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.
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