Time: 5:30 PM PST/8:30 PM EST
TV: CSN California/FSN Arizona
Radio: KFRC 1550 AM
Streams: Post in comments
Spread: ASU by 2.5
Injury report: Sanders-Frison (out)
ryandrew disagreed with me about the difficulty of tonight's game, so to hear his sunny-side take on what will happen tonight, take a look below.
This is NOT our toughest road game of the season, and ASU is not our biggest threat in the Pac-10 race. I’ve watched most of ASU’s games (cause I’m a habitual gambler-what can I say), and ASU gets by because they play a 2-3 zone in a poor shooting league. In the games they’ve won, they usually hold opponents to ridiculous shooting percentages. Basically ASU is playing the perfect type of defense for the league this year, cause no team (outside of Cal) can actually shoot (maybe WSU). But UofA has created the blueprint for beating them; running. ASU is slow and unathletic, and cannot run with you. As long as you don’t give them a chance to setup their defense, they can be beaten badly.
Cal actually matches up very favorably with ASU. #1 we can shoot the ball. #2, ASU’s zone is not a trapping zone (like Syracuse or OSU – which we will struggle with). The game will probably come down to a shooting contest (cause they have almost zero post play as well) and with them without McMillan, I feel comfortable out-shooting them. The big key will be getting stops and getting the defensive rebound; if we can do that, we will get a lot of open transition 3’s (ala WSU). Another thing in our favor is that we have our best defender (Theo) going against their best shooter (Kuksiks).
I guess that's what I get for watching ASU for about twenty minutes this year.
Note: Women's game starts around 7 PM at Haas. Norcalnick will fill you in on that game a later tonight!