Cal Men's Basketball Cruises Past Mercyhurst, 81-55

The shorthanded Bears have little trouble with the newest team to D1, as Jeremiah Wilkinson sets a new career high with 25 points.

Photo Credit: Rob Hwang (Bobbys.Cinema)

Presuming that Cal had five scholarship players available, this was never a game that was going to be in doubt.

Mercyhurst is in their first year at the Division One level, and they weren’t even particularly good at the DII level last year, when they went 15-16 and lost twice to Cal . . . ifornia University of Pennsylvania Vulcans.

The Lakers aren’t completely incapable of playing basketball - they have wins over fellow D1 bottom feeders Morgan State and Canisius. But they got demolished by the same Air Force team that Cal handled a week ago. Mercyhurst is the worst team on Cal’s schedule this year.

So no, this wasn’t ever going to be close, even without Jovan Blacksher, BJ Omot, and DeJuan Campbell all sitting out their 3rd straight games with injuries. Cal struggled to get going early on offense and the game was a slog for a few minutes, but then Jeremiah Wilkinson came in off the bench and started cooking offensively, and the Bears never looked back.

Cal’s athletic dominance really stood out on defense, where almost every shot was contested and Mercyhurst struggled badly just to find shots. Five different Cal players blocked a shot, and the Bears forced multiple shot clock violations, and a high number of turnovers for a team that is usually careful with the ball.

Again, the star of the game was freshman Jeremiah Wilkinson who scored 25 points on just 12 shots, plus 4 assists and 2 steals just for good measure. Wilkinson was in complete control from the minute he checked in, immediately drawing a foul on a drive before nailing a step back unassisted 3. He had 12 points by halftime and kept it going before finally getting pulled when the walk-ons came on the court late.

Here’s what Wilkinson has produced in the last three games:

No biggie, just averaging 21.2 points/game on 11.3 shots/game. Hey, is averaging nearly 2 points/shot good? Wilkinson’s emergence as an ultra-efficient scorer when given the opportunity has absolutely been the story over the last couple weeks. We’ll see if he can keep it going against tougher competition, but he could lose some efficiency and still be a wildly valuable player to this team.

Andrej Stojakovic and Josh Ola-Joseph were the other main offensive drivers - Ola-Joseph is already the master of the baseline cut to finish play. Mady Sissoko and Lee Dort were as dominant inside as you’d expect, combining for 17 rebounds, not far behind Mercyhurst’s 24 total rebounds for the entire game.

Roxy Bernstein was on the call and noted that Blacksher and Campbell both participated in shootaround, so I’d fully expect both to play when Cal is next in action on the road against Missouri. Dennis Gates’ Tigers are 6-1 and a good enough team that Cal will need those players back to get the road win, but I’d imagine that Mark Madsen and his staff realized that they could afford to give both players another game off to ensure a full recovery. BJ Omot is more week-to-week with his unspecific injury.