Cal Lays Egg On Senior Day vs Pitt, Falling 72-56

BERKELEY - It was Senior Day today in Berkeley, where Bear fans had their last opportunity to honor a talented crop of seniors in their last game at Haas Pavilion but the Bears came up with their most disappointing performance of the season in a decisive 72-56 loss to Pitt.

The game was a must win for the Bears with Pitt coming in at 10-18 overall and just 3-12 in conference play, sitting near the bottom of the ACC at 17th. The Panthers were coming off a close loss at Stanford where they held a 6-point lead with seven minutes to play, but Stanford used a 14-1 run to pull away for a 75-68 win in Palo Alto.

"Obviously, very disappointed with the way we played, Cal head coach Mark Madsen said after the game. "Congratulations to Pitt. They came out with tremendous physicality. They came out with tremendous energy. They wanted to get more than we wanted today, I take responsibility for that. That's not good enough.

"I'm very disappointed in myself for not having our guys better prepared. 12 turnovers in the first half is unacceptable. The missed assignments on box outs, those are unacceptable. The lack of physicality is unacceptable. I take responsibility for all of it."

For most of the season, the Bears got consistent production from their big four of John Camden‍, Dai Dai Ames‍, Chris Bell‍ and Justin Pippen‍ but the trio were only able to manage 30 points combined on 13-of-39 (33%) shooting from the floor.

The game started inauspiciously for the Bears as they turned the ball over at a high rate right out of the gate and at the 5-minute mark, Cal had more turnovers (5) than points when they trailed Pitt, 9-4 in the early minutes.

A Nojus Indrusaitis trey put Pitt up 8 at 27-19 with 4:16 left in the half as the Bears struggled to establish any kind of rhythm on the offensive end.

Ames came into the game as the Bears’ leading scorer at 16.8 points per game but he was also coming off the worst game of his Cal career when he fouled out in 22 minutes in the Bears’ 73-69 win over SMU with just 2 points on 1-for-10 shooting.

It didn’t start much better today for him today, as Ames didn’t hit his first bucket till 3:58 remained in the first half and the turnovers continued for both Ames (3) and the Bears with 12 TOs in the first 20 minutes, the last with Pippen (7 points, 3-11 shooting)‍ getting stripped under the Bears’ bucket with 5 seconds left in the half, turning into a Pitt putback on the other end of the court as the halftime clock expired with the Panthers holding a 34-26 lead in the locker room. The Bears didn’t make it to the line once in the opening stanza.

After missing Wednesday’s game with an illness, guard Dejuan Campbell was one of the few bright spots in the opening half, leading the Bears with 8 points along with some solid defense. That was all that the Bears would get from Campbell however, as the senior finished with 8 points in 23 minutes.

The second half didn’t start any better, with guard Demarco Minor hitting a 3 in the opening possession to put Pitt up 11 but a Bell three and an Ames layup in traffic cut the early second half lead to 6.

A Roman Siulepa dunk and a Cameron Corhen jumper pushed the Panthers’ lead to ten 3:26 into the second half but the Bears began to chip away from there, reducing the deficit to 3 with an Ilic layup and a Camden dunk and jumper with 13:05 remaining, 45-42.

The Bears were unable to sustain the momentum though, firing up early threes and failing to rebound most misses each trip down the court as the Panthers built their lead back up to double digits with 7 straight points with an Indrusaitis trey and dunk and a Corhen jumper to go up 54-44 with 6:52 remaining.

It only got worse from there as the Bears continued to miss shots while Pitt extended their lead to 14 on a 7-point run, culminating with an Indrusaitis 3 with 2:30 left in the game. Forced to foul on each possession, the Bears were powerless to get back into the game, as the Panthers extended their lead to the final 16-point margin.

Though Madsen shouldered the blame for the loss there was plenty of blame to go around for the ftrstrating defeat.

"We have to be able to handle success, Madsen said. "We have to be able to handle prosperity. And we did not do that this week. We came off an unbelievable win against SMU, some good wins before that, and we clearly were lackadaisical. We were not alert. We got beat on the boards, we got beat on the free throws, the free throw attempts. They took more shots than us. They had more assists than us. We had more turnovers than them. They had more steals than us. I mean, in almost every category, they outplayed us. This was a huge game for us, and we did not show up the way we needed to show up."

The Bears fell to 20-9 (8-8) as they head into their final road trip of conference play on Wednesday at Georgia Tech and try and salvage whatever slim NCAA tourney hopes remaining.