Men's Basketball Insta-Recap: Montana State beats Cal, 63-60
Men's Basketball Insta-Recap: Montana State beats Cal, 63-60
Too many turnovers. Too much Brandon Walker.
Montana State’s Brandon Walker scored 26 points to lead the Bobcats to the upset win over Cal. The Bears had no answer for the big man, as he showed an impressive array of spins and low post moves to dominate whomever the Bears threw at him on defense.
The Bobcats would push their lead to 12 points early in the second half, before Cal started to chip away around the 12-minute mark. Cal would continue to chip away, getting the lead down to 1 at the 2:34 mark, but Montana State responded with a basket to maintain the slim lead. Jaylon Tyson almost singlehandedly bought the team back, scoring 19 of his 27 points in the second half. Jalen Cone had two long-range shots in the last 2 seconds to tie it up, but he missed both.
Cal missed Devin Askew(inactive - injured) at the point guard position, as Cal committed 14 turnovers, a season high. Montana State converted those turnovers into 19 points.
Cal’s next game is against UTEP next Monday in San Juan Capistrano, as part of the SoCal Challenge. Tipoff is 7:30pm.
Let me ask the basketball experts out there why it was not an offensive foul every time their big guy threw his big strong left arm fully extended to his side , chest high level on the defender, simultaneously with making a spin move to his right. This move clearly impeded/ obstructed the defender to allow him to get a least a step and/or get his shit off. I’ve seen this called in tge NBA many times. I even saw the great Kobe called on this. Other players on their team were also coached to do the same thing. We lost the game because we missed at least 10 easy baskets at the rim, and our foul shooting is still bad. Montana was well coached and their players were long, skilled and smart. But we blew this game. I wonder if Madsen complained about Walkers offensive fouling, which allowed him to more than double his average.
Tough to draw many conclusions from this game, given the 3 key pieces that were missing, other than to say this team is still a helluva lot better than any of the Cal teams from the past 6 years. However, there are still hurdles, and despite the talent boost that Tyson, Aimaq and Cone bring, we're still not a good enough squad yet to beat efficient, well-coached teams that can shoot, even if they are from outside the Power 5.
Pre-season, I had admittedly unrealistic delusions of grandeur of a possible Bubble bid...then the Kennedy injury news hit...then we clearly struggle to defend the 3 and at the point of attack, and struggle from the stripe.
Now 4 games in, I agree 100% with bigaddi: let's finish at .500 or better, and get meaningful improvement from Newell/Okafor and try and get some development from Rodney Brown, Vlad, Gus Larson and maybe Devin Curtis.
Still a happy to be better than the past 6 seasons of Wyking and Fox, though...let's get this program headed in the right direction.