Women's Basketball: Cal Earns Statement-Win Over Top-25 Alabama

The Bears clamp down defensively late for another big NCAA tournament resume win

photo via @calwbball instagram

With 1:55 left in the game and Cal holding onto a 4 point lead, Alabama came down the court and did what they did for most of the game. They handed the ball to Zaay Green, their 6’2’’, 24 year old former 5 star point guard and expected her to find her own shot.

That was a pretty good idea for most of the game. Green finished with 28 points and spent large portions of the game slicing into the paint and finding ways to score. But this time around, she was guarded by Jayda Noble.

Noble had played all of two minutes on the night when she substituted into the game with a minute left in the 3rd quarter. The box score reflects one block and two fouls committed, and doesn’t even come close to telling the story. In her seven minutes on the court during crunch time she got one stop when she drew a charge on Green, and another stop in the block mentioned above. Green did not score any points when Noble was in the game.

Here’s the block in question, probably the biggest play of the game:

Note that this video only clips the block, and not the first 15 seconds of the possession that was entirely Green trying to get by Noble and failing. Note that the video cuts off before Green turns it over out of bounds, and Noble continues to harass her.

Why am I highlighting the defensive contributions of a defensive specialist off the bench? Because for the first time under Charmin Smith, Cal has a good defense.

Consider the most basic of defensive stats: 2 point shooting percentage allowed. Here is Cal’s national rank in that stat over the last four years:

• 2024: 187th

• 2023: 234th

• 2022: 81st (Evelien Schipholt effect?)

• 2021: 246th

This year? The Bears are 17th in the nation, and opponents are shooting a ghastly 36.6 percent on their twos. Maybe you think that’s impacted by Cal beating up on some bad teams? Perhaps! But Cal held Auburn to 38%. Cal held Gonzaga to 40%. Cal held Arizona to 42.5%. Cal held top 25 Michigan State to 34%.

Alabama, thanks largely to the heroics of Green, were actually shooting kinda OK on their 2s. But when crunch time came, Cal turned things on defensively. Alabama shot 3-10 from 2 in the final quarter of the game, and it was enough for Cal to hold onto a hugely valuable win.

Cal struggled early offensively mostly due to 3 point shooting. I had been wondering for weeks how the Bears would handle a bad shooting night, and Cal was 3-16 from three in the first half. But the Bears responded with a 6-11 2nd half showing and finished the night exactly 33%. Cal still hasn’t shot worse than 32% from three in any game this year. The Bears sit at 20th in the country in team 3 point shooting percentage. And most of the teams ahead of Cal in the rankings shoot 3s with a much lower degree of frequency.

So, how valuable is this win? Well, any win over an undefeated, top 25 team expected to make the tournament has plenty of value. But the full season context is what should get you excited.

The Bears are now 8-1 on the season and they have four solid wins and zero bad losses. Few teams in the country have a better collection of wins than Cal, who have beaten four teams who started the season with NCAA tournament aspirations of their own. Based on the Wins Above Bubble metric, Cal has the 12th best resume in the country right now! The Bears aren’t playing like an NCAA bubble team. No, they’re playing like a team that will be wondering which seed, or wondering if they’ve done enough to earn a protected seed.

This is heady, unexpected territory for a team and a coach that had only barely been on the periphery of NCAA tournament consideration once since Kristine Anigwe graduated.

And if I’m looking for the biggest reason for Cal’s turnaround, this is where I start:

Williams was the player of the game for Cal, scoring 21 points and contributing defensively herself. Last year, Williams played the Jayda Noble role at USC, coming off the bench as a defensive stopper but deferring to USC’s other offensive weapons. This year, she’s proving that she’s plenty capable of scoring herself while still giving Cal a consistent defensive presence on the perimeter. The combination of both transfers has given Cal’s defense an edge that it has never had under Charmin Smith.

“We know how to be better than we were before. We know how to finish games and we’re tough because we don’t quit.” - Charmin Smith postgame

Cal still has three non-conference games left, but they come against Pacific, Austin Peay, and Fordham, and Cal will be expected to win all three. But those games sandwich Cal’s opener in ACC play, which comes on Friday December 13th at home against . . . Stanford.

The Cardinal are fresh off a heartbreaking OT loss to undefeated LSU and Kim Mulkey, and generally appear to not be skipping a beat in their first season after Tara Vanderveer’s retirement. This is the biggest Cal/Stanford game in years.

CAL FANS, WE NEED YOU AT HAAS ON FRIDAY DECEMBER 13TH!

Tell me you don’t want to come out and root for this team:

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