Washington 84, Cal 69: One Bear Short

by Avinash Kunnath on Jan 17, 2010 3:00 AM PST in California Golden Bears Men's Basketball

When they're a complete basketball team, the Golden Bears are a tough team for anyone to battle for forty minutes. Kansas will attest. So will Pacific and the Furd. But when a key member of the rotation goes down, they're not only beatable, they can be utterly mediocre, as was the case yesterday against the Huskies. Cal's seniors looked ragged after an up-tempo battle in Pullman, and got their asses waxed for forty minutes.

Without Theo Robertson, the Bears lost a third of their big three scorers, couldn't compete against more talented Syracuse and Ohio State squads, and ran out of steam in the Pit. Without Jorge Gutierrez, Cal fell in embarrassing fashion to UCLA, slogged their way to a win over USC, and showed no defensive intensity at all during the Washington road trip.

I should emphasize this over and over: The Bears are not a deep team. Any injury to their guys will reveal that fragility. Our bench is good enough for 3-4 minute spurts, but you can't ask any of them to play 15-20 minutes without seeing a rapid dropoff in performance from the guys in front of them. In this case, no Jorge meant no one on the bench to provide energy or minutes, it meant more time for the fatigued seniors, it meant giving more minutes to guys who haven't seen enough PT to make an impact, it meant mixing and matching rotations and hoping for SOMETHING to stick. It didn't work Saturday.

After the jump, more thoughts on the team. Discuss the roadtrip in the comments and grade the Bears in the report card (or click here to get the form)!

I'm not going to moan and gripe too much about the defeat too much--I know we didn't play well at all. I expected Randle's play to fall to Earth, just not fall off the face of the Earth. Robertson and Boykin were no-shows. Amoke was invisible. Only Christopher, Seeley and Zhang looked ready to play, and the last two clearly were well-rested. For the Huskies, Isiah Thomas and Quincy Pondexter played excellent games on both sides of the ball, outclassing Randle and Robertson. Overton was excellent defensively, Bryan-Amaning had an excellent offensive game against whoever guarded him, Gaddy distributed the ball, Holiday made some heads up plays on both sides of the ball--it was a completely A+ performance from a deeper, more talented team.

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That's why I doubt that playing well would've earned us a win. The Huskies played like a team that neeed to win. They were more energetic, more athletic, and frustrated a Bears team that didn't have anything left to show. In short, they played like a team playing on a two game homestand--a loss for them would've ended any realistic hopes at winning the conference. They did what they needed to do--our job is to return the favor when we play them in Haas.

In the big picture, a fifteen point loss is no different from a one point defeat--take it, move on, set the reset button. The Bears and everyone else might as well be starting the conference schedule next week--there is no separation between any of these squads--so just keep on winning and keep pace with everyone else. No one is going to race away to the conference title this year.

Above all, they need to get healthy, get Jorge back into the lineup, and stay healthy. Otherwise Cal's goose is cooked.

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Comments

Wasn't surprised

I was expecting a blowout loss given how WSU game went and the early start time for UW. Cal got their road split, which is what you want. This would have been icing on the cake.

You do make a great point about our lack of depth. I can’t see us being that good next year.

by KikiRevenge on Jan 17, 2010 6:39 AM PST reply actions

I don’t think Jorge would have helped enough with this one. We needed someone to run the offense, distribute the ball and not turn it over, and Jorge doesn’t do that (yet, at least). It’s happened before, and it will probably happen again this season, but if you can get to Randle and disrupt the Bears’ offense at the point of attack, you can slow this team to a halt.

Defense and energy might have kept the Bears in the game longer, but it wouldn’t have helped much to slow all those transition buckets off turnovers.

So, basically, you gotta Go Bears!

by ragnarok on Jan 17, 2010 9:12 AM PST reply actions

Probably not—if this was the only game he played. But if Jorge was available for both Washington games, do we ride our seniors as much? I doubt Randle plays as badly if he doesn’t play wire-to-wire against Wazzu. The point is if you lose one guy for an extended period of time, the Bears will eventually lose a couple of games they could otherwise win.

Email: bearsnecessities@gmail.com

by Avinash Kunnath on Jan 17, 2010 10:40 AM PST up reply actions

Good point, Rag. Thomas was really bugging Randle – didn’t those two square off last season? And then you come in with Overton who is an absolute pest and Randle was in a funk, rather than his groove, as we more often see.

UW played active, aggressive and constant Defense. It’s like the opposite of what we saw on Thurs night – WSU let Randle got his groove going and the ball game was over before it was over. UW never let that happen and it was also over early, like 1st half over.

point #2: We are actually down 1 man in every game – and that would be at least one of the following big men: Kamp, Harrison, Wilkes. So, when we lose Theo or Gut, then we are down 2 in our top 6 rotation. In NM we were actually down 3, b/c MSF was dead.

point #3: What was up with Boykin playing only 19 minutes? And Monty starts Amoke, but he plays only 14 min? I realize Omondi got 2 quick fouls, but then he simply decided to not use him. There’s a story there for someone – how can we win without our most talented post players in the game? I do realize that the bench (Nicola, Smith, and Seeley) got extended minutes b/c of the score. But Max and MSF only played 12 and 13 minutes each. Like, gee – let’s just give up the post and play 5 guards? Like I said, there’s a story in there somewhere. I think what it says is “point #4”

point #4: We’re actually NOT that good. The preseason polls seemed excessively high (and not by a little considering our lack of interior size on the national scene) and yet I slowly bought into it – that we’d have a great senior guard team (which is often the formula). We lost the big games in NY, but I still convinced myself that we’d do just fine in the Pac, b/c it was a down year and nobody else had dominant big men. Well, at this time, I go back to recruiting…. who do we have that was identified long ago as a stud athlete. I think PC was a 4 star, and that’s all we got, and he ain’t even the best guy on the team. Maybe it says something about you if you’re best player was weakly recruited and less than 5’8".

Time for another realignment of expectations.

by concordtom on Jan 17, 2010 12:17 PM PST up reply actions

I agree concordtom. Also our preseason ranking was based on a couple assumptions (1) We would be healthy – and we haven’t been all year and (2) The Pac-10 would be awful.

Well, guess what – the Pac-10 is awful. The teams are just terrible, terrible, terrible. Cal has two bad losses in the last week, and yet they still are right at the top of the conference standings. Sure, Washington played well this weekend, but they still haven’t won a game outside of Seattle (and got killed by both ASU and Arizona on their first Pac-10 roadtrip.)

Once it became clear that Kamp would miss the season, it was no longer realistic that we were a top 15 team. But even after we readjust our expectations, we still should expect the Bears to win the Pac-10. And considering that has happened in like 50 years, we still could have a pretty nice season.

by Tedfordisgod on Jan 17, 2010 2:00 PM PST up reply actions

True – we still could be in the running at the end of the Pac10 season, and how cool would that be?!!!!

Normally, we would say that losing at UW is not a bad loss. Even considering that they dropped those 3 games in league already. I mean, I do believe they are a good team. I think Thomas, Overton and Pondexter are really good. I also really like their coach and his style of play. I think they must really be working on getting Adbul Gaddy going – he’s young and has a lot of upside. While I thought they were deeper than Cal, with Breshers, Gant, and Bryan-Amaning on the inside, I find it interesting that they only have 11 scholarships on the roster, instead of the allowed 13. Hmmm – some investigation needed. But, my point in talking about UW is while there’s no shame in losing at UW, but there was major shame in the way we lost. So, I agree, TIG, it was a bad loss, just like UCLA at home. We got manhandled by Ohio State and Syracuse and Kansas, despite comments to the contrary (2nd half was no contest). NM was a debacle. And now these two losses. We have 6 losses, and NONE have a feeling where your like, “that was a good loss”.

by concordtom on Jan 17, 2010 2:20 PM PST up reply actions

On the other hand, other than the loss to UCLA, all of our losses are pretty understandable.

Kansas and Syracuse will very likely end up No. 1 seeds in the tourney. Ohio State was really good with Evan Turner healthy. New Mexico is a good team that is notoriously hard to beat at home. Washington was a preseason top 15 team. Sure, none of the losses were particularly pretty – I do think we played quite well at Kansas though – but we haven’t dropped a game that we really should win 9 times out of 10 (say Pacific or Iowa State.)

I think that is the distinguishing feature of Monty’s tenure so far – we don’t lose many to clearly inferior teams (again UCLA not included). Up until this point, however, we have just had a lot harder schedule than last year, and we don’t have a better team than last year.

by Tedfordisgod on Jan 17, 2010 2:46 PM PST up reply actions

The UCLA loss is "understandable"

It was the result of a freakishly horrible combination of unlucky events. Lemony Snicket had nothing on that game.

Shawn Spencer: "I’m receiving a transmission from your husband. Really more of a voicemail, if I'm being honest. A status update. Perhaps a twitter."
Burton Guster: "I believe it’s called a tweet."
Shawn Spencer: "There’s no way I’m saying that."

by PaulThomas on Jan 18, 2010 3:59 PM PST up reply actions

I’ll take your word for it – I was on a flight and didn’t see the game. But on paper, it doesn’t look too good.

by Tedfordisgod on Jan 18, 2010 7:16 PM PST up reply actions

The preseason polls failed to acknowledge that we overachieved last season, and then assumed we would build upon this overachievement, which isn’t likely. We built our great record early last year, while we were able to still sneak up on teams, but once we became an established team, teams were able to successfully game plan for us.

by chowder on Jan 17, 2010 2:07 PM PST up reply actions

I agree that last season was over-achievement that then became the baseline, with improvement expected, thus the high poll ratings.

by concordtom on Jan 17, 2010 2:10 PM PST up reply actions

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(updated 1.2.2012 at 11:12 PM PST)

North	Conf		Overall
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Oregon Ducks Addicted To Quack	8	1	12	2
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Washington Huskies UW Dawg Pound	5	4	7	6
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USC Trojans Conquest Chronicles	7	2	10	2
UCLA Bruins Bruins Nation	5	4	6	8
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Arizona St. Sun Devils House Of Sparky	4	5	6	7
Arizona Wildcats Arizona Desert Swarm	2	7	4	8
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