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.
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