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		Cal stays atop the Pac-10 with win at Arizona State By Morris Phillips January 28, 2010

	All the prognosticators who thought Cal was good enough to win a Pac-10 title this year referenced their experience and senior-laden roster. In a season-defining win at Arizona State, the Bears showed exactly how that experience makes them the team to beat. Jamal Boykin, Jerome Randle and Patrick Christopher combined to score all but seven of Cal’s points in a 78-70 win that allows the Bears to keep first place in the conference to themselves at 6-2. And against a Sun Devils’ defense that is notoriously stingy, allowing just 58 points a game, Cal’s senior trio took the pressure off their teammates, by hitting one big shot after another. “The key thing was that we had to find to way to score against (ASU’s 2-3 zone), and we had to have players in there that could score against it. So we kind of stuck with the group that we thought could do that for us,” Coach Mike Montgomery said of his primary lineup, which had the senior starters, Boykin, Randle, Christopher and Theo Robertson, each play at least 37 of a possible 40 minutes. And the experience didn’t just show in the scoring, but also in Montgomery’s personnel decisions and savvy decision-making by Robertson and other Bears on the floor in the big moments after ASU cut Cal’s comfortable lead to 67-66 with 3:23 remaining. Robertson, who went scoreless and had four turnovers, still came up big moving the ball against the ASU zone, calling a key timeout with Cal stuck in the backcourt, and shutting down Rihards Kuksiks, ASU’s leading scorer, who took just eight shots and scored seven points. And Montgomery, by far the most seasoned Pac-10 coach in his 20th season preparing teams for the conference wars, made masterful decisions, shuttling in players to compliment his four seniors, despite not having Markhuri Sanders-Frison, who was sick, or being able to get significant minutes from Brandon Smith (ankle injury), Omondi Amoke (also sick) or Jorge Guitierrez (returning from knee injury that cost him five games). Without much flexibility, Montgomery got a little from big Max Zhang, when the Sun Devils’ Eric Boateng started to hurt the Bears with his inside scoring, and Nikola Knezevic, when Ty Abbott started to hit shots for ASU in the second half. Also, Guitierrez stepped in at the point when Randle was briefly injured and stayed in to hit a big three that re-established Cal’s lead after ASU climbed to within one point late. Cal (14-6, 6-2) shot 50 percent, including five 3-pointers, to grab a seven point lead at the halftime break. The Bears then stretched the lead to as much as 16 points in the second half, as Boykin repeatedly knocked down mid-range jumpers and teammates found him for easy buckets around the hoop on his way to a career-high 25 points. Randle was again his old self, hitting four big threes from deep on the way to a 25-point game. The mighty mite point guard, who often struggled and shrunk under the tutelage of Ben Braun as a freshman and sophomore, moved into seventh place on Cal’s all-time scoring list, passing Brian Hendrick with 1,565 points. Randle has scored at least 20 points, 29 times in his Cal career. Abbott led ASU (14-7, 4-4) with 20 points, and Eric Boateng added 19 points and 13 rebounds. Cal benefitted from ASU Coach Herb Sendek’s decision to bench team leader Derek Glasser for a long stretch in the second half, probably as a result of Glasser’s deteriorating play over the last four games. In this one, ASU’s leader shot just 2 for 9 and had only four points and five assists. In his absence, the Sun Devils didn’t get quality shots and surrendered a couple of key turnovers. With just 41 percent shooting for the game, the Sun Devils couldn’t keep pace with the hot shooting Bears, who made all 14 of their free throw attempts.