Cal men's basketball drops to Arizona, now one of three winless teams left in college basketball
Will Cal be the last one flailing?
Cal played another basketball game this weekend. This one was against top-10 Arizona.
Cal lost another basketball game. The worst start in modern Division 1 history continues.
Cal put up its best effort of the season. Unfortunately, Arizona is the best team in the Pac-12, and Cal is most decidedly the worst, and despite competing from start to finish, the Bears ended up in a double-digit defeat.
Devin Askew led the way for the Bears with 25 points and five rebounds. Lars Thiemann added 18 points and five boards. Kuany Kuany had 11 points, Grant Newell 8.
In tandem with the loss to USC, Cal fell to 0-9, 0-2 in Pac-12 play.
Mark Fox had some kind words for Cal’s resilience despite the very tough start.
“We’ve played really hard. We’ve had some challenges just trying to get enough healthy guys on the floor to build a cohesive team.
"The response of our players to that adversity has been terrific all the time. I’m very disappointed in the start of our season. These kids have been tremendous in their response to it.”
If Cal played the way they did against Arizona, they almost certainly would not be 0-9 right now. Cal made one field goal less than Arizona, were outrebounded only 37-31, and kept their turnovers at a minimum. But they could not keep the more talented Wildcats off the foul line, who were +11 at the stripe and +17 oo overall attempts.
Instead, Cal joins Central Connecticut and Louisville as one of the three remaining teams that are winless in college basketball.
Really, the last remaining interesting question for the Bears is where they will be the last winless team?
Central Connecticut has a host of winnable games left in their December schedule, including Manhattan and the St. Francis schools, all rated by KenPom among the bottom in Division 1.
Louisville has winnable games ahead, particularly against Florida A&M and Lipscomb the week before Christmas.
So if Cal doesn’t win their next game against Eastern Washington today, they are underdogs against Butler and Santa Clara, and stand a good chance of being the last winless team in college basketball.
Keeping in mind all the dreariness above, I’ll leave with you this link to the San Francisco Chronicle profile on Mark Fox and the dire state of Cal Men’s basketball, and the key item that arose from it regarding two other choices in Cal alum Dennis Gates and Gonzaga assistant Tommy Lloyd, now succeeding greatly respectively at Missouri and Arizona.
It’s tough right now out there Bears.
0-30!!!! 0-30!!!!!! If we have to suck, at least go big and do something that's never been done before. As students, faculty and alums, we pride ourselves on doing things that no one else does, like winning Nobel Prizes, discovering plutonium, creating Apple Computer, etc. Why not be the absolute worst team in the history of college basketball? It might be an unbreakable record for eternity. GO BEARS!!!!!
Keep tanking, I say! It sets us up well for a lottery pick.