Bears Face Mid-Majors Hampton and Detroit-Mercy in brief stop in Berkeley

Cal’s itinerant basketball team is making a stop in Berkeley this week, interrupting what is basically a long journey from China to Brooklyn.

The Bears spent a week in Shanghai and lost to Yale, 76-59, in what was their official season opener. They returned home this past weekend and will take on a couple of Mid-Major teams. Hampton and Detroit-Mercy this week as part of the GotPrint.com Legends Classic. Following those games the Bears, whose non-conference schedule encompasses 18,000 miles, will head to New York to take on St, John’s next Monday and either VCU or Temple on Tuesday.

The Bears first home game this week seems to present the tougher challenge. Hampton (1-1), a small black college located in Virginia, was founded in 1868 (same year as Cal) and counts among its alumni Booker T. Washington. Picked to finish either third or fourth in the Big South, which they joined this year after 23 years in the MEAC (Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference).

The Pirates were 19-16 a year ago, 12-4 in the MEAC. They were passed over by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee despite sharing the MEAC regular season title. They did make it to the NIT, where they lost to Notre Dame in the opening round. The NCAA snub is indicative of why Hampton left the MEAC, despite having made the postseason one way or another five straight years. The Big South is not the upper echelon of NCAA conferences, but it is rated well above MEAC.

Coach Edward Joyner, in his tenth year at Hampton, returns five of his top six scorers from a year ago, including 6-1 guard Jermaine Marrow (2 above), a junior who averaged 19.3 points per game last season and was named to several preseason All-Big South teams.

Hampton’s victory is over a school called Mid Atlantic Christian University, which the Pirates overwhelmed, 110-58. In their second game they lost. 69-57, to the same Virginia Commonwealth team that Cal might see next week.  

That game gives a hint as to what the Bears might be up against Tuesday night. Shooting just 20 per cent (8-for-40) in the first half, Hampton trailed 35-19 at halftime and the gap grew to 24 early in the second period. Then Hampton, and Marrow, took off. He scored the next 14 points of the game himself, and when fellow guard Kalin Fisher finished the 17-0 run with three free throws, the Pirates were behind by only seven. However they could get no closer and VCU held on for the 12-point victory.

Marrow finished with 25 points and will present the Bears backcourt with a defensive challenge. He doesn’t shoot a lot of threes, he took just three shots from beyond the arc, hitting one, but he can’t be ignored out there, as he did hit almost 30 per cent in 2017-18.

The comeback left the Pirates feeling better despite the loss. “I told them at halftime, trust each other,” Joyner said.  “We got caught up in the atmosphere. We didn’t convert because we got into a one-on-one type of game. We sped up, and that’s what (VCU) wants to do.

“When we became more patient, we got open looks. That opened it up for Jermaine because other guys made open shots.”

Besides Marrow, who had 22 in the opener and is averaging 23.5 in the two games, the Pirates have other player averaging double figures in scoring. Guard Trevon Barnes averages 12.5.

Although outscored in the paint, 36-16, the Panthers outrebounded VCU 44-42. They have  only one starter, senior Trevond Barnes, as tall as 6-9. Guard Greg Heckstall, who stands just 6-6 but crashes the boards like a bigger player, had 12 of Hampton’s rebounds. The Pirates do have two “bigs”, Pierre Sow (7-0) and James Dunlop (6-11) but both are freshmen and neither saw the floor against VCU.

Detroit-Mercy, sometimes just called Detroit, has some basketball pedigree going back a few years, but is undergoing some tough times. They were 8-24 and 4-14 in the Horizon League last year. Coach Bacari Alexander, who is no longer around, had a two-year record of 12-44 that does not include the seven-game suspension for mistreatment of a player.

The new coach is Mike Davis, who had a successful tenure at Texas Southern, inherits a team with only two players returning who started as much as one game. With his team picked to finish tenth in the conference preseason poll, Davis quipped. "I thought they were gonna pick us 11th, but there are only 10 teams.”

The Titans are already living down to expectations. Going into Monday night’s road game at Butler they were 0-2, having dropped road games at Western Michigan, 89-76 and Temple, 83-67.

They do have some weapons, including the coach’s son, Antoine, who originally signed with Houston but switched when his dad got the Detroit job. He has come out firing, He averaged 31.0 points in the first two games, and was hitting 48.9 per cent from the floor, 44,4 (12-for-27) from beyond the arc. Senior Josh McFolley, who averaged 11.1 points per game last year, is checking in at 15.5 this year and had dished out nine assists. The leading rebounder is Chris Brandon, a 6-7 swingman, who has 13 rebounds in two games.

The undersized Titans were outrebounded, 94-65, in the first two games.

Detroit-Mercy has been to six the NCAA Tournament six times, last in 2012, and the NIT seven times, most recent in 2013.That are some lean times for the school that produced Knicks great Dave DeBusschere and All-Star Spencer Haywood.