Bears End Hibernation, Drop Cougars 71-60

Even though we're well past Ground Hog day, it looked at first like the Bears were planning on six more weeks of winter, as they went into hibernation at the start of a game they absolutely had to win.

Cal sleep-walked through the first eight minutes against Washington State Saturday and spotted the Cougars to a 16-5 lead.

"We weren't aggressive, we weren't active defensively with the starting lineup," said Bears coach Mike Montgomery.

As the players are frequently reminded at practice, you should always listen to the coach. WSU was getting open shots, easy looks, and they weren't missing. A team that entered play shooting 42% from the floor for the year and 40% in Pac-10 play, was lights-out, hitting 14 of 21 shots before intermission.

At the 12:00 mark, four substitutions were made, and they all had a telling effect on the game.

WSU coach Tony Bennett removed freshman Klay Thompson from the game, and Montgomery sent in Omondi Amoke, Jorge Gutierrez and Harper Kamp.

With Thompson off the floor, Cal was able to lock down on Taylor Rochestie and get some looks themselves. Kamp provided instant offense with three buckets in a minute-and-a-half, which not only made him Cal's leading scorer, it gave him six of the Bears' 11 points and started the comeback.

"I thought Omondi and Jorge and Harper gave us some energy," said Montgomery in a moment of brilliant understatement. "We were down, we were hurting."

Over a 5-plus minute period while Thompson sat, Cal out-scored the Cougars 20-2, including Kamp's six, five from Jerome Randle, four from Gutierrez and five from Theo Robertson. With five minutes left in the first half, the Bears had reversed the 11-point deficit and were leading 25-18.

"You see that all the time about our team," Randle said. "Jorge and Harper, every night, it's really no surprise. They work hard in practice, and we knew they would do the same thing in the game."

The Bears once again employed a modified triangle-and-two defense, but they weren't able to stick with it very long.

"(We tried the) triangle and two," said Christopher, "we tried to go into it a little, but (Caleb) Forrest was knocking down shots from the corner, so we had to go back to man."

Rochestie hit a long three just prior to the horn to give the Cougars a 33-30 edge at the half.

The Bears shot 54% from the floor in the first half, 80% from long-distance, and still trailed, mostly because the patient Cougars were hitting 2/3 of their shots. Both teams were hitting so frequently, Amoke's four rebounds at the half were double what any other player on the floor had corralled, and together totaled almost one quarter of the missed shots in the half.

At the half, Christopher had three points on 1-for-1 shooting from behind the arc, and had dished out three assists.

Perhaps the Cougars thought he was willing to pass up the open shots. If they did, Christopher quickly disabused them of that notion.

Off a very solid screen from Jamal Wilkes, Christopher drained a wide-open trey from the top of the key to tie the game at 33-all just 30 seconds into the second period.

Thirty seconds later, Thompson was whistled for his third personal foul, and the Bears quickly grabbed the whip hand.

Behind Christopher's pair of treys, another from Randle, and a thunderous slam dunk by Jamal Boykin, Cal built a 44-37 lead with 14:22 to play. Then Thompson returned to the floor, the Cougars scored the next six points, and the game remained close for the next 12 minutes.

Aron Baynes hit a pair of hook shots in the low post, Rochestie made an old-fashioned three-point play (which included the Cougars' only free throw attempt of the game), and with 8:23 left, the game was tied at 52.

Asked about the disparity in free throws - Cal had 16 to just one for WSU - Bennett said "That was frustrating --- not discouraging, but frustrating."

It was also the turning point of the game, as Cal tallied 10 of their final 19 points from the charity stripe, hitting 10 of 12 free throws down the stretch.

And they also tallied their only fast break points of the game in that stretch.

But the Cougars would not go away.

After a Randle three gave the Bears a 60-54 edge with 5:42 left, Thompson hit a three-pointer set up by Rochestie's rebound, in the lane, of his own missed three-point attempt. Thompson hit another trey 47 seconds later to cap an 8-0 run entirely of his own making, and the game was again tied at 60 with 2:51 to play.

The Bears called a timeout, and out of that timeout got Christopher a look. He was fouled, went to the line and made one, but WSU uncharacteristically pushed the ball down the court after rebounding the miss and quickly put up an errant shot, rebounded by Kamp, who got the ball to Randle. He was fouled and made both free throws.

At 1:31 Robertson drained a layup off a ridiculous assist from Randle, a no-look over-the-head flip, Christopher hit a pair from the line 17 seconds later, but Rochestie nailed a 25-foot trey to close the gap to make it a two-possession game with 1:00 to play at 67-63.

Then, the Cougars, out of a time out, backed off on defense and let Cal run 30 seconds off the clock before Robertson hit a final jumper with 23 seconds remaining. The passive defense seemed like a strange decision since it was a two-possession game no matter what, and it backfired. Randle added a pair of free throws in the waning seconds to produce the final margin.

Christopher was 6-for-9 from the floor in the second half while Randle was 6-for-9 in the game; they both finished with 20 as the Bears shot 53% for the game.

"Patrick just needed to make a shot," said Montgomery. "We got a good look for him early (in the second half), and it helped his confidence. I don't care who you are, confidence is everything. Pat said all the right things, but I know deep down he was hurting."

Of Randle's performance, Montgomery said, "Jerome, 20 points on 9 shots is outstanding. His floor game is improving. It seemed to me he had a lot more than 3 assists."

Asked to comment on Christopher's second half detonation, Randle was succinct: "He was all right."

Randle also commented on the importance of completing the season sweep of the Washington schools and defending the home floor:

"This is big. I'm glad we came out and played hard and defended well. We had a good week of practice and we need another to get ready to play Stanford. It's good we got these out of the way to focus on Stanford."

The Bears play Stanford at Haas Saturday at 2 p.m.

When Montgomery was asked if he'd like another game during the week when the The Bear will meet their cross-bay rival (Stanford scheduled a sparring session with Cal State Bakersfield for early in the week), Montgomery had a typically droll response.

"We tried to get Duke this week, but they weren't available. We asked them to move the North Carolina game, but they weren't willing to. I can see the headlines now - "Duke Turns Down Cal Offer, Montgomery Pissed."

While it's debatable whether they are ready for Duke, it's a fact that the Bears need a win over Stanford to remain in the upper echelon of the Pac-10. Saturday's victory kept them tied with Arizona State at 7-4, no worse than third, pending the outcome of Sunday's Stanford-Washington contest.