Last Second Jalen Celestine 3 Downs Washington

Cal avenges their loss to Huskies with dagger 3 of their own

Basketball doesn’t have to be complicated when you have good players with clear strengths.

With Cal down 1 point and inbounding the ball with 11 seconds left, they handed the ball to their best player who was having a dominant game, and asked him to make a play. Jaylon Tyson started to attack is defender off the dribble.

Meanwhile, Cal positioned their best shooter, Jalen Celestine, on the wing opposite Tyson. When Celestine’s man sank inside to help on Tyson, Cal’s best player made the right decision to give the ball up. Celestine rewarded that decision with a swish, and Tyson picked up his game-leading sixth assist.

Washington rushed down the court (and got off a not horrible shot) but couldn’t convert, and Cal somehow managed to pick up maybe their best win of the entire season. It may not be as emotionally satisfying as wins over UCLA or Stanford, but if you’re into objective measures, this win represents Cal’s first ‘Quad 1’ win of the season. It also sent me into hysterics, and I’ve watched every different angles of the game winning sequence a collective few hundred times already tonight. For your viewing pleasure:

1. TV replay

2. Cal bench view

3. Baseline fan cam

4. Nick being petty on replay

As has been the case in so many of Cal’s Pac-12 wins, this one did not appear likely for much of the game. Cal rode a first half scoring explosion from Tyson to as big as a 7 point lead, but UW took the lead back early in the 2nd half and stretched it out to as many as six.

Then, just inside 5 minutes to play, Fardaws Aimaq picked up his 5th foul of the game and UW hit some free throws to push their lead back up to 5. Without their best interior defender, rebounder, and secondary offensive option, how exactly was Cal going to overcome a 5 point deficit with just minutes to play?

At this point it’s all but obligatory that I post these after every game where Cal tries to murder your heart

The answer was Grant Newell and Jalen Celestine, two players who stuck with Cal through a coaching change. First, Tyson found Newell making a nice cut for an easy layup. Then Newell ran the floor in transition to clean up after a Kennedy missed runner. Then Celestine drew a foul and hit both free throws, then nailed a 3 (off an assist and screen from Newell), all to set up the game winning play.

In retrospect, it’s shocking that Cal’s offense in the last few minutes didn’t revolve around Tyson, who had 28 points already. Entering the game, the story was the battle between Tyson and UW’s Keion Brooks, the two leading scorers in the conference. Both delivered, with Tyson putting up 28 points and 6 assists and Brooks going for 26, but it was Tyson who had the better night and got the W.

But in crunch time it’s to everybody’s credit that even in late game situations Cal didn’t force their best player to do everything. Even when one player has 28 points and another player didn’t register a point for the first 37:39 seconds of the game, Tyson was smart enough to know that a wide open Celestine 3 was a better play than trying to beat a double team on the perimeter.

The other thing that won Cal this game? Late-game defense. Washington made exactly one basket over the last 6:15 of the game, encompassing the final 11 possessions of the game. Now, to be fair, UW did draw some fouls and get points at the line, so it’s not like Cal completely locked things down on the defensive end. But the ‘5’ part of a 12-to-5 run to end the game is just as important as the points you score.

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Let’s talk a little bit more about Cal’s defense. To start the season, Cal’s defense was kind of a disaster. The Bears allowed UOP to score 1.22 points/possession, allowed a really bad UTEP offense to put up 1.1, and got pretty badly torched by Butler and Ole Miss. I distinctly recalled watching the UOP game from the stands and it was clear that whatever high screen defense Madsen wanted Cal to play, his players hadn’t absorbed it yet.

But gradually the defense has gotten better and better, to the point that Cal held the 3rd best offense in the conference to below average efficiency on their home court. It was defense that beat Stanford, defense that was the difference against Washington State at home.

And through 75% of the conference schedule, Cal is currently 5th in the conference in defensive efficiency. They have held conference opponents to exactly average offensive efficiency compared to the Pac-12 league-wide average.

With the possible exception of Keonte Kennedy shooting gaps in passing lanes, there’s nothing much that Cal does that’s eye-catching. They just play fundamentally sound defense, funnel drivers towards their rim protector, and pull down rebounds.

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Let’s talk about Fardaws Aimaq, who had a really tough game. The top line stats (13 and 13) look normal enough, but he forced a lot of offensive action and turned it over 6 times without being nearly efficient enough from the field (6-12) to make up the difference. Plus after getting tagged with a bogus illegal screen call on the first possession of the game, he then picked up four really bad foul calls to foul out early.

Of course, while all of this was going on, he was also his typically monstrous self on the defensive glass (13, a full 42% of Cal’s defensive rebounds) while also protecting the rim against a really good 2 point shooting team. Only Arizona finishes at the rim better than Washington, but Daws blocked 3 shots and was a big part in UW’s below average shooting night.

Which is to say that with Fardaws, you have to take the occasional rough offensive nights in exchange for what you always get, which is elite rebounding and the best interior defender on the team.

One last note: For the final 4:23, with Daws fouled out, Madsen did something that I can’t recall having seen all season long: he played small ball with Grant Newell at the 5. It worked brilliantly on offense, and UW isn’t a team with a dominant post scorer to take advantage. I don’t think Cal could play that kind of lineup against, say, Stanford’s Maxime Raynaud or Colorado’s Eddie Lampkin, but there will be moments down the stretch when Cal could play small to great effect.

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Operation go .500 in Pac-12 play is back on. The path is difficult, but far from impossible - when the computer projections predict a final record of 9-11, it means you only need to steal one win.

Cal will come back home for the final two games of the season at Haas, and the best way to get to 10-10 in Pac-12 play is to sweep the Oregon schools. Cal will be a solid favorite against Oregon State, the worst team in the conference and a team that still hasn’t won a game away from home this year and has lost each Pac-12 road game by at least 7 points. Nothing can be taken for granted, but it’s a roughly coin toss game against Oregon on senior night that looms larger.