Cal WBB blitzes Florida State for another statement win

The Bears led by as much as 34 in impressive romp

photo credit: Don Collier

The final score was 82 to 70, but what matters here is everything that happened in the first 25 minutes of this game, when Cal welcomed the 26th place team in the AP Poll and threw them into a wood chipper.

Cal led 67 to 33 about halfway through the 3rd quarter and those 25 minutes represent some of the best basketball I’ve ever seen in Haas Pavilion. On offense, Cal was decisive and deadly, and every movement or pass seemed perfectly designed to carve open Florida State’s defense. On defense, Cal was always in the right place at the right time to disrupt what the Seminoles wanted to do. They took on one of the most prolific offenses in the country and completely discombobulated them.

I took the game in from the student section bench, directly across from the Florida State bench. One of the secret delights I had was a direct eyeline to Florida State’s head coach as Cal dropped a 50 point first half offensive barrage. Every time Cal got an open look from three I could see her frustration and I imagined her saying something along the line of “we practiced specifically to stop Cal from getting those kinds of shots!” But when this Cal team is clicking the way they were on Sunday I think the list of teams that could stop them is very short indeed.

And if you just look at the final score, you might think that Cal was very good but not dominant. Do not be fooled. Sure, the Bears took their foot off the gas. Most of the 4th quarter was an exercise in game control as the Bears focused more on running clock than scoring points. It was a little bit of a slog, as Cal tried to play slow while FSU tried to speed the game up, and there were some annoying late turnovers. But the final result was never in doubt. This was as comprehensive of a beatdown I’ve ever seen Cal hand to a team that is going to make the NCAA tournament.

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Cal’s splash-sisters offense is rightfully getting all of the headlines, but it’s Cal’s defensive transformation that has powered Cal’s improvement over last year.

And Cal’s defense did something incredible in this game: They slowed down Ti’Niya Latson, who leads the nation in scoring at just short of 28 points/game. Latson didn’t make a field goal in the first half and finished the game with twice as many turnovers (6) as field goals (3).

Here’s her advanced stats game log, with points in the far right column:

Latson was previously felled by illness (3rd and 4th games of the season) and injury (8 points in just 11 minutes before getting hurt against Jacksonville) but never by an opposing team’s defense, until Cal popped up on the schedule.

How did Cal do it? As it turns out, the answer to that question has a lot to do with why Cal has been nearly impossible to defend so far this year. How many shooters can you get onto the court?

Charmin Smith was asked about Cal’s defensive game plan against Latson after the game, and her answer can be overly simplified to “we made the choice to leave some of their shooters open.” That was primarily former Bear Amaya Bonner and Brianna Turnage. Bonner, to her credit, went 3-9 from deep, while Turnage went 0-2. Cal calculated that by dropping off of certain shooters, it would allow them to help on Latson’s drives.

The exact game plan is certainly more complicated - how the guards play drop coverage, how Cal’s center rotates over to contest, etc. But the basic concept - we’re going to dare you to take the kind of shot you don’t want to take because we’re going to make the kind of shots you DO want to take unreasonably difficult - is pretty simple.

So much of basketball is trying to force your opponent into the kinds of shots they don’t want to take, and earning the kind of shots you want for yourself. Florida State’s good three point shooters (Latson, O’Mariah Gordon, Sydney Bowles, Carla Viegas) combined to attempt only four three-pointers, while weaker shooters attempted 15. That allowed Cal to harass Latson into by far her worst full game performance in 366 days*

Meanwhile, Florida State found out what most everybody else has this year: Cal has too many shooters to possibly defend everybody. Cal made seven 3s in the first half; all of them were assisted, and most of them were drive-and-kick three pointers created because Cal forced FSU to decide between helping on drives or sticking with shooters on the wing. When FSU helped, Cal found open shooters. When FSU didn’t help, Cal drove the lane or got the ball inside to Michelle Onyiah or Gabrielle Abigor.

The Bears ended up finishing 60% from 2, a reminder that while this is a great deep shooting team, they are more than just a bunch of long range shooters. They have the talent to punish teams who overextend to defend the 3 point line. Opposing defenses are at a loss for how to stop an attack this versatile.

*I’ll let you decide if Latson’s 8 point, 5 assist, 1 turnover game against UNC on January 11 of last year is worse than her 13 point, 3 assist, 6 turnover game against Cal.

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As I’m writing this, the NET rankings haven’t been updated for games through Sunday, but Florida State SHOULD represent Cal’s third Quad 1 win on the season. Here is a list of other teams with three or more Quad 1 wins:

Texas, South Carolina, UCLA, USC, Notre Dame, Duke, Oklahoma

We’re in rarified air, resume-wise. Cal stacks up well right alongside teams ranked 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 10th, and 14th in the AP Poll.

Charmin Smith and this team have talked all season about how their goal is to make the NCAA tournament. While I’m sure they will take nothing for granted until they hear “California” on the selection show, I feel very comfortable saying that this season’s question is how high can Cal push their tournament seed, and that making the tournament itself is all but a foregone conclusion.

That’s not me saying that Cal could lose every game left on the schedule and still make the tournament.* No, it’s me saying that this team has proven enough that I trust them to take care of business down the back stretch of the season.

It starts with a HUGE road game on Thursday against Duke. The Blue Devils, as noted above, have impressive wins over Kansas State and Oklahoma, and close loses to top 25 Maryland, South Carolina, and North Carolina, all on the road.

Duke specifically may represent a tough challenge for Cal because the Blue Devils do two things defensively that are important against Cal. First, they force lots of turnovers, which has been the relative weakness for Cal’s offense. Secondly, they are good at preventing teams from attempting 3 point shots. This game will be a great test of exactly how versatile Cal’s offense is. If the Bears put up points on the road against a top 25 defense that is seemingly well suited to what the Bears do . . . it would be quite a statement to the rest of the country.

It’s also a game between two teams that are part of a four way tie with 1 loss in ACC play. It’s unlikely that anybody is truly going to challenge Notre Dame for the regular season title, but the winner of Thursday’s game will have an early stake for the title of most dangerous challenger.

*It’s worth noting that last year the final two at-large teams selected to the tournament (Vanderbilt and Columbia) had four and zero quad-1 wins respectively. Cal is barely past the halfway point of the season and they already have a resume good enough to be on the bubble.