Bears Pummeled in Pullman

Fresh off an encouraging win over fourth place Colorado last weekend, the Bears sleepwalked their way to a decisive 82-51 defeat to WSU in Pullman tonight.

Nowhere in the lopsided loss was the difference in play more apparent than behind the arc, where the Cougars had a substantial 21-point differential over Cal, hitting 12-of-23 (52%) to Cal’s 5-for-17 (29%) from three.

“I was really disappointed in the effort we gave tonight,” said Cal head coach Mark Fox. “The first half, off to a poor start. We had some good looks at the basket that didn’t go in. I thought our frustration offensively, we carried it right over to the defensive end and it effected our defense. We just let them have really good looks from three which they took advantage of.

“We just didn’t have the resiliency tonight that you need to have to win on the road. Obviously we’re really disappointed with our play tonight.”

After briefly pulling ahead 9-7 on a Andre Kelly jumper five minutes into the game, it was all downhill for the Bears, who failed to capitalize on WSU team leader and leading scorer Isaac Bonton (18.4 points, 4.2 assists, 4.2 rebounds per game) being out for the game - his second straight missed to injury.

Soph Noah Williams more than made up for Bontin’s absence, scoring from all over the court while playing solid defense. Williams scored an impressive 32 points on 12-of-20 from the floor and 4-for-6 behind the arc to go along with nine rebounds and seven assists on the night.

The Bears were led by junior wing Matt Bradley, who came off the bench after missing several practices this week to illness to score 16 points on 5-of-9 from the floor in 23 minutes.

Bradley didn’t have much help with only Kelly reaching double digits with 10 points and five rebounds on the night.

After the Bears’ brief lead, WSU closed out the half outscoring Cal to the tune of 41-17 including the last 10 points of the half.

Besides trailing by 22 at half, the Bears’ D gave up an attrocious 8-for-10 from behind the arc along with being outrebounded 20-8 and allowing 59% shooting overall, while turning the ball over seven times.

Not exactly a recipe for success.

It didnt’ get much better in the second half, with the Cougars stretching the lead to 35 before soph guard Dimitrios Klonaras took advantage of some late playing time to hit the final two buckets of the game to close out the scoring.

Cal got nothing from the point tonight, with starter Joel Brown going scoreless in the first half and sitting the second half out and just two points combined from Makale Foreman and Jarred Hyder on 1-for-8 shooting and 4 assists on the night from the trio. WSU also decisively outrebounded the Bears, 39-26 on the night.

The Bears’ uncompetitive loss was particularly disappointing after their strong victory over a solid Colorado team last Saturday and generally-improved play of late with most of their roster finally available.

“I’m really disappointed because we really didn’t carry over. We didn’t show the competitive maturity that you have to play with every night,” said Fox. “As well as we played on Saturday then to flip the coin and play that poorly tonight...I don’t want to take anything away from Washington State because their kids played well but for our kids to be so different than they were the other night, we have to develop a competitive maturity to play every day.”

The Bears wrap up their last road trip of the season Saturday at 7 vs. Washington In Seattle on ESPNU. Last place Cal falls to 8-16 (3-13) and WSU climbs to 13-10 (6-10) on the season.

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