Women's Basketball: Fourth-Quarter Surge Pushes Cal Past Florida State

Lulu Twidale has another huge night as Cal keeps NCAA hopes alive

photo via @calwbball twitter

Sometimes basketball games are complicated. Strategic chess matches, as coaches search for edges and mismatches and tactics ebb and flow with game state.

Sometimes basketball games are simple, because the best player on the floor takes over.

With a minute left in the 3rd quarter, Cal trailed by six points. The Bears would score 28 points the rest of the way. Every single field goal from that point forward was either scored or assisted by Lulu Twidale. She scored 20 of Cal’s 28 points the rest of the way, and that six point deficit turned into a 75-62 win.

Before that surge, Twidale was having a good but not necessarily remarkable game - 10 points, 5 assists. But she took over across the final 11 minutes, turning a back-and-forth contest into a comfortable win. You can enjoy a highlight reel of her entire night, but I have to call out the dagger 3 that basically sealed victory:

Lulu drives the baseline, but is cut off, retreats back out to the top of the key, finds that her guard hasn’t chased her hard enough, has an opening, and drains the unassisted three.

Look man, that’s a Steph Curry play. That’s the kind of thing most players aren’t even allowed to do without a coach yelling at you. But Twidale has rediscovered her shooting form in ACC play, and (correctly) has the green light to shoot.

Because the ACC all-conference team is 15 players, Twidale was probably already on the list before her late-season surge. But consider where she ranks in ACC-play-only basic stats:

• Minutes/game: 2nd (38.4)

• Points/game: 8th (16.0)

• Assists/game: 8th (4.5)

• Free throw%: 2nd (92.5%)

• Three pointers/game: 1st (3.1)

There just aren’t very many players who impact the game so broadly on the offensive end in the ACC. It’s basically Hannah Hidalgo, then Kimora Johnson (two players who will likely get attention for national All-American honors) and then Lulu Twidale. And she’s only been getting better across ACC play - over the last 10 games, she’s just short of 20 points/game while chipping in more than 5 assists/game.

In a game where Cal’s other scoring options didn’t have huge games, Cal needed their best player to step up, and she did in a massive way.

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Over the last few years, Cal fans (myself 100% included) have occasionally gripped about turnovers. It was Cal’s primary weakness last year, when the Bears had a ghastly turnover rate of 25%. That has improved a touch this year, to 22.8%, which is pretty close to the national average, but still is a relative weakness to Cal’s game.

But part of the reason that Cal turns the ball over a lot is because the Bears mostly refuse to take bad shots, and we saw an illustration of what that does in this game. Consider:

• Florida St. 2 point shots: 14-47

• Cal 2 point shots: 17-32

Despite attempting 15 fewer two pointers, Cal still made three more than FSU. Why?

Well, part of the story is better interior defense/finishing. But it’s also a question of shot selection. 25 of Cal’s 32 two point attempts were at the rim, and 7 were midrange shots. 25 of FSU’s two point attempts were at the rim . . . and 22 of them were midrange shots.

It’s absolutely true that a 15 foot jumper is a better end to a possession than a turnover. But it’s also true that a layup attempt or a 3 is a better end to a possession than a 15 foot jumper. Some of Cal’s interior pass attempts are frustrating when they’re deflected or stolen . . . but when they hit paydirt, the shots are high quality looks. In ACC play, Cal is 4th in 2 point shot percentage, and 3rd in 3 point shot percentage, all while getting to the line a lot. Not too shabby for a team that is very undersized after Sakima Walker.

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It’s worth pausing for a second to appreciate the view. With today’s win, Cal moves to 17-11, 8-7 in ACC play. I would not have expected Cal to be flirting with a 20 win season when the Bears fell to 10-9 in mid-January. It’s also worth appreciating a 2nd straight year of NCAA tournament contention after a four year stretch without any March excitement.

Meanwhile, Stanford lost by 15 points to Miami today, and are in the middle of a 1-8 stretch of basketball. With this loss, they fall three games behind Cal, meaning that the Bears have all but clinched a better conference record than Stanford for the 2nd year in a row, something that was virtually unthinkable at any point in the last 30 years.

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Next up for Cal is the same Miami team that just handed Stanford a loss that knocks the Cardinal even further off the bubble. The Bears are perhaps slight favorites in what is basically a toss up game. It's worth tuning in just to see two of the ACC’s better true centers match up when 6’5’’ Sakima Walker goes up against 6’6’’ Ra Shaya Kyle.

If Cal can win their toughest game left on the regular season schedule, they’ll head back for their final home stand with confidence that they can close out the ACC schedule without another loss to finish at 11-7 and clinch a bye to the 2nd round of the ACC tournament (and maybe rise as high as the 6 seed). Lose, and it’s probably the killing blow to any NCAA at-large hopes, while also risking the possibility that Cal could fall to the ACC 10-seed and have to play in the first round.

Sounds stressful. I vote that we put the ball in Lulu Twidale’s hands. That’s been working out pretty good for us lately.