Cal loses 4OT heartbreaker to end regular season

In the game of the year, the Bears fall just short, 112-110

Mar 09, 2025

photo via @calmbball twitter

If this game had had any real stakes, it would rank as perhaps the best Cal basketball game I’ve ever watched.

For 60 minutes, Cal and Notre Dame threw haymaker after haymaker at each other. Every time one team made a play that seemed to give them the advantage, the other responded. The universe seemed to conspire to prevent the game from ending. When one team seemed down and out, the refs would call a phantom touch foul. When the other team seemed doomed, the basketball gods would grant them a banked in three.

Here is what it looks like when two teams play 25 minutes of basketball in which every single event can swing the game in favor of one team or the other:

It’s impossible for me to pick out one or two or even 10 plays that were critical to the final outcome because there were hundreds. With about 4 minutes left to play in the game, Cal tied the score at 63-63, and in our sweet innocence we all had no idea that there was nearly an entire basketball game left that would end 59-57 in Notre Dame’s favor.

I thought Cal would win in the first OT period when they held a 3 point lead and the ball with a minute and a half left, and again when Andrej Stojakovic scored on a runner to give Cal a 3 point lead with :46 seconds left.

I thought Cal was doomed when Notre Dame led by six with 1:38 left in the second OT, but Wilkinson banked in a 3, Cal got a stop, and then Mady Sissoko scored a wild 3 point play thanks to a very questionable foul.

I thought Cal would lose when Sissoko and Stojakovic fouled out (Sissoko on an absurd wrong call). I thought Cal would win when Tae Davis and Markus Burton (43 points on 40% usage!) fouled out.

Cal finally did lose in quadruple overtime when Notre Dame’s Matt Allocco hit a 3 with 15 seconds left to give Notre Dame 1 one point lead, and then Jeremiah Wilkinson lost his handle out of bounds as he attempted to drive the baseline with 5 seconds left. The game ended in slightly anti-climatic fashion with a series of fouls by both teams - Cal to stop the clock, Notre Dame to prevent Cal from attempting a game tying 3. A buzzer beater to win felt fitting for the insanity of the rest of the game, but you can’t have everything even in a 60 minute game of college basketball.

What do you even take away from this game? I had a plan to write about how this was the Andrej Stojakovic defensive game when he recorded an incredible 5 blocks in one half of basketball (and six for the game) to slow down Burton and give Cal a chance to win the game. I was really going to focus on that when it looked like Andrej drew a critical offensive foul by taking an elbow to the face in the final minute of regulation before the refs turned it into a cylinder foul* on Stojakovic.

But all of that was washed away by 20 minutes of overtime insanity as Burton and Wilkinson traded shot after shot after shot, as neither team gave in for 20 minutes of intense basketball until the Bears finally blinked.

In many ways, this game was a perfect microcosm of the entire season. And I find myself thinking about effort when I watch this particular Cal team.

When Justin Wilcox has his post-game press conference after a loss, the first question he gets asked is often a softball where somebody says that Cal really put in a lot of effort. Wilcox rightly responds that effort is a baseline expectation, and that effort alone is not enough to win games.

And this Cal MBB team is a perfect distillation of that reality. I don’t know if I’ve seen a team that plays harder. This Cal/Notre Dame game wasn’t literally meaningless - it technically had a minor impact on the seeding at the bottom end of the 15 team ACC tournament. But it was an easy-to-miss matchup between two teams that entered the game with identical 13-17 records.

And yet Andrej Stojakovic expended a ton of energy desperately chasing Burton all over the court. And yet Mady Sissoko played 44 minutes of bruising interior basketball, hurling himself after every rebound available. And yet Jeremiah Wilkinson spent all game attacking the basket relentlessly, throwing his body at rim protectors for 52 minutes.

I watched this Cal team throw everything they had into a game that really didn’t matter much, and I saw them not get rewarded with a win. Because effort isn’t enough by itself at this level.

But as a fan, I appreciated it. It made a trying season much more bearable. Here’s to hoping that Cal’s coaches can figure some things out schematically, and augment the roster, so that if the Bears bring this same level of effort next year it results in wins.

Here’s Cal’s side of the ACC tournament bracket:

Virginia Tech is actually a pretty favorable draw - the Hokies are probably the worst of the log-jam of teams tied at 8-12, and Cal probably should’ve beaten them in their only matchup this season back in mid January. Stanford annoyingly would be next, and the prospect of going 0-3 against the Cardinal is distasteful. Still, we’ve seen Cal play close with Stanford already this season. I wouldn’t call a run to the ACC quarterfinals likely by any means, but it wouldn’t exactly be a huge surprise either.

But anything beyond that would be a shock. Beating Louisville, a team that already blew Cal out, with the Cardinals fully rested and the Bears on their 3rd game in three days?

No, Cal’s season is all but guaranteed to end next week in Charlotte. It’s almost time to turn our focus to . . . sigh . . . transfer portal season.

*I spent too much time trying to understand this call. The relevant rule here is what constitutes a ‘cylinder’ and what constitutes a ‘normal basketball play.’ Here are the rules in question so that you can interpret for yourselves:

Rule 4, Section 39, Article 1c. The space that a player may legally occupy is defined by an imaginary cylinder surrounding the player and which extends from the floor to as far above the player as he can jump or extend his arms and body. The diameter of the cylinder shall not extend beyond the hands/arms on the front (the arms bent at the elbow), the buttocks on the back and the legs on the sides. These dimensions may vary according to the height and size of the player.
Rule 4, Section 39, Article 1k. The offensive player must be allowed enough space to make a normal basketball play. The defense may not invade the vertical space of the offense and make illegal contact when the offensive player is attempting a normal basketball play. A normal basketball play in this context includes shooting, passing, dribbling or pivoting.