Bears Victorious on Senior Night, Knock Off BC, 82-71

BERKELEY - The Bears were badly in need of a victory on Senior Day in their final home game of the season at Haas Pavilion and senior center Mady Sissoko‍ came to the rescue with a dominating performance to key the Bears’ 81-70 win over Boston College Saturday night in Berkeley.

Sissoko was unstoppable, going 9-for-10 from the floor and 3-of-4 from the line with a career-high 21 points along with 15 rebounds in just 28 minutes on the floor, playing extended minutes with 4 fouls without pulling back in the slightest.

"It meant a lot, especially senior night," Sissolo said of his career high performance. Give the credit to the guards. They were finding me in every possible way. So it definitely meant a lot to close out the game like this, go crazy hard."

"He has gotten better from the start of the year till now, and he's done that with hard work," Madsen said of Sissolo, who put together his big game despite fasting for Ramadan..Mady is a really good shooter and he shows that from that short to midrange and in practice he makes threes. The time will come in his career when he shoots threes and it might be this season. So he's just someone that's so focused and cares so much about winning, and it's just an honor to have him in this program.”

The Bears got off to a strong start, riding active defense and an opening Jovan Blacksher‍ 3, a pair of Sissoko‍ buckets and a trio of baskets from Andrej Stojakovic‍ (14 points) to jump out to an early 15-4 lead 6:18 into the game. Blacksher had a solid game with 18 points and no assists in the win

BC clawed their way back, narrowing the Cal lead to 3 at 24-21 after a Chad Venning layup with 5:44 left in the half before the Bears offense started clicking again. The Bears closed the half scoring 18 of the last 28 points to take a 42-31 lead into the locker room. 

Blacksher had a strong first half, scoring 12, including three treys and no turnovers.

The Bears’ offense was stagnant in the second half as they struggled to get good looks against BC’s 2-3 zone. The Eagles came out strong with a 15-3 run to start the half with guard Donald Hand scoring 9 of the early second half points. A pair of Hand free throws gave BC their first lead of the game, 46-45 with 14:38 remaining.

The deficit seemed to wake up the Bears and they responded with six straight points on a layup by Wilkerson along with a pair of free throws after an intentional foul and a layup by Petraitis put the Bears up 51-46.

The lead didn’t last long, as the Eagles scored the next six points, going up a point on an Elijah Strong layup with 10:39 left.

The game was back-and-forth for the next few minutes before the Cal offense woke up, scoring 11 straight points to take control of the game. Back-to-back 3’s by Stojakovic and Jeremiah Wilkinson‍ (15 points) started the run and a Sissoku dunk and-1 plus a layup to give the Bears a 72-60 lead with 3:57 remaining.

BC attempted to make a late run, cutting the Bears’ lead to 7 witb 1:35 left but a pair of late free throws each from Blacksher and Stojakovic closed out the scoring in the win.

"The three games leading up to this have been challenging because it's been an overtime one possession loss of the buzzer at Georgia Tech,” Madsen noted. “Really good Georgia Tech team. You know, we're at Stanford. It's tied late. We don't get it done. It's SMU. It's tied late. The game goes a different direction. So I was really proud of our guys to come out and come out and execute very well tonight.”

Before the game, the Bears honored graduating seniors Blacksher, Sissoku, Christian Tucker, Matt Desler and Gus Larson.

The Bears will go on the road to close out the regular season at Louisville and Notre Dame before traveling to Charlotte for their first ACC tournament after clinching a spot with tonight’s win.