Women's Basketball: Cal Falls To Miami 69-60

The Bears' subpar shooting dooms them in loss and denies Cal a resume-building win

Coming into this game, Cal was #53 in NET rankings, Miami was #54. Still on the outside looking in for the NCAA Tournament, the Golden Bears need to win out and then win at least once in the ACC tournament to return to the field of 64. Cal has been a respectable 4-4 on the road in ACC play. Today matchup against Miami was Cal’s last road game before finishing the regular season with two games at Haas Pavilion next week. It was also Cal’s last chance to snag a Quad 1 win.

Graphic Courtesy Cal Athletics

After a close opening period, Miami asserted themselves in the second quarter and never trailed the rest of the way. With Cal leading 15-14 after the first quarter, the Hurricanes scored the first nine point of the second period to grab a 23-15 lead. This game featured a battle of true centers, with 6’ 5” Sakima Walker matched up against Miami’s 6’ 6” Ra Shaya Kyle. Walker picked up her second foul 10 seconds into the second quarter, forcing Claudia Langarita and Naya Ujukwu into extended playing time. Kyle finished the game with a Miami-high 16 points and 14 rebounds. Six of those rebounds were collected in the second quarter with Walker on the bench.

While Kyle was winning the interior battles, Cal could not answer on the perimeter. Miami’s defense wasn’t doing anything special against Lulu Twidale and Cal’s shooters. Cal was getting their typical shot looks; the shot just weren’t falling Cal shot 8-of-33 (24%) from outside, well below their season average. Cal shot 22-of-66 overall (33%).

Miami led 35-27 at half, and maintained a 6-10 point lead for the rest of the game. Miami occasionally pushed the lead to 11, Cal occasionally cut the lead lead to 5. But, like the Men’s win against Stanford yesterday, you never really felt the home team was in any serious threat for the second half.

As Cal’s shooting woes continued, Miami’s shooting was their best of the season. The Hurricane took ten less shots than Cal, but connected on 28-of-56 attempts (50%). Coming into the game, Miami was a below average 30% from 3-point range. Today, they connected on 7-of-10 (70%) from long range. Kyle’s interior presence helped Miami to 38 points in the paint. In Cal’s effort to pack the interior, Miami had several good looks from outside. It’s not a bad strategy to clog the middle against Miami and dare their shooters to beat you. Today, it led to early foul trouble for Walker. Miami guard Ahnay Adams was still able to penetrate to the rim while collecting a season-high 9 rebounds to go with 10 points and 6 assists.

Lulu Twidale led Cal with 18 points, but it took her 21 shots to get there. Gisella Maul added 9 points and 9 rebounds.

Both teams were horrible from the free throw line. Cal was 8-of-18 (44%), while Miami was worse at 6-of-15 (40%). Quite a statline for Miami….70% from long range but only 40% from the charity stripe.

With the loss, Cal falls to 17-12 overall, 8-8 in ACC play. Cal is now 1-8 in Quad 1 games, 3-10 in Quad 1/Quad 2 combined. Next Thursday night’s game against Clemson will be a Quad 2 game, while the regular season ending game next Sunday against SMU will be a Quad 4 matchup. The Golden Bears are currently 10th in ACC standings, and realistically will finish somewhere between 8th and 10th if they win both of their last two games. It will take at least two wins in the ACC tournament to re-enter the bubble discussion.