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Basketball: Coaches vs. Cancer roundup
By Jeff Faraudo
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 12:26 am in Basketball, Gameday.
Here’s a summary of what happened Monday night in the Coaches vs. Cancer tournament:
– No. 6 North Carolina, the defending national champs, opened with an 88-72 win over Florida International and new coach Isiah Thomas, the retired Hall of Famer. Attendance: 16,161.
– No. 16 Ohio State got a triple-double (14 points, 17 rebounds, 10 assists) from junior forward Evan Turner in a 100-60 win over Alcorn State. A: 11,015.
– Syracuse got coach Jim Boeheim his 800th career victory with a 75-43 rout of Albany. A: 15,707.
– Cal led by 18 in the second half, then held off Murray State’s late rally in a 75-70 victory at Haas Pavilion. A: 7,603.
Two quick reactions:
1. Among the four teams headed to Madison Square Garden next week, Cal played — by far — the best opponent Monday night. Albany was 15-16 a year ago, FIU 13-20, and Alcorn 6-25. Murray was 19-12 and is a co-favorite to win the Ohio Valley Conference.
2. Where are Cal’s basketball fans? The announced attendance seemed a bit generous, anyway, but with an 8 p.m. tipoff, everyone had plenty of time to get home from work, grab a bite and still get out to Haas Pavilion. Not my problem, but seemed like a weak turnout to watch the 13th-ranked team in the country.
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November 10th, 2009 at 3:31 am
Several reasons. The tickets are too expensive. Fans are a little burned out with cal being “overrated” this year. And people just don’t like basketball as much as they do back east. Unsold tickets should go fr $5 to students. And man, they looked sloppy. Randle was his usual spaz. Max just stood around up top whenever he was in. They played with little discipline. Until these guys can beat top 25 teams with consistency, I wouldn’t expect a packed house. Bear fans are tired of the hype. Time for results.
November 10th, 2009 at 4:44 am
Notice how they completely shut down our perimeter threat? Good teams will do that to us. We didn’t get complacent at year end. We weren’t tired. Teams just finally figured us out. If we don’t have a post threat. And I mean more than Harper, were going to be lucky to make the tourney this year. Very frustrating game.
November 10th, 2009 at 6:02 am
Kind of embarrassing to see the small crowd on TV. But it wasn’t out of the norm last night for this event. The crowd shots of the Syracuse game looked similarly sparse, though that had a lot to do with the cavernous Carrier Dome, too. The Ohio State game looked well below capacity as well. (The UNC fans seemed to come out in droves, however.)
It’s not unusual for the Bears to have smaller crowds in November/December, it seems. Once Pac-10 play rolls around, Haas will be rocking again — especially if this team lives up to the preseason billing.
November 10th, 2009 at 7:12 am
Attendance?
8pm means 10pm finish means 10:45 home. No put kids to bed. Work next day, and all week long – bad to start week off tired. Besides, it’s on TV. My tickets went wasted.
November 10th, 2009 at 7:15 am
Rollonbears, what top 25 OOC teams do we have coming to Berkeley? With the PAC-10 down this year, which is the reason we are favored to win the conference. Should we all just stay home this year, and wait until next year when 80% of our starting five will be gone? Is there anything positive you took out of this game or do you just walk around with a glass half empty attidude all the time.
November 10th, 2009 at 8:07 am
The turnout was very disapointing especially, from the students. I hope most fans will come out and support the team and not be fairweather, jump-on-the-bandwagon fans like rollon.
November 10th, 2009 at 8:31 am
Jeff,
It’s nice to read a reporter call out the obvious fact that Cal’s crowd was small and had to be dissapointing for the AD. I was there, and will be there wednesday. When I can’t use the tickets they will go to people who will. The team is good but there is no buzz around the program besides the die hards. AD office needs to provide some sort of leadership/marketing buzz to bring out students/casual fans. It’s easy to use excuses what’s hard is actually getting it done. Cal needs to make sure butts are in the seats, especially students. It’s a good product, good coach, good venue and fairly affordable, cal fans failed. AD failed, can’t just hope for a packed house in these times, have to make it happen. Students are the easiest way, shuttle em in, at least 30K live close to Haas.
Come on.
November 10th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Bears: good point. They can give tons of students the nose bleed seats with 2 hrs before tip time.
November 10th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Totally agree bears. Students bring the energy and the noise. If we win the tourney in new York it’ll be packed anyway. The 8pm start was indeed late but even later
for me on the east coast! Happy the Detroit game is on too. Gotta love espnu. Go bears!
November 10th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Man these posts sound so pessimistic for a home opening win against a potential conference champion…
I was a little disappointed with turnout (from watching on TV, I’m a bit far away to attend weeknight games), but to be fair I hadn’t known too much about Murry St and understand why folks would not have the motivation (with the start time and all as well)
Glad I had ESPNU, cuz it was a fun game to watch, great to see Jorge draining 3′s!!! And nice to Max Zhang actually playing, though I can see he is still a ways off from contributing more than 10-15min per game… Sanders-Frison should provide a great inside presence with his strength this year as well… Still not ready to give up on football, but starting to get very excited about the upcoming basketball season!!!
Take it to the Tourney Bears!!!!! Go Bears!!!!
November 10th, 2009 at 10:06 am
I love Cal sports with all of my heart. But honestly, no matter how good we get, Haas and Memorial will not be full when it should. What kills me is that people don’t realize that if Haas is full every night, the advantage would be so big that our team would win more games. The combo of Cal being such an academic place and being in a state where there is so much to do and worry about causes the fans to appear like they don’t even care. Drives me nuts. I thought Jeff F. said that it would take a year lag of good b-ball before fans started showing up. Well Jeff, this is Cal. Nothing makes sense here. But I love the Bears! Roll On!
November 10th, 2009 at 10:12 am
And I agree with Ohio Bear. Once the Pac-10 rolls around, the games will be much more packed. I remember a game against Stanford like 5 years ago when Kately was still on our team. I was excited to bring a couple of my Stanford fan buddies to Haas to show them how much better Haas is than Maples when its rocking. This was the night Kidd’s jersey was tired. The place was unreal. So frickin loud. It was glorious. We should expect the same after the first of the year if our Bears are still winning and hopefully ranked. The game against Washington is gonna be a Bonanza!!!!
November 10th, 2009 at 10:17 am
And I take back partially what I said about Memorial. What Tedford has done to the football program is unreal. Most football games have at least 50,000, which is pretty good. We just don’t get loud enough and don’t totally fill up the 72,000 seats. I was at Autzen Stadium for the blowout earlier this year and that place is 5 times as loud with fewer seats. They actualy give a damn.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:25 am
Rollonubears,
If you’re so disappointed, jump on someone else’s bandwagon. You call our best player a “usual spaz”? I take that as a good sign — if Randle has an off game and we are up 18 with 10 minutes left, we aren’t a one man team. And what do you expect from Max — 40 points a game? He’s clearly got a LONG way to go before contributing. And, as for results, we’re 1-0. Get over yourself and enjoy the win.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:08 am
“Notice how they completely shut down our perimeter threat?” Hardly. The Bears had plenty of good looks on the outside, especially after effective dribble penetration by Smith and Randle. 5-12 on 3s is not the sign of a shut-down perimeter. Yes, there was some opening game sloppiness from both teams, but the team showed a pretty good level of maturity and patience on offense and a good amount of discipline and hustle on defense. Rollon, whatever bitterness you have from the gridiron, keep it out of basketball. These guys work hard, and with the improved coaching already show greater determination and commitment to the fundamentals that will help them succeed.
While it would be nice to have another big man, the team overachieves with the talent they have. They don’t deserve detractors in early November.
November 10th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Cal fans are not die hard NCAA fans. It would have helped if the media played up both the opening of the season, and the fact that Murray State is not Chico State.