Bears Take UCLA to Overtime but Lose 13th straight

The record shows that Cal lost its 13th consecutive game Wednesday night, when UCLA prevailed 78-67 in overtime at Haas Pavilion. 

But the Bears certainly gave the Bruins (13-12, 6-6 Pac-12) all they could handle. And had they not missed a number of shots they usually make, the losing streak, an ongoing school record, might be over.

More than once an easy lay-in seemed halfway down, only to come out. Justice Sueing even had a dunk slam off the iron. The Bears, who came into the game hitting 43.7 percent from the floor, hit just 33.8. And they were an anemic 6-for-22 from beyond the arc.

They still had themselves in good position; they led by ten in the first half, nine at halftime and 11 early in the second period. The crowd of 7,182 was energized and hopeful. But in the end the Bruins simply had too much firepower.

“The guys really battled tonight,” head coach Wyking Jones said afterward. “I was really happy with the effort. They left it all out there.”

He mentioned that many of his starters played more than 40 minutes and seemed to be pooped in the in the late going.

. “I have to do a better job of trusting my bench and getting those guys out of the game. I know that it affected them late in the game, They were tired.”

UCLA, which had been dreadful in the first half,  stormed back in the second, and it took a wild finish to bring in the overtime.

In the extra session, the weary Bears managed just three points, again missing shots they normally knock down and UCLA  scored the first five points of OT to go up 69-64. Sueing hit a three to cut the lead to two, but that was it for the Bears scoring. Darius McNeill missed a three, a lob misfired, Connor Vanover missed a pair of free throws, All the while UCLA was adding on.

At the end of regulation, freshman Matt Bradley, who had been 1-for-9 until then, came up huge and enabled the Bears to send the game to overtime. First he hit two free throws to give Cal a 59-55 lead with 2:04 left. That lead vanished as the Bruins hit a pair of treys, the second by Kris Wilkes, who scored 18 points after halftime.  

But Bradley coolly knocked down two free throws and it was tied.

Wilkes hit another trey to put the Bruins ahead again, but Bradley bombed one in from the corner with 27 seconds left to tie it again and Wilkes misfired at the end so we had overtime, “He’s fearless,” Jones said of Bradley. “He wants to take the shot. He wants to help us win.”

UCLA played an awful first half. But the Bruins, most notably  Wilkes, were much better after intermission. Wilkes burned the Bears by hitting five of his eight three-pointers post halftime. .

“We sloughed off of him a little too much and gave him too many open looks,”: Jones said.

As they have in most of their recent defeats the Bears opened the game with a lot of energy and took a 7-0 lead as UCLA was missing its first nine shots. Coach Murry Bartow, who took over when Steve Alford was fired seven weeks ago, was so disgusted with his starting unit that with less than four minutes gone he pulled them all at the same time and brought in five new players.

They did only slightly better and gradually Bartow put the starters back on the floor.

The Bears hd managed to build their lead to ten points when UCLA went on a 9-0 run to cut the margin to 20-19.

But Andre Kelly muscled in a lay-up, was fouled and finished an old-fashioned three-point play to give the Bears a little breathing room. A subsequent 6-0 run, two of the buckets by Vanover pushed the lead to eight.

The closing sequence was the first half in microcosm. McNeill hit a free throw with 32 seconds left to give the Bears 32-25 lead. UCLA then milked the shot clock to 15 seconds and Jaylen Hands simply threw the ball into the stands under the basket.

McNeill missed a jumper but Grant Anticevich tipped in the miss just as the buzzer was sounding, The officials needed to take a good long look at the replay, but finally ruled the bucket was good.

Afterward McNeill said the locker room was understandably somber. “Everybody was down,” he said. “We had it and everything was going well. The guards were mixing it up, we were rebounding. We missed some assignments at the end we paid for it.”

Nevertheless, the sophomore guard said there was some reason to be optimistic. “We are getting better every game,” he said. “We are in every game in the first half and in the second half we come out flat and don’t get it back together. We have just got stay focused the whole game. A team like us, we can’t afford to have mistakes. People will capitalize on it.”

McNeill led the Bears with 18 points, Sueing had 15 and Vanover 12.

The Bears were pretty much able to neutralize 7-1 Moses Brown, who had given them trouble in the first meeting this season. He scored just four points and had but a single field goal as Vanover discouraged him from shooting. He also was just 2-for-9 from the foul line. Jones said that fouling him was part of the game plan.