What are your Cal basketball non-conference thoughts?

boomtho: Cal has exceeded my expectations defensively, given the injury to Kam and Jabari's struggle to get healthy. The team has been better at the point of attack than I thought they'd be, and since Kam went out, Kingsley has stepped up (even minutes-wise if nothing else) in a big way that I didn't really anticipate. Cal has done all this defensively despite Rabb having one hand to play with, starting a tiny freshman PG, and giving reasonably big minutes to guys (Coleman, Mingo) we may prefer not to.

I'll also give a shoutout to Charlie Moore who has been a freaking revelation thus far. The scoring and explosiveness is what catches your eye, but he does so much that you wouldn't expect a freshman to do: keep the bounce alive, probe effectively without being out of control, sees interior pocket passes that even our team isn't ready for.

In terms of disappointment, I'll mention a couple things. First, just purely on wins and losses, it's a bit disappointing to have lost both SDSU and Seton Hall. Given limited chances to notch decent OOC wins, I was hoping to chalk at least one of those up to a win. Losing to SDSU is especially annoying given last year's results and this year's football result. Second, as has been my constant complaint under Cuonzo, the offense is pretty far behind the defense. It's hard to complain too much given the lack of continuity, but it's still frustrating to watch in game. Last, personnel wise, both Mullins and Mingo have been disappointing, especially on the much-needed element of consistent perimeter shooting.

Nik Jam: Despite injury problems, it has not resulted in a bad RPI loss. (Though we were close to doing so against Irvine, Princeton and Louisiana Tech, the last one probably sinks our season) On the other hand, we may regret that Seton Hall game in March. That's what I said about the Virginia loss and we wound up OK... the problem is, the Pac-12 won't be as RPI-heavy as last year. All I'm hoping is that the injury bug does not plague the entire year. When Rooks comes back, we should be able to beat anybody. We may not be able to afford bad losses to the bottom half of the Pac.