Cal Basketball Report: Be Still, My Heart

I can’t decide if it’s an understatement or an overstatement to say “Winning on the road is hard, and Cal did just enough to win at Washington”. On one hand, Cal played mostly terrific defense, completely dominated an important stretch of the game in the middle of the second half, and had to overcome some truly unconscionable officiating (more on that in a minute) to beat a pretty solid team on their home court. On the other hand, Cal very, very nearly coughed up a double-digit lead in the closing minutes, went ice cold from the free throw line at the worst possible time, and committed 16 turnovers (several of them totally unforced and totally unacceptable).

To unpack this emotional roller coaster of a game, let’s take a page from Mr. Clint Eastwood.

The Good

Jaylen Brown - 23 points, 7/13 shooting, 8/10 free throws.

I have been infatuated with Ivan Rabb since the opening game of the season. And don’t get me wrong, Ivan has been great despite working through some obvious growing pains. But Jaylen Brown has taken over. He has taken over the team. He took over this game. He’s a man amongst boys. And if you didn’t see his two-handed jam in the second half, look it up. His elevation doesn’t make physical sense.

Tyrone Wallace and Jordan Mathews - 36 points combined.

Wallace continued to make poor decisions with his ball handling duties, and Mathews did not have his usual impact shooting from the perimeter. But both get credit for effectively driving to the hoop in the first half when Washington was seemingly blocking every shot in the paint and the game threatened to get out of hand. Without their early contributions, Cal probably isn’t even in position to blow a late lead.

The Bad

Pac-12 Referees - 56 total fouls called, general ineptitude

Look, you guys know how I feel about officials. They are human, and they are part of the game. All refs suck, and they are not an excuse for winning or losing. But this season has been a travesty of officiating, and this game was the cherry on top of the crap sundae. I won’t bother listing all the unthinkable calls they came up with, especially in the closing minutes of the game. But for its combination of jaw-droppingly bad timing and mind-numbingly bad reffing, the foul they called on Jabari Bird with 4 seconds left (with Cal up just 2) was an all-timer. It wasn’t a foul, and it sent a player to line who was 6/6 to that point, with a chance to tie. I can’t exlpain it adequately with words, and just thinking about it gives me heartburn. Just watch it. The basketball Gods made sure Washington missed the free throws, though. Justice prevailed.

Free throws under pressure - 9/19 from the line in the last 4 minutes, 5/12 in the last 60 seconds

After shooting 17/22 in the first 36 minutes, to boot. Simply unacceptable.

Jabari Bird - 2 points, 1/5 shooting, 18 minutes played.

It’s just upsetting that the reigning Pac-12 player of the week had no impact on the game, other than showing up in the box score as the guy who fouled with his team up by two with 4 seconds left. Jabari has to be better.

The Ugly

Cal’s stat line -  24/61 (39.3%) from the field, 4/15 (26.7%) from 3, 26/41 (63.4%) from the free throw line, 6 assists, 3 steals, 7 blocks, 16 turnovers, 29 fouls committed.

It’s ugly all around. Let’s start with the shooting percentages. The first two come in significantly below Cal’s season averages (as well as Washington’s defensive averages). And for a team that shoots free throws poorly to begin with (we are now 306th in free throw percentage on the year), we were STILL slightly worse than our average in this contest.

For this quick exercise, let’s be generous and round those numbers up a little. Let’s look at teams that shot 40%/30%/65% OR WORSE in a single game, but still managed to win. Out of the roughly 4,500 games that have been played this season in Div I, that has happened 81 times. So in 1.8% of games this year, a team shot as badly as Cal shot last night, and won.

Definitely unusual, but not crazy.

Let’s add in the fact that Cal also turned the ball over 16 times and committed a whopping 29 personal fouls. So 40/30/65 shooting + 16 turnovers + 29 fouls. And win the game. Before last night, in the last six years of NCAA Division I College Basketball, how many other teams do you think have won a game with a stat line that bad?

One. In ALL of NCAA Division I Men’s collegiate basketball. Since 2010. In a sense (and I will fully acknowledge that I am bending the statistics to fit my narrative) this was one of the two worst performances by a winning basketball team in the last six seasons (which is roughly 32,700 games).

That, my friends, is crazy.

So you can kind of understand my discontent, right? We won (and gosh did we need a road win), but we still played like road Cal. It just so happens that home Washington, on this occasion, was worse. I was hoping that this would be a glowing recap, touting Cal for finally turning the corner and blossoming into a true contender. But we’re still not there.

Now we head into a complete landmine game, at putrid Washington State. A win does little to bolster our position, while a loss of any kind is a horrendous black mark on our resume. A road sweep is nothing to sneeze at, but after a “glass-half-empty, glass-half-full” type of win, it appears we will return to Haas next week with lingering questions still to be answered. Can we play to our potential? Can we play at that level consistently? Can we do it against quality opponents, or on the road, or when the lights get bright, or when the refs try to screw us?

We’ll find out when we play at Arizona in two weeks, when all of the above will likely apply.

Go Bears.

Cal Basketball Report: The Return of Blakestradamus

Yawn. Just another dominating home win over a quality conference opponent. Snooze. Just a total deconstruction of RPI’s number 1 ranked team. I woke up this morning, and Cal Men’s Basketball is still undefeated at home. And the sky is still blue.

Let me begin by saying that I believe Oregon is the best, most complete team in the Pac12. I think they are going to go on to win the regular season championship and lock in a 3-4 seed in the NCAA Tournament. They already own wins over Baylor, USC, Cal, Colorado, Arizona and Utah (all within the top 32 in RPI). Not to mention, they beat those last two teams on the road. NOBODY in college basketball is winning on the road this year. While I wasn’t buying their #1 RPI ranking, I was buying their #11 ranking in the AP Poll. I’m basically trying to say that this was no slouch that walked into Haas Pavilion on Thursday night.

And Cal absolutely ran them out of the gym.

To illustrate our sturdy Golden Bear’s riveting 83-63 victory, here is a collection of correspondence I had in the lead up to, and during, the contest. And for those of you that don’t realize that I have been given a gift from beyond the beyond, this will be a special treat for you.

Following Cal’s horrible road trip to the mountain schools two weeks ago, I texted a buddy of mine who graduated from the University of Oregon. I expressed my frustration over Cal’s night-and-day difference when playing at home and on the road (I’m sure I’ve iterated this before, but Cal is now 15-0 at home, and 1-8 everywhere else. The disparity in their home vs. road stats is, unsurprisingly, vast). Then this happened:

Cal opened the game with perhaps the most energy I’ve seen from ANY Cal athletic program EVER, as evidenced by their 18-6 lead at the first media timeout. They shot 55.7% for the game. And the defense held Oregon 15 points below their scoring average, including a suffocating first half performance, allowing just 24 points. Two weeks ago, people. Please hold your applause.

Leading up the game, I also made this (only half-joking) prediction:

And this one:

Cal led by 21 with a minute remaining in the half. We didn’t quite get to that 24 point margin, but we weren’t that far off. And with 5 minutes left in the blowout, Cal was shooting EXACTLY 8/14 from 3, before eventually finishing a red hot 9/16.

Now you may applaud.

Other shout outs during the game:

Late in the first half - Comforting a Ducks Fan (but not really)

After Jabari Bird sank what felt like his 117th 3-pointer of the game

After Jabari Bird’s emphatic up-and-under reverse dunk in the closing minutes

If you haven’t figured it out yet, Jabari Bird was the MVP. He poured in 24 points (tying a career high) on 9/14 shooting. Perhaps more impressive though, was his defense. I don’t have stats to back it up, I don’t get THAT crazy. But he was hounding the Oregon wings whenever they touched the ball. His positioning was perfect. His close outs were perfect. He contested shots and stayed in front of drivers in the lane. Jabari has really flashed at times this year, which always prompts announcers to remind us how highly touted he was out of high school (and by association, what a disappointment his college career has been). I’m hoping he just needed time, and the right situation. Maybe the influx of primary talent will allow him to shine in a complementary role.

Other players of note:

Tyrone Wallace returned from injury, totally unbeknownst to me, by the way. He looked rusty in the first half, which is totally reasonable after missing a month with a broken hand. But in the second half, he looked like his old self - Viciously driving and spinning through the lane, dropping in shots off the glass or moving the ball to an open shooter. He also wound up with 8 rebounds… Which is a lot for a point guard with a broken hand. In any case, a very promising return for him.

Sam Singer had 11 assists. His court vision is top notch. His ball handling was great in this game as well. All he lacks at this juncture is consistency.

Jaylen Brown continues his “high usage, low efficiency” offensive run. 16 points, but on 7/16 shooting. There is still room for improvement when it comes to Brown incorporating into the offense, but as Bill Walton astutely pointed out (in between Glockenspiel solos), Cal’s best offense is Jaylen attacking the rim. Keep doing what you’re doing kid.

Ivan Rabb continues his “low usage, high efficiency” offensive run. 13 points, just on 6/7 shooting. He needs more touches. Period.

I’m not going to get into my usual curmudgeonly preaching about how we should take our wins with a grain of salt. Or about how Cal’s utter failures on the road are only made more infuriating by their exceptional performances at home. Trust me, I do have those stats. I’ll share them at a later date. Let’s just revel in what was a fantastic and integral victory. Our team is getting healthy at the right, and we may be about to turn the corner we’ve been stuck at all year.

Cal Basketball Report: Road Woes Continue

I don’t really want to talk about the Colorado game. I think it was one of the three worst Cal basketball games I’ve ever seen. You only need to know two things:

1) Colorado opened the game by shooting 1/19 from the floor, scoring 3 points in the first 9½ minutes.

2) Colorado led 37-23 at halftime.

You did not read those wrong. I did not switch up the teams. There are no typos.

Instead, I want to talk about the bigger picture. That metaphorical forest I keep bringing up. We are halfway through conference play, and Cal has been mediocre in every measurable stat. At a certain point, we get too deep into a season to expect wholesale changes. So we pose the eternal Cal basketball question: What is wrong with this team? Let me count the ways.

This team cannot win on the road

One overtime win against a terrible Wyoming team notwithstanding, Cal cannot win road games. It’s difficult to nail down exactly what the problem is. In one game, it’s poor shooting (0/12 from 3 against Oregon). In another game, it’s foul trouble (sending Stanford to the line 38 times). And in yet another game, it’s turnovers (16 of them against Oregon State). They just completed a complete mess of a road swing, losing miserably to Utah and Colorado (two teams they handled EASILY at home just weeks ago).

I can’t shake the thought that it’s simply a mental issue for this young team; that they can’t / won’t / don’t know how to get prepared to play a full 40 minutes in someone else’s arena. I heard someone on ESPN say “Freshmen don’t travel” while explaining Cal’s woes. It’s an insultingly simple bit of analysis, but I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t dead on.

The coaching leaves something to be desired

In two short years, Cuonzo Martin has already proven that he is a recruiting wizard. He seems to have a great rapport with his players, and it certainly appears that his guys like playing for him. He just might not be a great in-game manager. I honestly don’t think he knows what to do with his offense right now. He didn’t successfully recruit a point guard, and now he can’t rely on the injured Ty Wallace to create out of nothing. So the offense bogs down for long stretches. I can tell it’s bad on offense because every possession feels SO DIFFICULT. We can still get the ball in the basket, but it never seems to come easy (while Utah and Colorado are dropping in layups over and over).

And on the other side of the coin, his defense goes through similar lapses. Often, they happen due to foul trouble (which is partially out of Martin’s control). But other times, it just seems like we are a little off switching offensive players, a little late rotating to help in the post, a little too far away from the sharp shooter who just drained his last shot and would like nothing more than an open look from deep. When Martin preaches a defense-first approach and basically eschews spending meaningful effort game planning for the offense, these lapses are unacceptable. The defense is the fail-safe for when the offense struggles. But when the defense fails too, we get 23-4 game-deciding runs from the opposition.

It’s unrealistic to expect a powerhouse offense or a lock down defense 100% of the time - especially with our current collection of players. But you can expect adjustments and new schemes that fit the abilities of our players, as opposed to the other way around. And I don’t think those things are happening.

Failures in the “extraneous” statistics

Depending on which metrics you look at, Cal’s offensive output has been anywhere between Acceptable and Above Average. They play at a slow tempo, and don’t score an eye-popping amount of points because of it. But they shoot pretty well from the floor and grab a significant amount of offensive rebounds. Similarly with the defensive metrics, Cal has been a borderline ELITE unit on defense, despite their ups and downs. Teams shoot just 38.8% against Cal (good for 17th in the nation) with good rebounding numbers to be found here as well. So how is it that a squad with a (statistically) pretty good offense and a (statistically) really good defense has 8 losses and sits towards the bottom of the standings with a 4-5 conference record?

Unfortunately, shooting percentages and rebounding aren’t the only statistics that matter. When it comes to some of the other, less sexy statistics - let’s call them “extraneous” - Cal doesn’t fare so well. The first main culprit is free throw shooting. 67.1%. No way to sugar coat it, that’s awful. That mark places them at 255th nationally, right in the company of teams like Cal Poly, Hawaii, Oregon State, and … UTRGV? The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley?? Welcome to Division I, Vaqueros. One of their 6 wins this year was against “Our Lady of the Lake”. This is a team that shoots free throws as well as we do. Just think about that.

The other major factor is turnovers. Not only do we produce turnovers at a below average rate (12.5 per game - 155th), we are one of the absolute worst teams at forcing turnovers as well. We force just 9.7 turnovers per game, 341st in Division I. In case you were wondering, Division I Men’s Basketball has 346 teams. By the basic laws of mathematics, our turnover margin is also one of the 20 worst in the country, at -2.8 per game.

When you add all the factors up, that eternal question loses some of it’s mystery. This is a team without a point guard, who turns the ball over way too much and can’t generate them at all on defense. A team that shoots free throws about as well as a team I have honestly never heard of before and didn’t believe was actually a Div I team until I checked three different sources. A team that relies heavily on unpredictable young players and a coach that doesn’t quite have a grasp on his offense’s identity. Now put that team in a hostile environment against the deepest conference the pacific has seen in years.

It kind of makes you wonder how we win games at all, huh?

Is it better to struggle with turnovers and free throws than it is to struggle with shooting and defense? Probably. At least you can fool yourself into thinking those things are flukey, or could be corrected.  But it’s also supremely frustrating. I still believe this team should be good, but it just never gets there. Look no further than that for insultingly stupid analysis. This team SHOULD be good.

But it’s not.