Cal Women's Basketball: Short-Handed Bears Fade Late Against Top-10 Louisville

But is there a sliver of NCAA hope for resilient Cal?

photo via @calwbball twitter

In some ways, Cal’s 71-59 defeat to #7 Louisville was a well-worn script. Just like losses to Vanderbilt, UNC, and NC State, Cal battled hard and stayed competitive deep into the 2nd half, but eventually a deeper, more talented team pulled away for a mostly comfortable win.

For about 25 minutes, Cal played Louisville dead even. Louisville’s biggest lead was seven, and when Gisella Maul hit a 3 a few minutes into the 3rd quarter, Cal led by 2 points.

Then Louisville hit four 3 pointers in a span of seven possessions to turn that 2 point Cal lead into a nine point Louisville lead, and although the Bears had a couple of short spurts, they never truly got back into the game.

But for me, this game didn’t fall into the same category as some of Cal’s earlier losses to top 25 opponents. No, instead I found myself encouraged by Cal’s showing and what it says about their chances to make noise down the stretch in ACC play. And there are a few different reasons why:

1. First, Louisville is just better than any other team Cal has played so far this year. The Cardinals are deep, well-rounded, have no obvious weaknesses, and if they beat Duke next Thursday they’re probably going to finish the regular season with an undefeated ACC record. Two of their three losses have been to UConn and South Carolina. Playing Louisville close is more impressive than playing teams towards the middle or bottom of the top 25 close.

2. The Bears are short-handed. Puff Morris has been out for a while now, but adding on the injury to Taylor Barnes means that the Bears went with a rotation of just 7 players and Charmin Smith had to go with some lineups that probably have had pretty minimal practice time together. Claudia Langarita played 24 minutes in just her 3rd game back from a seven week injury absence. Playing tough against Louisville in any circumstance might have been a positive development, but doing it down two starters says something about this team.

3. Cal DID get over the close-loss hump with big wins over Stanford and Notre Dame, two teams expected to make the NCAA tournament. We’re stacking up data points showing that this team has improved, and that improvement is resulting in quality wins against quality teams.

That improvement flashed often against top 10 Louisville. You saw Cal’s improvement when you watched Sakima Walker go toe-to-toe with Louisville’s imposing post rotation of Laura Ziegler, Elif Istanbulluoglu, and Anaya Hardy. You saw Cal’s improvement when Gisella Maul totaled a career high of 19 points, show-casing an offensive skill set that went well beyond a three-and-D wing.

We also saw the difference between where Cal is, and where Louisville is. Charmin Smith referenced it in her post-game press conference, talking about how Cal was affected by Louisville’s pressure both in terms of turnovers (14 total) but also how that pressure impacted shooting:

Their pressure rushed us to where we weren’t making our catch and shoot threes that we typically make. So they’re really aggressive defensively and I think it just kind of gets you moving a little bit faster than you want to be.

Sure enough, one game after blistering the nets against Notre Dame, Cal shot just 3-17 from beyond the arc. Hit just a few more, and this game likely goes down to the wire. But it’s probably not a coincidence that Louisville is 15th nationally in 3 point percentage defense, and we saw that effect on Sunday.

The other major difference in the game was offensive rebounding, where Louisville was +6. Considering the size advantage that’s actually not so bad a number, but Louisville also used those 2nd chances more successfully. 13 2nd chance points for the Cardinals vs. 3 for Cal was basically the margin in the game, and Charmin Smith cited boxing out as a point of emphasis for the Bears down the final stretch of ACC play.

Will the Bears be healthier soon?

On the broadcast, the announcers mentioned that Cal was optimistic about a return for Puff Morris in the near future, but didn’t attach a specific date. Meanwhile, after the game Charmin Smith wasn’t able to provide a timeline for Taylor Barnes, though noting she had progressive from needing two crutches to just one. While Cal has managed the absence of their two stand out freshmen well enough, getting them back healthy could go a long way to determining how much Cal can achieve in February.

Is a run to March Madness still possible?

Here are Cal’s final eight conference games following this loss to Louisville, which includes win probability numbers from the Torvik projection system:

I want to call out a few interesting details:

1. Cal is not a (meaningful) underdog in any game for the rest of the regular season. True, there are a handful of games that are functional toss ups, including a visit from Virginia Tech in two weeks and a tough road game to a Miami team that is right on the edge of the bubble. But based on how Cal has been playing over the last few weeks, I don’t think it would be unreasonable to have Cal as a favorite in every game left.

2. Look at that far right column marked WAB. Cal is almost back to 0.0 Wins Against Bubble (WAB). For those of you unaware, the WAB metric is a relatively recent addition to the Selection Committee’s list of metrics used to evaluate teams for the tournament. WAB has been around for a while and has always been a useful shorthand to project the final field of 64 teams. If Cal can get their WAB back into the positives, they can go into Selection Sunday with actual hope, which seemed deeply unlikely even two weeks ago.

What would it take? Well, if Cal won each of their final 8 remaining regular season games, Torvik projects that Cal would enter the ACC tournament with a WAB of +1.9, meaning that Cal could probably lose in the first round of the ACC tournament and still feel pretty good about making the tournament. If Cal goes 7-1 down the stretch, their projected WAB would be +0.9, which would probably require a win or two in the ACC tournament to enter Selection Sunday feeling safe. 6-2 or worse would likely require a major run and significant upset to have a shot at an at-large tournament bid.

Is 8-0 likely? No, not really. If you believe Torvik’s projection system, Cal has a roughly 4% chance to run the table. Sure, games against Pitt and SMU are very likely wins, but the other six games mostly trend towards being toss ups, and coins don’t land heads six times in a row very often.

Still, the Bears have done enough over the last few weeks to give themselves a shot. If they keep improving, and if they get Morris and/or Barnes back healthy and contributing, I like their chances a bit more than the 4% chance that Our Computer Overlords spit out.

Cal’s attempt to finish perfect begins Thursday in Atlanta against Georgia Tech in what is more or less a must win game . . . but then again, that’s going to be the case for every game between now and the end of the season. Welcome to college basketball in February!