Stanford tops No. 11 Oregon; Cal beats OSU
Jabari Bird put his hand up to hide his hanging jaw. With 40.8 seconds left on the game clock Saturday, Cal forward Jaylen Brown had hammered home a one-handed dunk over the outstretched arm of his 6-foot-10 Oregon State defender.
Raucous fans glanced at one another, unsure what they had seen. Bears guard Brenden Glapion tried to prevent fellow reserves from storming the court. Fouled on the play, Brown turned around, straight-faced, as he stepped to the free-throw line. This for him was nothing new.
“That was probably the best in-game dunk I’ve seen in person,” Bird, who passed to Brown slicing to the rim on that highlight, said after Cal’s 83-71 win over the Beavers. “I was caught off guard. I didn’t think he was going to rise up like that.”
It has been that kind of season for Cal at Haas Pavilion. Dating to last spring, the Bears have won 17 consecutive home games, 16 of them this season. They are two victories shy of becoming the first Cal team since 1959-60 to go a full season without losing a game in Berkeley.
Saturday, the Bears (17-8, 7-5) never trailed. They more than doubled OSU (15-9, 6-7) in offensive rebounds. With little answer for Cal inside, OSU piled up 33 fouls. The Bears made 26 free throws despite shooting 59.1 percent from the foul line.
Two days removed from his 24-point outburst against Oregon, Bird needed only 14 shots to finish with a game-high 23 points. Point guard Tyrone Wallace, in his second straight game off the bench since returning from a hand injury, chipped in 17 points, five rebounds and three assists.
“I thought we had great crowd energy,” head coach Cuonzo Martin said. “They fed off that.”
In the Beavers’ Jan. 9 win in Corvallis, guard Gary Payton II nearly hung a triple-double on Cal. So stopping OSU’s top option was the No. 1 priority on the Bears’ scouting report. With Wallace and guard Sam Singer taking turns on him, Payton cobbled together a modest 10 points and five rebounds. Cal was willing to stomach 22 points from forward Tres Tinkle.
After a 14-2 Beavers run trimmed its lead to 59-56, Cal created distance with threes from Brown and guard Jordan Mathews. With less than four minutes left, Brown took a bounce pass from Mathews and soared for a tomahawk dunk.
But the play Old Blues won’t soon forget came in the waning seconds. Brown gathered his feet near the block, corralled the pass from Bird and cocked his right arm back. Ball in hand, the freshman made OSU forward Olaf Schaftenaar into a poster. The hashtag, “#SCTOP10,” accompanied replays of the monstrous slam on Twitter.
“I guess they left me open in the backcourt,” said Brown, who ended the game with 15 points, eight rebounds and three assists. “Jabari just made a great read, and I just finished.”
Said Martin: “It’s impressive, but I see it in practice.”
Whether the Bears can parlay such highlights to road success is undetermined. Undefeated at home, Cal is 1-8 away from Haas Pavilion. Four of the Bears’ final six regularseason games will come in unfriendly confines. Thursday, they face upstart Washington in Seattle.
“Just pretend we’re at home,” Bird said when asked how Cal can improve on the road.
Connor Letourneau is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: cletourneau@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Con_Chron