Cal comeback falls short against Stanford
The Bears just aren't able to hit enough shots in 66-61 defeat
photo via Rob Hwang
The ESPN2 broadcast brought Mike Montgomery onto the broadcast after the under 16 timeout of the 2nd half, and Monty opined that Cal could get right back into this game if they could just create some open shots.
Monty was entirely right and entirely wrong at the same time. Cal hasn’t been able to create open shots all year long, and it is very much hampering Cal’s offense. And yet somehow Cal manages to stay afloat on offense by doing everything else well.
Cal managed to entirely erase a 17 point Stanford 2nd half lead partly because Stanford went absolutely cold on offense, and partly because Cal relentlessly drove to the basket, drew fouls, and pulled down offensive rebounds. Cal nearly pulled off the comeback in part because they turned a nearly air-balled 3 into a put-back, and rebounded a missed free throw that then turned into a game-tying three point play. This team’s ability to manufacture points by flinging bodies in the general direction of the basket is truly impressive.
. . . but Cal also shot 37% from 2 and 29% from 3 against a roughly average ACC defense. And when you can’t make baskets, it’s really really hard to pull down enough rebounds and get to the foul line enough to make up for that.
This frustrating reality is reflected in some ugly numbers:
The gap in effective shooting percentage in ACC play between Cal and 16th place Georgia Tech is roughly equal to the gap between 16th place Georgia Tech and 4th place SMU. Cal’s shooting percentage in ACC play this year is lower than the Pac-12 shooting percentages for a couple of Mark Fox teams.
Cal’s offense hasn’t cratered because they don’t turn the ball over, they earn a ton of free throws, and they pull down a ton of offensive boards. We saw plenty of that against Stanford - 32 of Cal’s 61 points game either from the line or off of an offensive rebound. But there is a hard cap on how good this offense can be until they find a way to scheme open shots.
I’m not a scheme expert. But the play-by-play reveals a story in this game. Cal only collected 4 assists in the game. Three of those assists were 3 point shots. I can’t recall if they were kick-outs, or passes where Cal was swinging the ball around the horn. One assist was a baseline out of bounds play.
In other words, Cal didn’t have a single assist on a live play two pointer. No plays where a driver draws the defense and drops it down to a big man, no cuts to the basket, no pick and roll buckets. Nothing happened in this game to scheme open an easy shot. Whether that’s a failure of the plan itself, or a failure to teach the players such that they can execute a plan, I cannot say.
When I think back on this season, what I will picture in my mind’s eye is Jeremiah Wilkinson or Andrej Stojakovic trying to finish a runner in the lane over a primary and a help defender. It’s been the defining shot for the Bears this season. Wilkinson and Stojakovic turn those kinds of shots into points better than most players, but when your offense is defined by heavily contested shots there’s only so much you can hope for.
You know what I find particularly frustrating about this game? I just watched Cal get maybe the best whistle they will ever get at Maples Pavilion and Cal still lost.
Just off the top of my head there were multiple iffy calls that went in Cal’s favor. Stojakovic easily could’ve picked up a 2nd foul on an early block/charge call that looked like a 70/30 play in Stanford’s favor. Cal’s late comeback was aided by multiple soft calls around the rim. On a late contest at the rim Lee Dort absolutely bodied into the Stanford shooter and although the block itself was clean, Dort’s physicality to get into blocking position was absolutely not.
And that’s not even getting into some absurd game management. There was an absurdly long game stoppage to review a change-of-possession judgment call over a couple of seconds of shot clock time, there was allowing Stanford to kill off 8 seconds of game time in an attempt to deny Cal a final possession in the first half (thwarted by a Stanford turnover) and a random stoppage when the clock didn’t start. Really, just a painfully bad 40 minute performance all the way around.
But the refs did Stanford one (sigh, deserved) favor: they correctly punished Cal for their physicality when defending Maxime Reynaud. Stanford’s best player scored 20 points against Cal back in December without even shooting a free throw. My bet is that Cal wanted to send a message about toughness inside this time around. Cal delivered that message emphatically. Dort and Mady Sissoko combined to commit 8 fouls, most of them on Reynaud. And Reynaud went 8-10 from the line, many of them late, to allow Stanford to hold on for the win.
Cal currently sits tied for 14th in the ACC, but in 15th place because Syracuse holds the tie-breaker over the Bears. Cal will be an underdog in three of their final four regular season games, though they will be home favorites over Boston College.
The three teams that finish 16th, 17th, and 18th do not make the ACC tournament. If Cal beats BC, they will be favorites finish in the top 15. However, if the Bears fall at home to the Golden Eagles, the possibility of getting left out of the ACC tournament looms large.
Perhaps that doesn’t matter much. I don’t think Cal is a particular threat to win 5 games in a row on a neutral court, even if that neutral court weren’t 3,000 miles away in North Carolina. But it would add insult to injury to finish in the bottom 3 in an 18 team league that is also suffering through a historic downswing.
Modest goals: get 1 or 2 more wins, get to the ACC tournament, bring effort and energy to the end-of-season tournament, and try to build some positive momentum into off-season recruiting and retention efforts.
Missed free throws was the difference.