Cal aims to keep rolling vs. SMU's 'lot of weapons'

Buckle up.

Riding a big win over Stanford, Cal will host SMU, a solid team in a nearly identical boat, in the Blue and Gold’s penultimate home game on Wednesday night at Haas Pavilion — and the stakes remain high as Mount Whitney.

Staying in the NCAA Tournament conversation, of course, remains on the line for the Bears (19-8, 7-7 ACC). But they also need a win over the Mustangs (19-8, 8-6 ACC) to better position themselves for a top-nine seed in the ACC Tournament, which would give them a bye.

Every game is a must-win. But the Bears could really, really use this one.

“SMU’s a really good basketball team,” Cal coach Mark Madsen said during the weekly ACC Zoom call on Monday. “They have a lot of weapons, they have tremendous size. They play, whether it's their man or their zone, very sound with what they're trying to accomplish. They have players that can find their way into seams of the defense. They're a great passing team. They shoot the three-ball well. 

“There's a reason why they're one of the top teams that we're going to play this year.”

Led by guard Boopie Miller, who averages 18.7 points, 6.9 assists and 3.6 rebounds, the Mustangs are tied for the conference’s highest-scoring offense with 86.8 points per game and hold the second-highest team field goal percentage at 50 percent.

SMU is also one of just two ACC teams — the other being NC State — that shoot better than Cal from behind the arc, with a 37.9-percent clip from deep to the Bears’ 37.6-percent figure.

“You got Boopie out there,” Madsen said. “(SMU has) a lot of good, tough guards and wings who … can gamble a little bit because they have pretty good rim protection behind them. And so this is a very good team, it's a talented team, and it's a very well-coached team.”

The Bears enter on a two-game winning streak and as winners of four of their last six. 

Cal will certainly have its hands full in what should be one of its more challenging matchups at arguably the biggest stretch of the season, but the Bears are feeling good about where they stand.

“We just finished a tremendous practice session this morning,” Madsen said. “And the guys were here early, getting shots. We went hard, we watched a lot of film, we got better today. And that's our process — get better every single practice session, prepare for every single team. 

“And when you jump up the ball, don't leave anything out there on the court.”

It sounds like Cal will enter with a 6-foot-10 boost, too.

Madsen added that, if he had to “guess,” starting center Lee Dort would play against SMU after missing the last seven games with an undisclosed lower-body injury suffered in Cal’s win over Stanford on Jan. 24 in Palo Alto.

“Lee Dort went 100 percent live,” Madsen said, referencing the Bears’ Monday morning practice. “We scrimmaged up and down. He looked great … I don't have the post-practice report from our trainer yet, but … we're right there. Whether it's SMU or Pitt, we’re extremely close.”

Dort is close. Cal is close. March is close.

The Bears are one victory away from their first 20-win season since the 2015-16 team, led by current Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown, finished with a 23-11 record and NCAA Tournament berth.

Cal is in the thick of several conversations that it has been excluded from for some time.

And while conference play is tough, and facing SMU won’t be easy, Madsen agrees with Stanford coach Kyle Smith, who said Saturday night that competing in the ACC has been a good experience for the Bears and Cardinal.

“I think the ACC has really pushed us to be the best versions of ourselves,” Madsen said. “The travel is incredibly difficult. I hear about other teams traveling; we would feel the same way, but our travel is brutal, going to the East Coast all the times that we do.

“But we play against Duke, Carolina … Louisville. And this is a great, great basketball conference. And so, it's definitely pushed us to be better.”

The Bears have already faced the ACC’s blue bloods.

But SMU will be eager to remind Cal that it is a newbie who can hoop, too.