Bears can’t get it done inside

The Cal men’s basketball team made the type of history it has been trying to avoid Saturday night at Haas Pavilion.

The Bears dug an 18-point hole and were defeated by Seattle 82-73, assuring a losing nonconference record in back-toback seasons for the first time since the program did it three straight times from 1963-65.

“That was the message: ‘If we don’t dig ourselves a hole, we’re fine,’ ” Cal head coach Wyking Jones said. “You exert so much energy trying to get back. We can’t come out flat. It just can’t happen. If you want to win a game, you’ve got to come out ready to play.”

Cal (5-7) opens Pac-12 play Thursday at USC after leading Seattle for all of 91 seconds and trailing by as many as 18 points. The Bears went 14-18 in nonconference play in 1963-65.

The Redhawks (12-3), who lost games earlier this year to Stanford and Washington, are off to their best start since opening the 1963-64 season 13-2. They fended off Cal’s only real challenge midway through the fourth quarter by holding the Bears without a field goal for a span of eight minutes, 14 seconds.

Cal had won three of its previous four games, a stretch sparked by moving freshman guard Matt Bradley to the bench and starting a bigger first five. But the Bears got crushed inside by Seattle, which outscored Cal 19-7 in secondchance points.

“Right there, something’s not right,” Jones said. “That’s not how it’s supposed to look. I know we’re an undersized team, but we shouldn’t go down 19-7 on the boards. … I’m going to look at the film, but typically when you give up 14 offensive rebounds, you don’t have five guys in the paint fighting for a defensive rebound. Somebody is leaking out.”

The Redhawks were led by Myles Carter’s 26 points. The 6-foot-9 forward also had 13 rebounds. part of Seattle’s 38-30 edge on the boards.

Paris Austin and Darius McNeill combined for 39 points for Cal.

Cal looked like a team that missed seven of its first nine shots in falling into a 21-4 hole. The Bears didn’t make a threepointer until they were down by 18 at the 7:15 mark of the first half, but that wasn’t even their biggest problem.

With 7-3 freshman Connor Vanover still in the concussion protocol and 6-8 sophomore Grant Anticevich in foul trouble, Cal got dominated inside. Seattle outrebounded the Bears 19-7 in the first half, leading to huge advantages in points in the paint (20-10) and secondchance points (10-0).

“We came out flat, and we weren’t ready to play. I don’t know why, but I have to do a better job of making sure we’re ready to play,” said Jones, who sensed something was off at the 11 a.m. shootaround. “The energy level wasn’t there, for whatever reason.”