Cal MBB's defense shredded again in loss to Clemson

We have to talk about defense after Cal's 80-68 loss to the Tigers

On the bright side, it turns out that this guy is really good at basketball via @calmbball twitter

As of the end of the day on January 4, there have been 30 ACC games played so far this season.

A team has scored 1.3 points/possession or greater just 8 times in those 30 games. Duke did it to Virginia Tech and SMU and almost Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech did it to Notre Dame. SMU did it to Boston College (by shooting 11-16 from three!). Louisville did it to Florida State (by shooting 15-29 from three!).

Against Stanford, Cal’s defense allowed 1.35 points/possession

Against Pitt, Cal’s defense allowed 1.3 points/possession

Against Clemson, Cal’s defense allowed 1.31 points/possession

Allowing a team to score so efficiently is usually a rare event that happens when you face an elite team like Duke or run up against a team that happens to shoot out of their mind. It is not something that is supposed to happen routinely.

Here’s the top of the standings in raw offensive efficiency in ACC play so far:

Cal has been pretty excellent on offense! If you ignore the outlier that is arguably-the-best-team-in-the-country Duke, then Cal so far fits right in alongside the best offenses in the ACC, particularly when you consider that playing Pitt and Clemson on the road means that Cal’s early ACC schedule has very difficult so far.

Unfortunately . . .

The gap between Cal’s defense and the 2nd worst defense in the ACC is about the same as the gap between Duke and everybody else offensively. Cal’s defense has been so bad that Cal has soundly lost three games despite three games of excellent offensive production.

It is here where I have to make a comparison that I HATE having to make. It chills me to my bone and leaves me feeling ill. But I have no choice.

Cal’s Kenpom adjusted defensive efficiency in 2024-25:

Cal’s Kenpom adjusted defensive efficiency in 2018-19, under Wyking Jones:

We’re not quite in Wyking Jones territory on defense, but we’re in the same area code.

Mark Madsen, no doubt, recognizes that things have gone horribly wrong on the defensive end, and it looked like Cal changed up their defense against Clemson. Cal looked more aggressive with double teams and help defense, perhaps in an effort to better disrupt what the opposing offense was attempting to do. To a certain extent, this might have worked, as Clemson turned the ball over 12 times (19.5% of their possession), their 3rd highest turnover rate of the season.

The problem is that Cal’s aggressive doubling/help defense left guys wide open, and Clemson took full advantage. The Tigers shot 8-18 from three on a series of looks that ranged from wide open to absurdly wide open, and also shot an insane 23-32 (72%) from 2. If you’re curious, here are the 10 games since 1997 in which Cal’s defense allowed the highest 2 point shooting percentage:

What’s on that list? One game in which a young Mark Madsen tortured Cal, One game in 2011 against one of the greatest college offenses of all time, four games during the recent stretch of time when Wyking Jones, Michael Williams, Mark Fox, and Jim Knowlton voluntarily decided not to compete in the sport of basketball, and two games from this season.

Cal’s defense is overshadowing lots of intriguing things happening on the other end of the floor. Against Clemson, it obscures a truly special break out game from Andrej Stojakovic, who scored 30 points on 15 shots and just one turnover. It was the kind of performance that we would all be lionizing in a win, but becomes a footnote in a game where Cal trailed by double digits for the final 11 minutes of the game.

Which gets at the primary frustration of the season. In many ways, Cal has enjoyed many positive individual developments. Andrej Stojakovic has exploded as an elite lead scorer. Jeremiah Wilkinson is putting together a freshman campaign that deserves all ACC freshman team honors. Multiple other players in the rotation have been efficient secondary scorers. If you had told me before the season started that all of the above would happen, I’d have guessed that Cal might be 10-4 or 11-3 right now.

I don’t really understand why the defense is this broken. True, the loss of BJ Omot, maybe Cal’s best wing defender, hurts. But everybody else on the roster should in theory be reasonable defenders. Mady Sissoko played solid minutes at the 5 for a series of typically good Michigan State defenses, and Lee Dort clearly has physical tools at least as good as Sissoko. All of Cal’s guards or wings are either fast (Blacksher, Wilkinson), rangy (Petraitis), or both (Ola-Joseph).

If you’re the optimistic type, I think you can maintain some positivity about the future. Cal has gained positive development from some of their younger players, and if Madsen can hold into Stojakovic and Wilkinson (and enough players to maintain continuity into next year), augment the roster with new additions, and figure out how to coach this team up on the defensive side, Cal could become very interesting very fast. But we are one week away from the midway point of this season and based on the available evidence Cal’s defense is a hard road block for winning more than a handful of games the rest of the way.

The good news is that Cal is coming back home, and their opponents will be Virginia and Virginia Tech, who represent two of the worst offenses in the ACC. If Cal can’t at least slow these teams down and earn a win or two, then this season looks rather grim.