Cal8285 said:
The dumb coaching move of the night belongs not to Jones, but to Mike Hopkins. OK, I don't know all of what was going on behind the scenes, but it made no sense to me that, as soon as UW tied the game at 71-71 with 4:36 left, Hopkins called an immediate TO, his last remaining one. Having been on an 11-4 run and having scored 5 points to Cal's none in the last 27 seconds, you'd think momentum was on UW's side and Cal might be getting a little panicky. A timeout was probably what Cal needed and UW didn't want. Yet Hopkins called his last TO?
UW was 1 for 8 from the floor in 4:36 after that TO, with the only 2 UW points a transition bucket after a steal by Crisp.
I loved the game that Cal played for the first 31 minutes, not so much the game we played the last 9 minutes, but thanks to UW's play after the Hopkins TO (and give the Bears some credit defensively), our offensive issues didn't kill us.
Last night, for the first 31 minutes, we had 20 assists to 5 turnovers. That was good basketball, if you want to know why this looked like the best game of the year up to that point, go no further than that 20-5 ratio over 31 minutes. I can't imagine we had any stretch of more than a half where we did that well this year (SD State was a watchable game where we had 18 assists to 8 TO's). Unfortunately, from that point on, it was bad offensive basketball. 2 assists and 6 turnovers, including 3 in a row on the first 3 possessions.
The only good news is that there was bad basketball on both sides, UW's coming especially after the inexplicable timeout. The last 4:36 was a little like watching the first 9 or 10 minutes of the game in Tucson, or pretty much the entire UCLA game at Haas, neither side playing watchable basketball. Over the next 4 minutes, Cal outscored UW 3-2, one FG for each team and 1-2 from the line Cal. 3 TO's for Cal in that stretch, 1 TO for UW and the aforementioned 1-8 floor. THERE'S great crunch time play for two teams. Then UW had no choice but to foul and at least we went 2-2 one of the two times they fouled, missing the front end the other time to make the last few seconds a little more exciting.
But the first 31 minutes made up for the lousy play by both teams at the end. I am very happy the players got to enjoy a conference win. Has the 12 seed in the Pac-12 tourney ever defeated the 1 seed in a regular season game? If this was the first time, it was a good time for it.
I didn't see the whole game, just about the last 15 minutes, but even when we went cold, we still did get a couple of buckets -- Anticevich had a couple of mid range Js, as well as that Vanover baseline 15 footer (which should be his bread and butter, a la Don MacLean). That kept us going. What I liked about that were two things:
For them to be open, they had to make entry passes into the post, which we rarely did most of the season. Anticevich and Conor both were not afraid to just turn around and calmly drain what are open 15 footers.
Secondly, our problem in many games was that we would basically make it a game for about a half and then have that one 5-10 minute stretch where we completely do nothing on offense. That usually has been the time where our opponents gain confidence and separation, and essentially win the game. Those baskets disrupted that flow, and decent teams do that. Decent teams never have a dark period of 10 minutes every game.
Hopefully we are learning from this. I would love to see them beat Wazzu and make a run in the Pac-12 tournament. Yes, Wyking still should be fired, but I have nothing against him personally and hope he has a really good March. I was so happy for him, the coaching staff, the players and team managers, and all of their families. They all have families. They all have friends. Imagine what a brutal stretch this has been for them. I was so happy for their celebration last night in the locker room. Go Bears!
