Tempering Expectations
My guess is, most of you haven’t paid much attention to this year’s men’s basketball team. Given the lackluster non-conference schedule, past year’s performance, and the crushing pain of disappointment currently known as ‘football season’, I don’t blame you much. Perhaps, however, some of you began awakening from your post-Big Game fetal position to notice that Braun’s team was 6-0, his best start at Cal, including a 43-point drubbing of Jackson State that saw the Bears rack up 117 points. Maybe you started paying attention. Maybe you heard that last Sunday’s game at Kansas State was actually televised, so you decided to tune in and see if this Bears team was worth following. I hope you did. If all you saw was that the Bears came away from Manhattan, Kansas with their first loss, perhaps you said "Eh, same old Braun team. Beats up on a bunch of chumps then lays down in front of a real team. I’m not getting my hopes up." If so, that’s too bad. Despite the loss, there were plenty of reasons to continue following this team on display Sunday.
With the exception of a couple runs, this was a tight game throughout. With K-State leading 10-5 early on, the Bears put together an impressive 19-4 run to build the largest lead by either team all day, a lead that was worn to nothing by halftime. Midway through the second half, the Wildcats slowly built a 9-point lead, only to see it erased by a 9-0 Bears run, sparked by an improbable, fadeaway 3 from Knezevic to beat the shot clock. Other than that, this was a possession by possession game the whole way, and anyone watching would conclude that these teams were essentially equal, with K-State getting a couple lucky shots in the last two minutes to pull away.
I say these shots were ‘lucky’ because Kansas State is a horrible 3-point shooting team, and the Bears did a good job all day forcing the Wildcats to throw up bricks from beyond the arc. It was a good strategy, but Kansas State hit 2 in a row with time running down, and the Bears couldn’t respond.
I was also impressed with how well the Bears handled Michael Beasley, the Wildcats’ future top 5 NBA pick (he might even go #1). With Hardin out for most of the first half with foul trouble, the Bears rotated a committee of bodies on him, keeping him out of his game for much of the day. Unfortunately, in his place, Bill Walker went off for a career-high 30 points, single-handedly keeping K-State in the game for long stretches.
The obvious star for the night for the Bears was Ryan Anderson, who had 24 points and 11 rebounds, making a bunch of tough plays. Unfortunately, I think he felt the scoring burden towards the end, forcing some shots that just weren’t there instead of running the Bears’ offense.
Also encouraging: Eric Vierneisel hit a pair of 3s, which triples his total for the year. His game is pretty ugly, but he was third on the team with 11 points, as well as second in both rebounds (6) and assists (5).
Speaking of rebounds, the Bears, for the first time this year, got their butts kicked on the glass, especially on defense, where they gave up 18 offensive rebounds, mostly to Walker and Beasley. Some of that you can probably attribute to Hardin only playing 20 minutes, but one of the big reasons that this mostly mediocre-shooting team beat Cal is that they got so many more chances to shoot it.
The other reason is that they got a ton of chances to shoot it where no one could guard them. The Bears continued to shoot well from the free-throw line, but they only had 11 free-throw attempts all game, as opposed to 40 for Kansas State. And it’s not like the Wildcats were a guard-heavy, contact-averse team. They had a couple of big heavies in the middle, but somehow managed to draw only 14 fouls as a team.
Oh yeah, and a completely stupid technical on the Bears’ bench. One of the coaches, not Braun. Considering that the Bears were down by 2 with only 30 seconds left, those two free throws were the difference between having to foul and getting to play solid defense.
The big weakness for the Bears, in my opinion, was turnovers. 21 for the Bears is far too many, including 9 by Jerome Randle alone. Some of these were pretty stupid turnovers too. Regardless, you’re not going to win many games if your starting point guard gives 9 possessions away, and you can be sure that Pac-10 teams will watch the tape of this game and continue to go after our shaky guard play. If I were an opposing coach, I know that that’s what I’d do.
Anyway, if the Bears were going to drop a non-conference game, this was the one to do it. It’s not what I’d call a ‘good loss’, but it was the toughest test they’ll face before conference play begins, and it certainly shouldn’t hurt them in the eyes of the NCAA tournament committee should the Bears find themselves on the bubble. Of course, it does emphasize the importance of the Bears’ win at Nevada, giving them at least one road win before conference play.
Going forward, they get Delaware State and Utah at home, plus some chumps in the Golden Bear Classic. I expect Cal to win all 4 games. Utah should give them a game, at least, and perhaps Bucknell in the GBC, but I would be very disappointed if the Bears were to drop any of these games. Despite the road loss, this is still a very talented team, and if they can tighten things up over the next 4 games, I expect they’ll hold their own in the Pac-10, making a run at the post-season in the process.
