Cal Women's Basketball Revives Season with Road Sweep

But for the Bears to make it count, they likely need to beat Stanford on Friday

photo via @calwbball twitter

Let’s start with the good news: After four seasons under Charmin Smith in which the Bears never finished better than 4-14 & 10^th place in the Pac-12, the Bears are finally competitive in the toughest conference in the nation.

Following a road sweep of the Washington schools, the Bears are a respectable 5-8 in conference play, good for 7^th place. The Bears are all but guaranteed to finish the season with a winning record, which will represent their first winning record since 2018-19, their last under Lindsay Gottlieb.

But now for the bad news: the Bears aren’t really on the NCAA bubble thanks to an inability to win a game against the Pac-12’s heavy hitters, and thanks to one singular bad loss.

Let’s finish up this compliment sandwich on a high note. Cal’s Washington sweep revives flagging hopes that Cal could play their way onto the NCAA bubble, and opportunities remain. Let’s dive in.

A True Washington Sweep

After beating Wazzu and UW at home, Cal completed the full season sweep on the road. How did they do it? With three pointers! Cal shot 9-18 from deep against Washington State and 7-17 against Washington, while their opponents went 2-10 and 3-13 respectively. So while Cal had a decided shot volume disadvantage in both games (mostly thanks to turnovers), Cal’s three point shooting carried the Bears to victory.

Ioanna Krimili was the shooting star, going 6-10 from deep for the weekend, but it was very much a balanced scoring effort, as six different Bears reached double digit scoring in one game or the other, and nobody collected more than 15 points in any one game.

In fact, a deep rotation has come to define how Cal plays. 10 different players got court time in both games, eight different players registered points, and rebounding was very much a team effort. When the Bears are at their best, the ball is moving and just about any player on the court might put up a 3.

It must be noted that Washington State was playing without Charlisse Leger-Walker, who has a case for most valuable player in the Pac-12 because of how much she means for the defending Pac-12 tournament champs. Wazzu lost Leger-Walker to a season ending injury during an upset win over UCLA, and they have lost four straight since her injury.

Why do I mention this? Cal’s wins over Washington State represent, by a pretty wide margin, their two best wins of the year. As of writing, the Cougars are clinging to #25 in the NET rankings. Cal’s next best wins are two dubs over #48 Washington. If Wazzu fades without their star player, it’s entirely possible that Cal won’t have any kind of marquee wins to point to. Which gets us to . . .

Cal’s Resume

Here are the raw numbers:

• Cal vs. the NET top 25: 2-7 (two wins over #25 Washington State)

• Cal vs. the NET 26-50: 2-2 (Two wins over UW, losses to Texas A&M and Arizona)

• Cal vs. the NET 50+: 11-1 (loss to #115 Arizona St.)

You can see the main issue here. Cal has something of a split resume – many games against really good teams, with very limited success, and many games (and wins) against not good teams, and very few games against average teams.

To a great degree, this is representative of the Pac-12 as a whole, where six teams have been utterly dominant and will enter Selection Sunday hoping if not expecting to see their name with a top 4 seed and home court advantage in the first two rounds. Stanford, UCLA, USC, Oregon State, Colorado, and Utah have collectively lost just three games to teams in the bottom half of the Pac-12.

As of right now, Cal is clinging to the fringes of the NCAA bubble. HerHoopStats only lists their first four teams out, which doesn’t include Cal, but ESPN has the Bears last among their ‘next 4 out.’

So what do the Bears need to do to give themselves a chance to get on the right side of the bubble? Simple: a win or two over the top six teams in the Pac-12.

The bad news? Cal is only guaranteed two more opportunities for that kind of a win. Cal will have to win a first round game against a lower half Pac-12 team to earn the right to play one of the heavyweights of the conference, and Cal’s only two games left against the top half of the conference come at Oregon State in the regular season finale . . . and this week, at 7:00 on Friday, at Stanford.

Let’s pretend for a second that Cal beats ASU and Arizona on their home floor, Oregon on the road, and wins their first round tournament game against, say, UW. If Cal wins all of those games (far from a guarantee, I know, but also hardly far fetched) but loses to Stanford, Oregon State, and one of the elite teams in the Pac-12 tournament quarterfinals, the Bears will finish the season 19-13, but potentially with zero top 25 NET wins if Washington State continues to slide. I don’t think the selection committee says yes in that scenario.

But add in even one extra win and you have an elite resume win, plus 20 total wins in the best conference in the country. That could just be enough to sneak in the first four.

Is Cal playing for their season this Friday? No, Cal can absolutely lose to Stanford and still make the NCAA tournament even if they don’t win the Pac-12 tournament. But opportunities for resume wins are few and far between, and if Cal falls to 0-8 against top 25 NET teams other than Washington State the path to the tournament narrows that much more.

Does Cal have a chance against Stanford? The Cardinal are probably the best team in the conference, but they’re not invulnerable - just last weekend, they needed OT to beat Washington. When the teams faced off earlier this year, Cal played an exaggerated defense that left shooters open to better defend Cameron Brink, and Stanford’s shooters went 11-27. Meanwhile, Cal’s shooters were ice cold is a blowout loss.

Will Cal bring a different strategy to Maples? Will Stanford’s shooters go cold? Will Cal finally have a red hot three point shooting night against an elite team and pick up an upset, a prediction I made earlier this year that has yet to come to pass? We find out Friday.