The BearInsider Scout: Cal vs Santa Clara

After a frustrating loss at San Francisco on Wednesday, the Bears are on the “road” again, this time to the South Bay with a matchup against the Santa Clara Broncos. According to the computer models, this one should be more evenly matched. Santa Clara is currently ranked No. 143 and San Francisco was No. 109 at the time it played Cal. Meanwhile, the Bears are No. 172.

It’s the Bears’ third game against a West Coast Conference team this year. So far the Bears are 1-1 with a win in the season opener against Pepperdine and the Wednesday lass to the Dons of San Francisco. Cal has one more game against a WCC opponent when Saint Mary’s travels over the hills from Moraga to take on Cal at Haas Pavilion next Saturday (December 14).

Santa Clara is also 1-1 against Pac-12 opponents. The Broncos beat Wazzu by eight at home in the third game of the season and then got pummeled by 18 points by a better-than-expected Stanford team in Palo Alto four days after beating Wazzu. It’s tough to get a read on the Broncos. They’re currently 8-2 and have won all but the Wazzu game by double-digits playing some pretty horrible teams. But the only top-100 teams they’ve played against (Stanford and Nevada) absolutely throttled the Broncos (Nevada won 98-67 two days ago).

As a team, the Broncos are very evenly balanced. Five players average between 9.5 and 11.1 points per game. No one averages over 30 minutes a game and nine players average at least 14 minutes a game. It makes sense as the Broncos are currently playing at a clip of 74.5 adjusted tempo, according to KenPom, which is the 25^th fastest team in the country. Santa Clara relies on rotating a lot of bodies to keep up with the pace.

So far, the player getting the most playing time is junior forward Josip Vrankic, who leads the team in rebounds, steals, and almost assists. Sophomore guard Trey Wertz is leading the team with 11.1 points per game. Fellow guard Tahj Eaddy, 6-11 big man Guglielmo Caruso, and DJ Mitchell — a forward transfer from Wake Forest — are also averaging in double-digit scoring. 

No doubt the Broncos are tall. Mitchell, Vrankic, and Caruso are all over 6-8. Wertz is a big lead guard at 6-4 and 185 pounds. The bench is also fairly big with Jalen Williams at 6-6, Keshawn Justice at 6-7, and Jaden Bediako at 6-10.

You can see how evenly matched these teams are by just looking at KenPom’s adjusted efficiencies. Of offense, Cal’s adjusted is 99.0, compared to Santa Clara’s defensive efficiency at 98.9. Three-point shooting has been covered almost too much for this Cal team, but if there was a time to find its three-point shooting on the road, this is it. Santa Clara hasn’t been good at guarding the three. Against Nevada, the Broncos game up 14 threes on 28 attempts. If you thought Cal got beat badly at three on Wednesday, it was a lot worse for the Broncos. It’s very likely Cal’s guards will get some open looks at three on Saturday. Can they connect?

As tall as the Broncos are, they are very bad at offensive rebounding. This is good for a Cal team that has been giving up a lot of offensive rebounds. Santa Clara is also pretty bad at shooting the three (277th in the country) but very good at making shots inside the three-point arc (eighth in the country at two-point shots). This makes it a bit of an easier scout for Cal. Pack the paint on defense and dare the Broncos to shoot over you. Do whatever you can to take away easy buckets near the basket.

Three Keys to the Game

Pace, Pace, Pace (and transition defense)

In the first half against San Francisco, the Bears were able to control the pace of the game. It was slow and the scoring was low. But in the second half, the Dons were able to speed the game up and get into transition more. This was bad for Cal for at least two reasons: Cal doesn’t have the depth right not to rotate guys in and out in a fast-paced game and Cal’s transition defense has been fairly horrible this year. Cal needs to make this a half-court game. 

Three-point shooting

Yeah, I know. This is brought up all the time with Cal. But as long as Cal continues to be a top three-point shooting team with little-to-no frontcourt production, three-point shooting will be a key. San Francisco is literally one of the worst teams in the country at guarding threes (allowing opponents to shoot 40.4% after the Cal game, which is 340^th in the country) and Cal still struggled. This is a game in which Bradley and Anticevich need to go off from long-range as they have at Haas Pavilion. Winning the game might depend on it.

Free-throws

Both teams are coming into the game averaging a 36.4% FTA to FGA rate, which is in the top-100. The difference is Cal has been really good at not putting other teams on the line (23.3% defensive FTA/FGA rate) while Santa Clara has been really bad at keeping teams off the free-throw line (40.6% defensive FTA/FGA rate). If the three-point shots aren’t falling for Cal, they need to find other ways to manufacture points and getting to the line could be a reliable one.

KenPom projects: Santa Clara - 72, Cal - 67 (68% win chance)

This seems a bit high. KenPom’s projection of USF winning by eight seemed about right, but I’m not convinced Santa Clara is as good as the computer models are projecting. Losing by 31 to a very mediocre Nevada team didn’t help that mindset. This will obviously take a strong effort on both ends of the court from Cal, but I’m bullish on Cal’s chances in this one (even though I’m a huge KenPom homer).