Cal Women's Basketball: Bears Earn Greatest-Ever Win over Stanford, 83-63

The Bears destroy their rivals in a record breaking 3-point barrage

photo via @calwbball instagram

If you’ll forgive me, I’m going to be self-indulgent for a second.

I’ve been a dedicated Cal WBB fan for the better part of 15 years. Cal has been pretty darn good for most of that time! The Bears made a final four and were pretty regularly at least in contention for an invite to the NCAA tournament.

And I can vividly describe every Cal win over Stanford because (before this game!) I could count them on one solitary goddamned hand. Five wins I’ve witnessed. From the Alexis Gray-Lawson game to the Asha Thomas game, wins over Stanford were precious miracles. To do it meant you needed to play a nearly perfect game AND get lucky. You needed your star to score 37 points, or your non-shooting guard to hit a couple of improbable threes, or your diminutive point guard to hit an absurd buzzer beater.

And the one thing that NEVER happened? Cal never blew out Stanford. It was never easy, it was never fun, it was a slog to be survived, a battle that left you bruised and exhausted. It always felt fluky, and you never left a game against Stanford thinking that Cal was obviously the superior team.

On Friday night, Cal destroyed Stanford. The final margin was 20 points, but it just as easily could have been 30. The script was reversed in every way. This time, it was Cal who felt inevitable. It was Cal who brought down more rebounds and forced more turnovers. And it was Stanford who was forced to try junk defenses in a futile attempt to come back.

And finally, it was Cal who had the starters on the bench having a party as a reserve scored a bucket in the final minutes.

Tara Vanderveer, you tortured me for years on end. I hate you, but dammit if I don’t respect you. Please for the love of Oski stay retired.

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Cal made 18 threes, a school record. This was the reason the game was a blowout, and I’ll get to the splashy display soon.

The reason Cal won was defense. Stanford entered the game shooting 54.7% from inside the arc. Against Cal, they shot a miserable 11-42 from 2. Per Torvik, Stanford’s offensive efficiency is top 10 in the country. Cal just held them to 0.91 points/possession, their worst offensive performance of the season. Stanford just dropped 1.3 points/possession on Kim Mulkey and LSU! Teams don’t do this to Stanford, it doesn’t happen!

It was Cal’s defense that kept the Bears ahead early when the shots weren’t falling, and it was the defense that allowed Cal to easily pull away when the shots finally started going through the net.

And the defense was anchored by Michelle Onyiah, who played one of the greatest single games of defense I have ever seen from a Bear. And if you know anything about Michelle Onyiah, you know that her career has been defined by her obvious athleticism . . . and her inability to avoid fouls. Somehow, in one single game, she put it all together after years of flashes and promise.

Her five blocks were thunderous and absolutely set the tone. Here are the two best:

You take those same plays over the last four years, and Onyiah picks up two fouls. Maybe she uses too much body, maybe she clips an arm on the way up, or with her follow through. But tonight, against Stanford, it was perfect defense. Stanford had no answer, and increasingly settled for jumpers when they realized there was a brick wall in the paint.

The second block also featured the one major moment of fear in this game: Ioanna Krimili rolled her ankle on a Stanford foot, and had to get examined in the locker room. It looked pretty bad at first, and I feared that Stanford would take advantage of Krimili’s injury to go on a run.

As it turns out, Krimili only missed about 5 minutes of game action, during which Cal outscored Stanford 5-4. Jayda Noble came into the game and helped continue Cal’s lights out defensive performance. But then Krimili came back, and Lulu Twidale did THIS . . .

And then Krimili did THIS . . .

. . . and the rivalry was flipped on its head, and the blowout was on.

For the first 15 minutes of the game, Cal was getting reasonable looks from deep but only shot 2-11. Part of that was because some of the shots weren’t coming from their very best shooters (and because Krimili was in the locker room getting her ankle looked at for 5 minutes of game time).

But from that point on Cal hit SIXTEEN OF TWENTY-NINE three pointers! I would like to now note that Cal shot 45% from three on the same night that Stanford shot 26% from two. This game was basketball the kind of basketball heaven that I didn’t know if I’d ever get in my lifetime. By the time Marta Suarez hit the most absurd 3 of the game, nothing felt real:

The numbers are absurd. Twidale’s 6-11 gets the headlines, but four different players chipped in at least three makes from deep.

Cal’s biggest lead was 27 before Stanford hit some late, inconsequential 3s to make the game look cosmetically better. But don’t be fooled, this was a demolition job.

And lest you think that the offense was just Cal raining down threes, Cal was plenty solid from inside the arc. Lulu Twidale had a beautiful euro-step-to-reverse layup finish in transition, Kayla Williams spent all game slicing into the paint, Krimili had a nice runner off the glass to beat the buzzer at halftime, and Michelle Onyiah finished well on her limited interior touches. Remember when I said that this was Stanford’s worst offensive performance of the season up above? Well wouldn’t you know, it was their worst defensive performance of the season too!

Most of the 4th quarter was an extended party. The game finally ended with Marta Suarez carrying Lola Donez around the court, Charmin Smith getting on the mic to lead the crowd in ‘Bear Territory,’ and Lulu Twidale responding to a question about Cal’s shooting with a response of “it’s what we do!”

It’s the happiest I’ve been about a Cal WBB win since Layshia Clarendon led the Bears to the Final Four with a win over Georgia.

“Yes it means a lot to me, I’d be lying if I tried to downplay it. I don’t care right now, I’m happy we beat Stanford and I’m going to act like it” - Cal WBB HC Charmin Smith

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Some of what happened in this game is about Stanford not being quite as good as they have been for most of forever. They lost a ton of talent both to the WNBA and to the transfer portal off of last year’s top 10 team. It was immediately obvious watching the game that for the first time in a while Cal was evenly matched with Stanford from a physical/athletic perspective, which played out as Cal outrebounded and defended better than the Cardinal.

But make no mistake - Stanford is still an excellent team, probably top 25 worthy. They’re fresh off blowing what should have been a win over top 5 LSU, and their offense is still elite. They are very likely to end the season in the top quarter of the ACC.

No, this is at least as much, if not more, about how Cal has gotten better. How Lulu Twidale and Michelle Onyiah have taken massive steps forward, how Kayla Williams and Jayda Noble have transformed Cal’s defense, how Cal has too many shooters for any team to defend at once.

This is about how this team is one of three in the country to be in the top 25 in three point attempt frequency and top 25 in three point shooting percentage. This is about how this might be one of the most FUN teams in the country to watch.

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We’re going to have to radically change how we talk about this team, and this season now.

Two weeks ago, after a solid split in a Thanksgiving week tournament against Michigan State and Arizona, my attitude was that this team could be special but hadn’t proved it yet. Then, in the space of three games, they knocked off top 25 Alabama and torched Stanford.

Now, suddenly, Cal has a top 10 resume in the country. By the Wins Above Bubble metric, Cal is just a hair behind UCLA and UConn, but narrowly ahead of LSU and Iowa.

When you’re in that kind of rarified air, you’re usually talking less about whether you make the tournament at all, and more about whether or not you’re in line to get a top 4 seed and host first round tournament games.

I don’t know if that kind of resume is a realistic expectation, but based on how the Bears have played, making the NCAA tournament is no longer the goal. This season, suddenly, has become about loftier goals. Can this team compete for an ACC title? How high can this team push their NCAA tournament seed?

The Bears take the floor on Sunday against Austin Peay, and the weekend after will host a weekend tournament against Fordham and either Xavier or Temple to close out non-conference play. The Bears will be heavy favorites in all three games.

Then comes ACC play proper, and we’ll really start learning how much these surprising Bears can achieve.

But for now, I’ll be basking in one of the greatest nights in program history, a joyous, audacious display of team basketball.

Thanks Bears, that was incredible.