Tag: Lulu Twidale

By Morris Phillips

If the Notre Dame Fighting Irish have another gear, the Cal women don’t want to see it.

As it was, the Bears found themselves as unwilling passengers in a vehicle speeding east on Interstate 90 in Northern Indiana, barely hinged with their seat belts unfastened. The ride wasn’t comfortable or in anyway enjoyable.

For Notre Dame, the same experience could be described as cruise control. The Irish walloped Cal, 91-52 in winning their 16th straight game, just another statement in their quest to be ACC Champions and Final Four participants this season.

Regardless of the outcome, the largest margin of victory by Notre Dame over another ranked team since 1999, Coach Charmin Smith made it clear that her team must embrace what they experienced.

“Notre Dame is a really good team, and we had moments in which we were able to do to play at that level and to contain them and keep them off the boards and do a better job of taking care of the ball,” Smith said. “And then it wasn’t something that we could sustain for 40 minutes. So that’s our process, working on being at an elite level for 40 minutes. Obviously, you’ve got household names and first round WNBA draft picks on that team, and I’m proud of how we stayed with it, and we were still fighting in the fourth quarter.”

Smith’s Bears (19-6, 7-5) found the pace unsettling, as they committed 21 turnovers, shot just 32 percent from the floor and missed 20 3-point attempts. Cal trailed by 21 points at the half, and by 37 points after a particularly lopsided third quarter.

Throughout, Notre Dame’s ball and player movement at the offensive end was constant and flawless, as potential WNBA guards Olivia Miles and Hannah Hildalgo took turns getting to the basket or finding cutting teammates for layups. For the game, Notre Dame shot 55 percent from the floor, and 50 percent from three.

“Offensively, I think we’re growing and getting better spacing,” coach Niele Ivey said. “I thought we did a great job. We had 46 points in the paint, and we had 20 assists.”

Cal still has a hefty NCAA Tournament resume, but their seeding will undoubtedly take a hit just because of uncompetitive losses at Duke by 34 points, and by 39 points on Sunday afternoon. The remainder of their announced schedule is kind, and it’s critical that Cal take advantage of all six opportunities to boost their win total.

The Bears were led by a trio of starters that scored in double figures topped by Lulu Twidale with 14 points. Michelle Onyiah and Marta Suarez scored 10 points each with Suarez also grabbing eight rebounds.

The Bears return home on Thursday to face Boston College at Haas Pavilion.

By Morris Phillips

BERKELEY, CA–Now 18 games into a magical season, the Cal Bears are settling in, refining their methods, and embracing the responsibility of publicly voicing their goals.

Beating talented Florida State 82-70–after leading by as much as 34 points–made for a big statement, as did the bigger challenge of limiting Ta’Niya Latson, the nation’s leading scorer. Cal accomplished both by winning their third straight conference game and holding Latson to 13, more than 14 points below her average.

“Our goal is to make the NCAA Tournament, and that means we have to beat some ranked opponents, got to protect the home court, and were doing that,” coach Charmin Smith declared. “The growth for us is making sure that we don’t have any letdowns. We understand there is a target on our back now.”

Right now, Golden Bears’ opponents are struggling to locate a moving target, a metaphor embodied by Cal’s five starters and their balanced offensive attack that is highlighted by superior 3-point shooting. Cal buried seven threes in Sunday’s first half, and those makes were a major reason Cal built an insurmountable 50-25 halftime lead.

“They’re a really good basketball team,” coach Brooke Wyckoff said. “They play well at home, and we let them get out to a hot start, which is what you can’t do against this team. They’re really confident right now.”

Wyckoff explained that Latson’s struggles came from Cal committing several players to keep tabs on her and not letting the Seminoles get their running game unleashed. That last part is simply a battle of wills. If Florida State wanted to run, Cal’s objective was to make shots in part to slow the Seminoles in transition. Mission accomplished as FSU missed 23 of their first 31 shots from the floor, a product of Cal’s early success.

In all 18 games thus far, the Bears have shot the ball terrifically. Their shortcomings have centered around turnovers and defensive lapses. But increasingly, the team has limited its issues in those areas and seen its stock grow. In their next five games, Cal will see its two most prominent opponents in Duke and No. 3 Notre Dame, both on the road. Picked 14th in the ACC pre-season poll, the Bears didn’t figure to impact either team. Now, they might be ready for both, despite both contests being on the road.

“This year, the biggest difference that I see is we’re finishing games. We had some leads against really good teams last year, and we let them slip away. And this year, we’re able to get the wins.”

By Morris Phillips

BERKELEY, CA–Telling the whole damn world, this is Bear Territory, isn’t easy. In fact, it’s hard work, and you better mean it when you say it.

Coach Charmin Smith said it Friday night, and it meant something.

After 12 consecutive losses to Stanford and 31 losses in the last 35 meetings spanning more than a decade, something needed to be said, and more importantly, something needed to be done. Again, Smith demanded, and her Bears delivered an 83-63 win, the first for Smith over the school she attended.

“I’d be lying if I tried to downplay it… I don’t care. I’m happy we beat Stanford, and I’m going to act like it,” Smith declared.

Smith, who has been an assistant coach and now head coach at Cal over a period spanning 18 years, hasn’t enjoyed any success competing against Stanford. She was 0-11 against legendary Tara VanDerveer with a number of those defeats by lopsided margins. Friday, coaching against former teammate Kate Paye, Smith, and her team broke through, winning by 20 for the first time since February 1982.

This time, it wasn’t close, and it wasn’t competitive after halftime.

The Bears survived a cold-shooting first half by both teams with a 33-24 lead. But they caught fire in the third, burying eight 3-pointers to expand their lead to 23. The school record for made threes came crashing down in the fourth quarter as Cal finished with 18.

Lulu Twidale and Ioanna Krimili both scored 20 points, and Marta Suarez was one better with 21. Suarez capped off the third quarter with a buzzer-beating three that extended Cal’s lead to 63-40.

“The rim got real big for them,” Paye said.

“I think they flat-out wanted it more. We were out-coached, I thought we were outplayed. You saw a Cal team that was highly motivated, and they played extremely hard. They rebounded the ball well. They were very aggressive on defense.”

Nunu Agara, Stanford’s leading scorer, missed eight of her 12 shots from the floor and finished with 13. Brooke Demetre led Stanford with 18. The Cardinal were 14 of 43 shooing through the first three quarters.

The first-ever ACC conference game for both teams portended a new reality between the two rivals, now in the absence of VanDerveer, who coached Stanford since 1986. The Bears have improved immensely while Stanford is starting over. Both teams came in just outside the national Top 25 among the highest vote getters. Now Cal, riding an impressive 10-1 start to the season, should enter the polls on Monday if they can continue winning against Austin Peay on Sunday.

By Morris Phillips

BERKELEY, CA–Coach Charmin Smith needs her Cal team to clean up their ball handling and cut down on the turnovers. But on Wednesday, Smith scheduled Grambling, a conundrum disguised as a basketball team that lives and breathes by forcing their opponents to cough up the ball.

The result: an 86-63 win for the hosts, but the Bears committed 26 turnovers, which set off alarms inside Haas Pavilion.

“We have to take better care of the ball,” Smith admitted. “We know that. We’re living dangerously right now. We have to clean it up.”

The Bears are 5-0 with a signature win at Gonzaga. As a testament to how well they’ve played overall, the Bears have spent every second of their five second halves so far with at least a 10-point lead. That’s noticeable and impressive enough to capture ESPN Bracketology’s attention, which projects the Bears as an NCAA qualifier as a No. 11 seed.

Of course, the season is young, and bigger tests are on the immediate horizon, starting with Auburn’s visit to Berkeley on Friday night. Following Auburn, the Bears  will see Michigan State and either Arizona or Vanderbilt in Palm Springs. All three schools are also projected as NCAA teams, meaning the jockeying for postseason position starts now.

What Smith liked was just as apparent as the unsightly turnovers: a five-minute stretch in the third quarter in which Cal made eight 3-pointers. That ballooned Cal’s 13-point lead to a 67-41 advantage that effectively ended the visiting Tigers upset aspirations.

Lulu Twidale led Cal with 19 points, a total boosted by her efficient 4 for 7 shooting from distance. Marta Suarez added 16, Ioanna Krimili had 15, and freshman post Gabrielle Abigor scored 11 on 4 for 4 shooting.

Kahia Warmsley led Grambling with 16 points, and Douthshine Prien and Lydia Freeman had 10 each. The Tigers were the SWAC regular season champions last season, winning 23 games. Coach Courtney Simmons concedes that her group, with 10 new faces this season, doesn’t shoot it well, but they do commit to a tremendous amount of defensive activity across all 94 feet, which explains how they succeed in the SWAC. But against Cal, the disparity in made threes (12-1 for Cal) and 32 percent shooting for the Tigers made for a lopsided result.

“If you research and do your homework on this, we probably shot 30 something percent last year and won 23 games,” Simmons said. “The key to the way we play is to rebound the basketball. In this system, there’s no such thing as a bad shot. We don’t go out and recruit kids that can only shoot the basketball. I recruit athletes to give the kids that can shoot the ball a little bit of problems.”

Simmons, intently dissecting the numbers with a scoresheet in hand, conceded that her Tigers fell short of 30 offensive rebounds, their average which leads the nation. Grambling managed “just” 19 o-boards, which wasn’t enough to compensate for their poor shooting.

“It’s the discipline factor. It’s not finding the shooters in transition, which was the same thing that happened to us at Tulane (in their previous game),” she said.

Auburn, a physical, defensive-minded group as well, arrives on Friday in a rematch of last season’s meeting in Alabama that went to Cal, 67-53 with Suarez scoring 27 points.