Cal Men's Basketball Fouled By Beavers, 92-85

Jorge’s only chance of winning POY is Cal winning the conference. So he has a decent shot at it.

Cunningham was bailed out by the refs. no thanks, he still can’t play D.

I realize it’s early in the season for such talk, and I’m just a bit more than biased, but I’m thinking it’ll be hard to convince me to vote for anyone else other than Jorge for conference Player of the Year.

I went to the stats to support my bias, knowing it’s not entirely favorable for him, but I don’t care! Gut is certainly the most important player on Cal, and if Cal is able to win the conference, then Gut is my guy!

http://www.pac-12.org/portals/7/images/MBasketball/2011-12-stats/HTML/CONFLDRS.HTM

Scoring:
1. OSU’s Cunningham @ 17.0
2. UW’s Wroten @ 16.8
3. Cal’s Crabbe @ 15.9
9. Jorge @ 13.9
15. Ore’s Garrett Sim @ 12.8 (Gut’s spot opened when Sim bailed on Cal)

Rebounds:
15. Cal’s Kravish @ 5.9
17. Cal’s Crabbe @ 5.7
20. Cal’s Kamp @ 5.3

Assists:
1. WSU’s Moore @ 5.64
2. Utah’s Watkins @ 5.08
3. UW’s Gaddy @ 5.08
4. Cal’s Cobbs @ 4.6
5. Jorge @ 4.21

FT%
7. Jorge @ 81.4%

Steals:
1. OSU’s Cunningham @ 2.93
13. Jorge @ 1.29

Assist to Turnover Ratio:
1. UW’s Gaddy @ 2.87
2. UCLA’s Anderson @ 2.42
3. Cal’s Cobbs @ 2.3
4. Cal’s Smith @ 2.0
8. Jorge @ 1.59

Defensive Rebounds:
9. Cal’s Crabbe @ 4.6
10. Jorge @ 4.5

A few thoughts.
1) Nobody brings the all everything, leadership, consistency, selflessness, and competitive intensity that gets his team going that Jorge Gutierrez brings.
2) Crabbe is scoring and rebounding at a greater clip than Jorge. However, Jorge is in constant motion, driving the lane, collapsing the defense, and passing out to Crabbe’s open 3’s. Jorge’s movement creates shots for everyone on the team, including himself. He is also always guarding the other teams’ best guards on a nightly basis.
3) Jorge has toned down his defense in a positive way. Before, he’d go all out, excessively, getting himself into foul trouble, throwing him off his game a bit. Maybe he’d get a technical, maybe he’d just have to be calmed down on the bench. He’s not doing any of those excessive roughness fouls, and that is appreciated. He can still have the defensive impact without all that, but we need his offense so much more now, that he’s needed to balance out the D with O.
4) Jorge is not in the Top 10 in minutes played (31.6 and above) and that’s a great sign for the future of our season. We don’t want him getting burned out. Much appreciated, Brandon Smith!

I admit, it may be a bit of a tall order for Jorge to get the votes with his scoring being 9th, below 14 per game. Voters undoubtably flock to the highest scorers. Candidates would be Cunningham at OSU, if they can finish high enough in the standings. If UW finishes top 3, voters could lean toward one of 3 scorers (Wroten; CJ Wilcox 15.3, 4th; or T. Ross, 14.4, 8th). Arizona’s leading scorer is Solomon Hill at 12.1 (21st), so forget about them, though Hill is 3rd in rebounding. Similarly, Stanford’s Owens is 20th at 12.4/gm. The other 3 scorers ahead of Jorge come from Utah, USC, and WSU, teams that won’t finish high enough to be considered. Crabbe could also take Jorge votes away if Cal finishes high in the standings. There’s a good chance he could catch fire down the stretch and increase his scoring by a good margin. Still, I’m siding with Jorge for overall contribution.

Basically, let’s say it’s a 3 team (OSU, UW, CAL) and 6 player (Cunningham, Wroten, Wilcox, Ross, Crabbe, Jorge) race for Pac-12 POY! Well, I’ll throw in Hill of Arizona in there – it could happen. He could finish 2nd in boards and 10 spots higher in scoring with not much changing. He also is 13th in assists at 3.36. Well, nah. It’s all Jorge, baby! A little more scoring, a couple signature games, and a conference title and he’s there. That’s a long ways from his freshman year, from his recruitment announcement, from Chihuahua.

Hip, hip, Jorge!

i dunno, Oregon’s damn athletic. that’d be good

@Colorado might be tough

*we should still be on track to be the favorites to win the conference

Possible concussion or because he seems to have lost his confidence as a ball-handler and shooter?

So, who won all those?

Who knows, we weren’t actually able to watch the game, but it sounded on the radio like our guys were getting mugged and pummeled on several plays without a call, whereas any time Cunningham got brushed he got the call. But again, we couldn’t actually see the game, so who knows.