tass with the held ball situation giving the ball back to the Gaels. That prevented the Bears from reducing a 70-60 deficit with 6:01 remaining.

The series between the neighboring schools separated by 11 miles and the East Bay hills concluded for now after games in each of the last three seasons. St. Mary’s captured all three–by double digits–but Bennett concurred that the Bears were much improved over the last two seasons in his comments after the game.

When pressed, both coaches had interesting takes on what it would take to continue the series in the future.

“We would like to protect some of these Bay Area games, but I can’t protect them all,” Fox said, citing the Pac-12’s increasing league games from 18 to 20 starting next season, which takes two non-conference games away. “That’s mathematically going to be impossible if we still want to play other people and grow our program.”

“I think it’s a game that if they’re good and we’re good, it makes sense,” Bennett said. “If either one of us aren’t good, it probably doesn’t make sense.

The WCC agreed to reduce the number of their conference games from 18 to 16 for their 10 members, which in part is how Cal managed to see all three Bay Area members–USF, St. Mary’s and Santa Clara–in the previous, two weeks. Bennett, who has seen a soft strength of schedule prevent two of his previous teams from making NCAA tournament appearances, loves the new arrangement. In the first year of the increase in non-conference opportunities, the long time Gaels’ coach has scheduled Dayton, Utah State, Wisconsin and Arizona State, all opponents that will catch the eye of the tournament selection committee.

The Bears resume their schedule on Saturday at the Chase Center in San Francisco against ACC opponent Boston College. That game is part of a quadruple header that will feature Stanford and St. Mary’s as well.

Sloppy Bears slip past Prairie View A&M 54-50, stay unbeaten

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By Morris Phillips

BERKELEY, CA–The Cal Bears committed more turnovers (22) than they scored points after halftime (19) on Monday against Prairie View A&M.

That won’t cut it on Thursday when the Bears step into Madison Square Garden and face Duke.

“I thought we were poorly coached today, I thought we played poorly, and two wrongs make a wrong,” coach Mark Fox admitted. “We were fortunate to escape with a win but we have to play better basketball than we played today.”

Definitely, a learning experience for the youthful Bears. But they didn’t get their lessons in a loss. Grant Anticevich hit a big 3-pointer with 2:40 remaining, and Matt Bradley scored half of his team-best 16 points in crunch time, and somehow the Bears held on, winning 54-50.

“Nothing was going our way offensively or defensively. But we stuck it out and ended up winning,” Bradley said. “We’re 4-0 right now– I’m happy to say that.”

The Panthers qualified for the NCAA tournament in 2018-19 and are the coach’s pick to repeat as SWAC champions this season. On Monday, they took the floor without Devonte Patterson, the presumptive SWAC Player of the Year, and still gave Cal fits.

“There were times we didn’t match their intensity, which was a problem. We should’ve grabbed more rebounds, but give credit to them– they played hard.”

The biggest difference between Cal’s first three wins, and the victory over Prairie View was at the offensive end. The Bears shot a cumulative 56 percent versus Pepperdine, UNLV and Cal Baptist. On Monday, against the physical Panthers, the Bears shot 39 percent and managed just eight assists on 17 made baskets. For long stretches, the ball didn’t move and the Bears settled for jump shots.

“Hopefully some days you can win because you make jump shots but that’s not the only thing that matters in the game and I felt like we had a little bit of an immature approach offensively and our decisions with the basketball,” Fox said. “We were not very good today.”

Down 52-50 in the final moments, Prairie View had a couple of chances to tie or take the lead but couldn’t convert. Chancellor Ellis missed a 3-pointer then with eight seconds remaining, Dejuan Madden was whistled for an offensive foul.

Anticevich had 13 points, six rebounds as the only Bear other than Bradley to score in double figures. Kuany Kuany, a slender 6’9″ freshman, made his Cal debut, but overall, the Cal bench did very little, as six reserves combined to miss 15 of their 18 shots.

Ellis and Faite Williams led the Panthers with 12 points apiece.

 

Anticevich’s the name, 3-point buckets the game in Cal’s 82-62 win over California Baptist

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By Morris Phillips

BERKELEY, Calif. — An all-time high of 354 institutions are competing in Division I basketball this season, and California Baptist from Riverside is starting a second season at the college game’s highest level.

But let’s be honest: Nobody at Haas Pavilion knew much about the Lancers, who are competing in the Western Athletic Conference against the likes of Grand Canyon and UT Rio Grande Valley, before Friday night.

For that matter, they didn’t know much about Grant Anticevich, who had made just 11 3-pointers in his first two seasons as a Golden Bear.

Well, both Anticevich and the CBU Lancers have a little bit more notoriety now.

California Baptist earned a bit of respect by being tied at the half, and leading Cal briefly in the second half. Anticevich was noticeable much earlier, scoring 16 of his career-best 23 points in the first half. New coach Mark Fox’s clean slate appears to have provided Anticevich with an opportunity, and the 6’9″ junior is taking advantage.

“I didn’t judge any of these kids off the previous year,” said Fox, who has stated on a couple of occasions that he has 17 new players on his roster. “I haven’t looked at tape. I didn’t look at the stat sheet. I gave them all a fresh start and from day one we thought, ‘Grant’s a really good three-point shooter.’ So we built that into what we are doing because he has shot it well since we arrived, and obviously tonight he got hot.”

Anticevich was 5 for 5 from distance, keying the Bears 82-62 win that moves them to 3-0 for the first time since 2015. But he wasn’t the only hot shooter for Cal, the team shot 57 percent from the field and 54 percent from three. Matt Bradley contributed 16 points, and Kareem South 10.

Anticevich and Andre Kelly keyed Cal’s 17-0 run that put them up 68-48 with 9:36 remaining.

“I feel like offensively we changed and also our intensity,” Bradley said. “We picked it up a lot in the second half. We denied 3-point shots and we just manned up and guarded our man.”

CBU was led by Ferron Flavors Jr. with 11 points, Milan Acquaah had 10. Acquaah, the pre-season pick for WAC Player of the Year, and a transfer from Washington State missed 13 of his 16 shots from the field.

The Bears continue play in the 2K Empire Classic on Moday with Prairie View A&M visiting Haas Pavilion. The Bears then travel to Madison Square Garden for Thursday’s game against Duke.

Sueing Doing Work: Cal’s leading, returning scorer breaks out in 89-83 win over SDSU

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By Morris Phillips

BERKELEY–The biggest mystery surrounding Cal basketball through seven games was the struggles of Justice Sueing, the team’s leading, returning scorer who hadn’t looked comfortable or been as productive as he was in his breakout, freshman campaign.

Under the bright lights of a tense, tight ballgame versus San Diego State on Saturday night, Sueing provided answers to the questions. The sophomore from Hawaii poured in a game-high 23 points, including a lead-changing 3-pointer with 1:43 remaining as the Bears forced their way past the Aztecs, 89-83.

The win followed Cal’s empty effort in a 19-point home loss to USF on Wednesday, and was every bit of the momentum-gathering, confidence-builder the team needed after a 2-5 start to the season. With rarely-used Grant Anticevich and Connor Vanover thrust into important roles, and point guard Paris Austin playing more efficiently, Sueing’s offensive breakout felt like Cal’s biggest development.

“I’ve been hesitating a little bit too much and not play with a free mind. I came into this game knowing what I was going to do, knowing how I was going to play it,” Sueing said.

Sueing shot 35 percent from the floor in the season’s first seven games (24 of 68), numbers more akin to getting benched, then leading an ascending club offensively. At times, Sueing’s shooting stroke looked disjointed, at other times, the 6’7″ forward barely registered as his less experienced teammates tried to find their offensive rhythm.

Either way, Sueing’s absence on the offensive end of the floor was a recipe for disaster as a young Cal squad grasped for scoring in all five of its losses. Then on Saturday, against a familiar non-conference opponent, the Bears battled for 35 minutes, only to find themselves trailing 76-68, their biggest deficit of the evening.

And that’s when all the growth and confidence emerged almost of nowhere.

First, Darius McNeill hit a three, narrowing SDSU’s lead to six. Paris Austin followed with a three, and Sueing’s three inside two minutes gave Cal the lead.

Freshman Matt Bradley, who came off the bench in a lineup change that allowed Vanover to start, hit a 3-pointer that broke an 83-83 tie with 32 seconds remaining.

In the final seconds, SDSU’s Devin Watson committed a turnover and the Aztecs’ leading scorer Mike Mitchell missed 3-pointer. Meanwhile, the Bears supplemented their four made threes with 7 of 8 from the free throw line in their final push.

“We were just trusting each other I think,” Sueing recounted of the final minutes. “Matt had a huge shot at the end and we all trust him. He’s one of the best 3-point shooters in the country. All of us just trusting each other, feeding off of each other.”