Freshman Jeremiah Wilkinson leads Cal to win over Air Force

The Bears get the win despite a shorthanded rotation

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We’re only five games into the season, but there’s one thing I’ve seen so far that I like about this team, and that I think will be a consistent trait all season long.

It’s going to be a different guy every night.

Already this season you could argue that Andrej Stojakovic, Jovan Blacksher, and Rytis Petraitis have all earned game MVP honors.

And on a night when Cal was unexpectedly missing three rotation players (Jovan Blacksher, BJ Omot, and DeJuan Campbell were all scratches for the game without explanation), somebody new was going to have to step up. That somebody was freshman Jeremiah Wilkinson after scoring just 11 points on 13 total shots across his first four games, Wilkinson took advantage of an opportunity for playing time and exploded for 23 points on 12 shots.

And the story of the game was that Air Force didn’t have any ability to stop Wilkinson and Andrej Stojakovic from cutting into the paint and finishing all game long. Andrej added 21 points of his own and each of them were constantly slicing into the lane and either finishing or getting to the line (or both). And while Cal probably didn’t want to let Air Force hang around as long as they did, the Falcons were never closer than 7 points in the final 10 minutes of the game.

It’s not the dominating performance some Cal fans (myself included) were hoping for against a team mired in the 300s of most ranking systems, but it’s not the worst result for a team still gelling and unexpectedly playing without three rotation players.

Cal’s offense got off to a slow start, scoring just 9 points in their first 13 possessions. But the Bears woke up and scored on 9 of their next 12 trips down the floor and never really looked back , eventually finishing with a robust 1.18 points/possession despite mediocre shooting from three (31%) and from the line (67%).

If Cal had defended better, this game would have been the blowout we were hoping for, but Air Force did a pretty good job of keeping pace despite a lack of offensive rebounds and plenty of turnovers.

The defensive problem was mostly three point shooting, as Air Force shot 11-24 from deep. As you might expect, this was a combination of iffy defense and some bad luck. Cal’s defense didn’t seem to be focusing on preventing threes, as defenders often went underneath screens or focused on defending paint cuts vs. players cheating to the line. But it’s also true that Air Force hit some unlikely shots. Ethan Taylor, a career 36% shooter, hit some deep looks, a few of which were reasonably contested. Wesley Celichowski, Air Force’s center, entered the game 2-14 from three in his entire career . . . and went 2-3 against Cal. I strongly suspect that Lee Dort and Mady Sissoko were told to not bother contesting his shots from deep, and of course Cal got punished.

Still, it’s somewhat alarming that Cal is 313th in the nation in three point shooting defense, allowing opponents to shoot 38.4% for the year. Cal finished 299th in that same metric last year. I don’t think this is necessarily some kind of coaching blind spot for Mark Madsen, who coached his team to excellent 3 point defensive numbers in his final two years at Utah Valley. And it does seem like this year’s team, with so much length at the guard/wing spots, should be well suited to be at least average at closing out and contesting shooters. I’m not sounding the alarm bells yet, but it’s worth monitoring.

Other notes

• I love the combo of Lee Dort and Mady Sissoko, who in many ways remind me of the prior center duo of Kingsley Okoroh and Kam Rooks. They’re here to do two things: defend the rim/block shots, and finish efficiently inside when they get position, and they do it well.

• Wazzu transfer Spencer Mahoney got his first serious minutes as a Bear.

• Petraitis is a whirlwind of activity, which is often good (4 steals!) but occasionally gets him out of position defensively. He’s also operating in a different role with Cal than he did with Air Force, where he was the fulcrum of their entire offense. We’ll see if he can bring some of the point-forward skills he flashed at Air Force as he grows more comfortable in Cal’s offense, or if his intended role for this team is more as bench energy/defensive disruptor.

• It’s early days, but Andrej Stojakovic appears to have made a major leap in ability as a year two player. He’s nearly doubled his 2 point attempts/game while increasing his shooting percentage on those shots AND has more than doubled his free throw rate. In short, in one off-season he went from an inefficient slasher to an effective slasher. Thanks Stanford!