Crabbe ready to take the wheel and drive
If there is one sentence Allen Crabbe does not want to catch himself saying as he prepares for his junior season as the go-to guy on Cal’s basketball team it is, “I just need to be more aggressive.’’
In each of his first two seasons, the naturally reserved Crabbe would often say exactly that in describing what he needed to work on to go with his smooth shooting stroke from the perimeter.
Those days are over. Or at least he hopes they are. It’s time for Crabbe to do a little chestthumping for the Bears.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for me to do what I’ve been talking about the last three years,’’ said Crabbe, one of 50 players nationally nominated for the John R. Wooden Award. “I’m pretty sure you won’t be hearing it. I need to stop waiting for people to make plays for me. I can make plays on my own. (Opponents) are not going to leave me wide open for shots, so I have to find other ways to score.’’
With last season’s stalwarts Jorge Gutierrez and Harper Kamp gone, it’s time for Crabbe to be the man for a Cal team picked to finish third in the Pac-12 Conference behind Arizona and UCLA. The 6-foot-6 wing player averaged 15.2 points and 5.7 rebounds
“I feel strong. People are not going to be able to push me around like they did the last two years.”
Allen Crabbe
a game as a sophomore.
“He has to be the scorer we need him to be,’’ guard Justin Cobbs said. “We need Allen to score. He’s doing a great job of putting the ball on the floor. He’ll be a complete player. That’s what you’re going to see — a guy that can put the ball on the floor and also a guy who can score. I’m very excited to play with him.’’
It starts for real Sunday night at Haas Pavilion when the Bears open the 2012-13 season against Cal State Bakersfield after posting a lessthan-satisfactory 89-80 exhibition win over San Francisco State on election night.
“We let that team score too many points,’’ Cobbs said. “You don’t want to give up 80 points to a Division II team. We need to work on our point-of-attack defense.’’
Coach Mike Montgomery, starting his fifth year in Berkeley, is unhappy with his team’s rebounding. In fact, he’s not very happy at all with this bunch going into the season.
“It hasn’t been very satisfying thus far,’’ he said. “We’re not playing very well. We have a lot of work to do. We need to rebound the ball. We’re not gaining an advantage for being big. We have to get people attentive to rebounding the ball. We gave up 17 offensive rebounds to San Francisco State. It doesn’t take rocket science to figure that out. We’re not reacting to the ball.’’
In particular, Montgomery said 6-10 junior forward Richard Solomon needs to step up his work on the boards now that he has rejoined the team after missing much of last season while academically ineligible. Solomon had two 10rebound games last season before being declared ineligible.
Crabbe, for one, is happy to have his friend and high school teammate back in good graces.
“He’s a big piece to our puzzle,’’ Crabbe said. “Ever since he went down, he was more focused on school. It was a life lesson. He’s matured. That’s what we need.’’
For his part, Crabbe said he worked hard over the summer on ballhandling and rebounding in addition to getting stronger. He knows he needs to get to the freethrow line more often, and the only way to do that is to have the ball in his hands, driving toward the basket.
In 2011-12, Crabbe went to the line only 89 times in 34 games, less than three times per game. As an 84 percent shooter, he needs to get to the free-throw line.
“This is the greatest I’ve ever felt,’’ he said. “I feel strong. People are not going to be able to push me around like they did the last two years. My main focus all summer was to get stronger and work on my ballhandling, so I can get to the line more.’’
The Bears will probably go with a starting lineup of Brandon Smith (when healthy; he has a sore shoulder at the moment) and Cobbs in the backcourt, Crabbe on the wing, and Solomon and David Kravish on the front line. Key reserves figure to be freshman guard Tyrone Wallace, 6-7 sharpshooter Jeff Powers and forwards Robert Thurman, Christian Behrens, Kahlil Johnson and Bak Bak.