PAC-12 Tourney: Cal MBB Vs. WSU Recap

What. A. Performance.

The Bears dominated the game from the beginning and never let up. There were a few moments early in the game where the cougars made some plays to take the lead but after taking an 11-point lead into halftime the Bears did not look back.

1st Half:

The beginning of the game was fairly up-tempo. Both teams seemed to have tournament jitters and was flying up and down the court. The Bears zoned in on DaVonte Lacy and made sure that he was not a factor in this game. The gameplay was for another player other than Lacy and Josh Hawkinson to score on us. And for a moment it looked like this was going to be Ike Iroegbu's break out game. After scoring 3 quick buckets, Iroegbu looked unstoppable and going into half had 8 points on 4-7 shooting with a steal. The Cougars also stayed in the first half from help from Jordan Railey and Josh Hawkinson. Limiting Cal's 3 point shooting looked to be Ernie Kent's gameplan, but that was immediately thrown away. The Bears made 4/7 from downtown in the first half, with the only misses coming from Dwight Tarwater and Jordan Mathews. On the flip side, Washington state only took 3 attempts from beyond the arc but missed all of them. The key to the first half though, was Cal's offensive rebounding. Cal had 7 second chance opportunities from offensive rebounds, 4 of which came from DWIGHT TARWATER crashing the boards. And with Kravish and Tyrone Wallace cleaning up the defensive glass, the rebounding battle was firmly in the Bears' hands from the start.

Second Half:

This is where Cal ran away with the win. The first thing that any Cal fan can notice is the other players who got into the game. Yes. Cole Welle AND Brenden Glapion got some burn. That in itself should tell you the Bears had this game in the books late into the game. Tyrone paced the team with once again a stunning stat line if you take away FG%. Ty shot 5-11 for 12 points, but had 7 rebounds, 7 assists and 1 steal. Once again though, Free Throws could have been our downfall, shooting at a team rate of 66.7% is abysmal. But after knocking down 4 more 3s and having a FG5 of 58.5%, Cal made a lead that WSU could not over come. But the star of the second half was simply David Kravish. After going into halftime shooting 4-10, David turned it up in the second half ending on 10-17 shooting with 25 points (Career High), 8 boards and 3 blocks. With those boards and blocks, Kravish became only the SECOND player in PAC-12 History to have 900+ Rebounds and 200+ Blocks in his career.  Cal got an overwhelming win despite Bird and Mathews only combining for 13 shots, and if Kravish can keep himself out of foul trouble with the other Bears playing as well as they did? Well it could be a long stay in Vegas for the Golden Bears.

Go Bears!