Comments on: Basketball: Arizona game thread

By: David

David — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:44:45 +0000

Az Fan here…..As a hoop fan, it was a good game. Several tie scores and lead changes. Cal is a good team and will represent the Pac-10 in the NCAA tournament. Good luck the rest of the season.

By: rollonubears

rollonubears — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:35:41 +0000

basically, theo was fouled and didn’t get the call. that killed the momentum and took the heart and fight right out of the bears. there was a mental lapse from that point on. monty needs to better prepare these guys for the mental aspect of the road game. also, when the bears get a big lead, you can just feel the momentum slip away. usually it’s a missed shot followed by an open 3 from the opponents. i wish coaches would call TO immediately, when that stuff happens. regroup, and tell the kids to pretend they’re DOWN by 10 instead of UP by 10. tell them to play tougher, not play to lose. that’s the biggest problem with the football and basketball programs. we don’t put teams away. when you get up big on the road (and we almost always have), you can’t shift into protect mode. keep playing relentless D. if you get called for a foul, fine. that keeps the momentum from shifting the same as a timeout. but more than anything, in the pac10 on the road, if it’s close, don’t expect any calls to go your way. we let AZ play with us for too long in the second half, and we had to rely on the officials near the end. that’s a bad strategy. by the way, i am tired of the bears getting called for traveling when they’re dribbling the basketball. the officials always seem to think “wow, that was too good of a move to be legal, so it must have been a travel.” you reply in slomo, and you’ll notice we almost always get screwed on that. also, how can zhang be over the back, ever?

By: GoldenBV

GoldenBV — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:34:06 +0000

Great post Bean.

By: The Wisdom Cow

The Wisdom Cow — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:33:44 +0000

Bean, I have to disagree only with respect what I consider a gross error by Monty in keeping with the trap scheme against Wise when it was not just ineffective, but leading to easy AZ baskets down the stretch. Was the team trying? Yes. Am I mad that they did not execute? Not mad, it happens, just disappointed. But when a strategy isn’t working at all, you do not stick with it, especially come crunch time, especially on the road.

I think of this mistake in the same regard as when Tedfors needed to call a TO to figure out he needed to go for 2 when down by 16 near the end of the game. It was the type of unneeded mental mistake by the coach (who we expect more from) that put our squad in a more difficult position then they should have been.

By: uh oh.

uh oh. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:46:54 +0000

Right on, Bean!!!
Well said.

By: uh oh.

uh oh. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:43:48 +0000

Hey, Nic Wise is very good and nobody should have been surprised by his performance. We’d have like to see Randle be able to do a better job on him down the stretch, and keep Wise in front of him, and out of the paint. But Nic Wise is a premier point, no doubt. Credit Wise for winning his matchup of two good players.

Also, Williams is a very athletic and big man. He was advertised as being good, and lived up to that reputation.

Throw in some decent role players and AZ is not a bad team.

Every time Cal is up there on the standings/rankings, everyone (including me) gets inflated expectations for this team, but it is well understood now that Cal has it’s flaws just like everyone in the Pac-10 this year. So, I’m getting used to it, and it didn’t take long to forget about the loss. We are a bit precarious with this team. I thought we could barely hang on to the lead, barely do anything.

Not a bad team, not a bad game. Just keeping playing and we’ll be fine.

If that game was at Haas, we win.

By: Bean

Bean — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:52:51 +0000

Such negativity. Mistakes are part of basketball. No basketball team is so “smart” that they don’t make mistakes, and “smart” teams do lose to others all the time. It is easy to look at a few bad plays or a few bad matchups and condemn the players and coaches as losers and chokers. That is unduly harsh.

Cal is not a particularly talented or deep team, but the team succeeds by giving its shooters the green light when they feel like they have a good shot, regardless of when that opportunity arises in the shot clock. Most of the time, that is a good coaching strategy for this team. On several of the turnovers, you can see what happens when players try to create opportunities that just aren’t there. Having the guard-heavy Cal rotation play free and loose is what normally works for this team. (A “smarter” armchair coach than Montgomery would have advised Jorge not to take that 3 that beat ASU and would have advised Randle not to take the 3 at UW last year that sent the game into overtime, since by some of y’all’s logic, they should have “known” that their shooting “sucked” those days.) Sometimes, especially in opposing gyms, shots don’t fall as they normally do. That has little to do with smarts or effort. It’s the way the game goes. Hard work, determination to win, and “smarts” are good values but are no guarantee of a W.

That is why it is puzzling why so many of the comments here make it sound as though Cal should be able to dominate every opponent. How many teams with a 5’9″ point guard and no NBA talent on the front line dominate? Not a lot. As far as I’m concerned, Cal has a great bunch of characters who have worked hard on their game to maximize the talent that they have. They are overachievers, not losers. Actually, the team is meeting my expectations; not matching up well against the most athletic and long opponents (Syracuse, Kansas) but still playing well enough to win 12 or 13 games in the conference regular season. Yes, I get aggravated and frustrated by the losses and can reflect on game-changing mistakes by some player or coach, but I recognize that it’s not realistic to expect these guys to play flawlessly all the time.

Arizona may be young, but they do not lack talent, and it’s not surprising they are 6-3 in conference. This was the first encounter with several of Arizona’s players, and I’m sure the coaches and players will take lessons from this game.

By: The Wisdom Cow

The Wisdom Cow — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:22:31 +0000

Honestly Steve, I am not sure we will not be better than most of those teams next year. Much will depend on the play of Franklin as a freshman, of course, but MSF, Amoke and Max should be able to hang with every front court in the conference. The guards will be young, but talented, with Jorge having a leadership role for the team that should prove invaluable.

Monty gets to start from scratch with players he brings in. I have ridiculed our inconsistent play all year. If any consistency appears next year, we may very well improve overall, possibly a lot.

As for your NCAA’s venting. The Pac 10 “deserves” their auto bid. One team may squeek in as well. Vent about the 14-16 seeds about not deserving if you are really serious (I think you are more showing understandable frustration). If Cal gets in, even if they play as they did today, they would be better than at leat 12 teams in the field.

Now, if the NCAAs were like the BCS bowls (limited spots), with our conference getting millions for poor play, I would be right next to you screaming we don’t deserve an entry.

Right now, Cal probably gets an invite as long as we are at least #2 in the reg. season and runner up in the conference tourney. If we win both, I think it is very possible the conference only gets the auto bid, which would be embarrasing enough for the conference that we would not live it down for some time.

By: Bears

Bears — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:30:03 +0000

Montgomery is a very good coach and his depth is limited this year and a lot of the guys have nagging injuries but they could have and I think should have won this game. It was right there for them and they could not do it. A play here or there down the stretch and it’s a Bear win and 2 game pac 10 lead. Very tough to swallow. The loss to ucla and this one were games we have to win in the back stretch or these guys are going to miss their shot to win the Pac 10.
Why was Randle in the game to let Wise abuse him again when we are up one with under 30 seconds left? Two senior PG’s in the game today and ours was outplayed. That was the main difference in the game. Wish we had Randle out and another guard in plus Max in to guard the middle during that crucial possession down the stretch. Problem is it should have never come down to that. We did not score a bucket the final 4 minutes. Free throws and that’s it. Cal had their chances and blew it. 9 games left, it’s crunch time. Every game is huge. Do these guys have it in them to raise their game? Why can’t they put it all together and have more than one or two guys play well? Very strange, I really thought this senior laden group would get better and better, they have stagnated. Guys better figure it out or you’ll miss your chance.

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:30:07 +0000

Wisdom-

I agree with your confusion on Max’s minutes. Max has a LOT of work to do, but for him to get consistently better, he needs consistent minutes. The fact that Montgomery will never even get him off the bench in some halves of even in some games is confusing.

Max brings the ball down too much- he brings his arms down too much- both on D, when rebounding and when he has the ball. Also, he slaps at the ball alot instead of trying to grab the ball. Though he is not real slow or really uncoordinated, he is still methodical and a step or count slow in reaction time. It is like his body and brain need to react more quickly. I think he can and will improve, but he needs gametime. Based on how he has played this year, I think he deserves minutes in every half of every game- even if just for a couple minutes, or a couple 2-3 minute stretches. I think even now if you used a +/- scoring system like hockey, the team is plus with Max on the floor.

I think now that Montgomery has been here for awhile and the real recent comparisons to Braun are fading, we now have higher expectations of the team and of Montgomery. He is a good coach who has had alot of success, so we expect alot from him and his team. So when we see what we saw today, or what we saw vs. UCLA, or even in the win at home vs. OSU last Saturday, it is confusing and we want to comment.

It is interesting, I have seen several comments on other forums/blogs (i.e, Wilner’s)from Stanford fans warning Cal fans to just wait and see that Montgomery isn’t as good as the general perception of him is, that he as good as I/we think he is- at least how good he was at Stanford. I watched Monty mostly vs. Braun and the Bears, and I witnessed him absolutely coach circles around Braun. I somewhat attributed these recent comments I have read to perhaps being sour grapes that Montgomery is at Cal. But who knows, maybe there is some merit to those Cardinal comments. I know I was scratching my head vs. UCLA, and your comments about trapping Wise unsuccessfully over and over and over were insightful and makes a lot of sense.

So maybe Montgomery isn’t an “A” quality coach. But it seems like he should be making better decisions than he does at times. Still, no cpmparison to Braun, right? Huge improvement, right? I would still like to see him step it up, along w/ the players. They all had a hand in the choke job today.