Cal Basketball

Cal Wins Thriller at OSU

By Cal Athletics

February 9, 2022

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CORVALLIS, Ore. – The California men’s basketball team snapped a 10-game losing streak by defeating Oregon State 63-61 in Pac-12 action at Gill Coliseum on Wednesday night.

With 18.4 seconds remaining, Jordan Shepherd scored the game-winner on a layup that was goaltended by the Beavers. Cal then clamped down defensively as the Beavers fired off three shots but could not connect on their final possession of the contest.

Cal moved to 10-15 (3-11 Pac-12) with its first road win of the season and first overall win since Jan. 2. Shepherd had a team-high 15 points – including the Golden Bears’ final four – and Grant Anticevich scored 13 points along with eight rebounds. Joel Brown nearly pulled off a triple-double, tallying nine points, a career-high nine rebounds and seven assists to go along with three steals. The junior guard also committed just one turnover in 35 minutes played.

“I’m super-proud of Joel,” Cal head coach Mark Fox said. “He really competed well today and I thought he was probably our MVP. We had a lot of guys chip in and play well but, boy, he was the difference in the game.”

Despite shooting just 39 percent (23-63) from the field, Cal scored 17 second-chance points with 14 offensive rebounds and converted a season-high 10 steals into 11 points off turnovers.

The Bears held Oregon State without a field goal for the final 5:16 after a 3-pointer by the Beavers’ Dexter Akanno tied the game at 55. Oregon State made six consecutive free throws to take a 61-59 lead with 1:54 remaining before Shepherd nailed an elbow jumper at 1:39 to pull even.

The contest featured 10 ties and eight lead changes.

Oregon State (3-18, 1-10) lost its eighth straight game.

UP NEXT

Cal faces Oregon at 1 p.m. PT Saturday at Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene. The game will be televised on the Pac-12 Networks.

Cal Wins Thriller at OSU

3,471 Views | 3 Replies | Last: 2 yr ago by Cal8285

BearoutEast67

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5:12a, 2/10/22

Great gritty ugly win! Awesome to have Brown back to lead so well.

Donate to Cal's NIL at https://calegends.com/donation/

KoreAmBear

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In reply to BearoutEast67 • 2:43p, 2/10/22

BearoutEast67 said:
Great gritty ugly win! Awesome to have Brown back to lead so well.

He was playing like that before he got COVID. Glad he's getting back to where he was.

Cal8285

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In reply to KoreAmBear • 3:24p, 2/10/22

KoreAmBear said:
BearoutEast67 said:
Great gritty ugly win! Awesome to have Brown back to lead so well.
He was playing like that before he got COVID. Glad he's getting back to where he was.

In some ways, Brown getting COVID quashed hopes of the team finishing out of the bottom third of the conference. Everybody has to deal with some health issues, whether COVID or injury, but this is a team that can't really afford to lose any of its key players.

We were 2-3 when we headed up to Washington for a pair of road games, needing to get at least one to have a decent shot at a middle of the Pac finish. After the first five games, the team had stopped playing stinkers. I think we beat UW if Brown is in the game, and I think there's a decent chance we take WSU if Brown played more than one minute. Winning one or two of those would have made a difference in our conference prospects.

Of course, the Kelly injury then really quashed things. Even with Brown back and Kelly still healthy, we had no expectations to win any of the next 3 after the Washington trip, Arizona at Haas, or UCLA or SC in LA. But if Kelly doesn't get hurt in the second half against SC, it turns out we had an outside shot at SC. And if we had Kelly, who knows how Stanford, UW, or WSU would have turned out.

Coming into last night, the season has sort of had 3 phases, the bad first 5, the decent next 11, and the losing streak of 10. The losing streak of 10 phase really got kicked off with Brown being out. We'll see if the next 6 games are just a continuation of the third phase, with the win over a terrible OSU team being a blip in the schedule, or if we can win some of those last 6 games.

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