Men's Basketball Prepares For ACC Tournament Opener Against Florida State
Plus, Dai Dai Ames and Justin Pippen earn all-conference recognition
The Cal Men’s Basketball Team wrapped up their regular season this past Saturday against Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, NC. They stayed on the East Coast and made the 80-mile drive down I-85 to Charlotte for the ACC Tournament that begins on Tuesday. Cal tied for 9th/10th place in league standings with Stanford, and earned the 9th place seed due to winning both games against The Cardinal during the season.
Coach Madsen had a short zoom call this morning with West Coast reporters and fielded an array of questions concerning the end of season, ACC and NCAA Tourney thoughts and preparations, and team mentality heading into the Wednesday matchup against Florida State. Below are a few notable quotes;
Nick highlighted how dependent this team is on shooting the three ball, and Cal’s inefficiency on two point shots. Coach Madsen was asked about shot balance when the long range shots aren’t falling.
“You know, we’ve never been a team where (focus on three point shooting) has been our philosophy. If you look at the shot distribution in the second half of Wake Forest, and really throughout the game of Wake Forest, you know, at times we tried to get the ball inside to our bigs, at times we were shooting the mid-range, and at times we, you know, we looked for open threes. And so, shot distribution, we’ve never tried to be kind of a one-trick pony”
On multiple games Saturday impacting Cal’s seeding, and how much was he aware of other games;
“Well, there were a lot of moving pieces. And so there’s always an awareness of what’s happening with the rest of the conference. You know, our focus at that time was to do everything possible to beat Wake Forest. We played a great first half, we didn’t play well enough in the second half to get the win. And so even with all the moving pieces, you know, coaches let me know kind of what’s happening in the conference because, we’re in there in our coaches' huddle in the coaches' locker room, so there’s an awareness there.”
On the Pitt and Wake Forest losses, and getting ready for this week;
“That (Pitt) was a disappointing loss because in addition to Pitt playing well, we didn’t execute the way we should have. We had a lot of intense film sessions, we had some really good practices after that to address some of the things that went wrong. The Wake Forest game, we played a great first half defensively. In the second half, they, they really killed us on second shots, second chance points. We fouled a three-point shooter. We did not do a good job controlling the glass, and they were able to take control of the game. And so now it’s about bouncing back. We studied the film, we walked through the things that went wrong to correct them, and now we’re preparing for the next game.”
FSU defeated Cal 63-61 back in January. At the time, FSU was only 2-6 in the conference and it appeared to be a bad loss. Since then, the Seminoles have gone 8-2 and a multi-game winning streak in the ACC Tournament may vault them back into NCAA contention. One last quote from Madsen, on preparing for the rematch against Florida State;
“They have the ability…to be explosive from the three-point line. You look at McCray, he’s a guy that can get downhill, get into the paint. They’re long, they’re athletic, they try to force turnovers. They do a lot of things really well. They have particular things they do in baseline out-of-bounds situations, sideline out-of-bounds situations, and so you, you have to be prepared for that. And they change defenses, they switch in and out of man and zone, and so these are things that we that we were prepared for the first time. The first time we played them it was a one-possession game and Florida State did a good job of beating us at their place. We played well at times in that game and at times we did not. We had a lot of turnovers in the first half against Florida State that hurt us.”
The ACC All-Conference selections were announced this afternoon. Dai Dai Ames earned third team All-Conference honors. Teams have five members each. Ames placed 15th in overall voting, securing his spot on the conference list. Ames was second place in Most Improved Player voting. At Virginia last year, Ames averaged 8.7 points last year in a rotational role by the end of the season. As one of the leaders for Cal, Ames averaged 16.7 points per game this year and was the focal point on offense for the Bears.
Justin Pippen earned Honorable Mention, finishing 22nd in total votes garnered. The second year player recorded sparse playing time last year at Michigan before blossoming at Cal this year, averaging 14 points, 4 assists, and 4 rebounds per game.
WriteForCalifornia will be onsite this week in Charlotte as Cal takes on Florida State. Follow me over on Bluesky for updates on Wednesday leading up to gametime, and for general feedback on the ACC Tournament experience.
Maybe they’re not preparing for Wake Forest?
Mark Madsen getting 1 vote out of 86 for ACC Coach of the Year illustrates the major uphill battle Cal faces in this insane era where 2 Northern California schools find themselves part of the Atlantic Coast Conference....