Bears fall flat in regular season finale

A flurry of turnovers and mental mistakes consign Cal to 80-58 defeat to Stanford

I got worried when Stanford started their senior reserves and jumped out to a 7 point lead anyway. Alarm bells started going off in my head when Cal turned the ball over on three straight possessions late in the first half. When Stanford opened the 2nd half on a 14-2 run that featured ANOTHER five Cal turnovers, I knew the game was over. Cal did not climb back into the game at any point, and Stanford’s lead would not fall below 17 points the rest of the way.

Honestly? I’m left scratching my head after this game. The story of the game is either Stanford shooting 12-24 from three, or Cal turning the ball over 17 times in 74 possessions. Stanford’s shooting maybe isn’t something that Cal had a lot of control over.

But the turnovers are utterly perplexing. Cal’s turnover rate of 23% was their highest in Pac-12 play by a fairly wide margin, and you have to go all the way back to November to find a few games where Cal had worse ball security performances. Those games were early in the season when Cal had a very different rotation thanks to injuries and lineup changes. And it’s not like Stanford is a team noted for forcing turnovers - their defensive turnover percentage is 289th in the country. Heck, BP wrote an article recently that discussed how a reduction in turnovers was a big driver in Cal’s improved play.

But against Stanford, for no discernable reason, Cal lost their hard-won ability to avoid coughing up the ball. There were bad passes, random fumbles, miscommunications . . . if there was a bad way to turn the ball over, Cal probably did it against Stanford.

And ultimately, that inability to hold onto the ball killed any chance that Cal could stay with Stanford. The Cardinal didn’t get a ton going on offense outside of their red-hot 3 point shooting - Stanford turned it over a lot themselves, only shot 45% inside the arc and missed a bunch of free throws. But when you hit 12 three pointers, that covers up plenty of other offensive inefficiencies. That shooting built a lead that Cal’s leaky offense wasn’t going to be able to surmount.

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I’ll be honest - I’d prefer to memory-hole this game, and frankly everything that happened since Cal held on to beat Oregon to close out their home schedule. I was pessimistic about Cal’s chances to beat either Colorado or Utah on the road, and didn’t particularly hold it against the Bears that they failed to do so. But getting stomped on by a Stanford team that had lost eight of nine and six in a row all by 10+ points stings.

It’s easy to speculate that the Bears have run out of gas. Due to injuries and lack of depth, Cal runs their starters heavy minutes. Jaylon Tyson, Jalen Cone, and Fardaws Aimaq in particular have received limited bench time and plenty of on-court responsibility throughout Pac-12 play.

It’s also entirely possible that this was just a random bad game, and Cal will come out next week in Las Vegas and play more like what we saw during the middle stretch of Pac-12 play.

Regardless, I don’t want to remember the 2023-24 Bears by this end-of-season stretch. The story of this season was the return of Cal to competitive major conference performance levels, and so I’m sure that 5 years from now, I’ll think about Cal’s home win over Stanford, or the comeback win over Colorado, or the crazy OT win over Washington State. If anything, I guess it’s a credit to what the Bears have done this year that I’m even in a position to feel sadness and disappointment about how Cal played in any individual game, rather than the resigned disinterest and ennui that characterized the last six years.

But boy it would be nice if this team gives us one more happy memory to end the season.

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The scenario is pretty simple: If UCLA beats ASU in Westwood on Saturday, Cal is very likely the seven seed in the Pac-12 tournament and likely to play ASU or Stanford. If ASU upsets UCLA, Cal is very likely the 8 seed, and likely to play 9 seed UCLA.

(It’s bizarre that the Pac-12 set up the schedule such that four teams are not playing a basketball game on the final weekend of the regular season.)

The 7 seed would be preferable both for a slightly easier first round matchup and so that Cal would be on the opposite side of the bracket from 1 seed Arizona, though we’re parsing the distinction between the 2% chance Cal can win four straight games without playing Arizona against the 1% chance that Cal can win four straight games including beating Arizona.

Does it feel like Cal is playing its best basketball heading into the tournament? No.

Does it feel like Cal, with its limited depth, is the kind of team capable of reeling off multiple wins without rest days? No.

Does tournament play necessarily obey these kinds of truisms? Often not!