Big run staves off record-tying skid
This Cal basketball team might not have a ton of talent, but it has plenty of pride.
Six and a half minutes away from matching the program’s worst-ever skid, the Bears orchestrated a poised, gameclosing run to secure a 74-70 victory over Oregon State on Saturday night.
The Bears (8-16, 2-9 in Pac-12) had lost nine consecutive games, one off the program record set in 1962. Back then, Cal played in Harmon Gym and was part of the Athletic Association of Western Universities.
The current Bears, playing in front of 8,581 at Haas Pavilion and sitting in last place in the Pac-12, refused to repeat history.
In a game that was disjointed because of 51 fouls and included plenty of reasons to think Cal’s slide would continue, the Bears got a difference-making effort from senior center Kingsley Okoroh and stood up to the Beavers’ second-half challenge.
“There’s enough pressure on these guys, enough chatter, so I never mentioned it to them,” Cal head coach Wyking Jones said of the losing streak. “…
The main things were just to come out and battle, come out and fight and come out and give everything you’ve got.”
That’s exactly what they did after Oregon State used an 8-0 run to take a 57-56 lead with 6:47 remaining. Darius McNeill responded to the Beavers’ first second-half lead by knocking down a three-pointer.
“I was real confident,” said McNeill, who scored a teamhigh 16 points after going 2of-21 from three-point range in the previous three games. “I already knew it was going to go in before I even let it go.”
That was the first of seven points the freshman point guard scored during an 11-4 run that gave Cal a 67-61 advantage with three minutes to play. Stephen Thompson Jr.’s layup trimmed the Bears’ lead to 73-70 with six seconds left, but freshman forward Justice Sueing made the first of two free throws with 5.2 seconds on the clock to ice it.
Cal celebrated snapping a skid that could have easily lasted another month if it hadn’t knocked off Oregon State. The Beavers (11-11, 3-7) had lost three straight to drop into 10th place in the conference and had dropped 18 straight road games.
“To say we needed that one is an understatement. We really, really needed that one, and I’m just very happy for our guys,” Jones said. “Throughout all of the losses and all of the tough breaks, they’ve been able to continue to fight, continue to stay together and continue to give us energy and effort.”
Cal, which got the first double-double of Okoroh’s career (14 points, 12 rebounds, five blocks), had to scrap to stay in the game. The Bears didn’t lead during the game’s first 12 minutes and trailed by as many as 10 before they went on the first of two game-changing runs.
Cal held Oregon State without a field goal for more than eight minutes During an 18-2 run, the Bears made two threepointers and got inspired play from Marcus Lee.
Nick Hamilton made a threepointer that gave Cal its first lead (26-24 at the 4:15 mark of the first half ), and Lee followed with six straight points to extend the lead to 32-24 with 2½ minutes left. Cal went into the locker room up 36-28, its first halftime lead in Pac-12 play this season.
Having watched its 10-point lead landslide into an 11-point deficit, Oregon State started taking advantage of a whistlehappy officiating crew. The Beavers aggressively drove to the basket and made 7 of 8 free-throw attempts during a 2½-minute stretch that felt like an hour in real time and sapped Cal’s momentum.
Oregon State trailed 56-49 with 9½ minutes remaining and scored eight straight to take a one-point lead at the 6:47 mark. That’s when McNeill buried the corner three-pointer that ignited the Bears’ gameclosing run and ended the nine-game losing streak.
“I’ve never lost that many in my life,” McNeill said.