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		Michael Duca on Cal basketball By Michael Duca February 7, 2010

	Sportstalk: Cal, who was coming off two game loses at Arizona and USC, finally got back on track with a 72-58 win over the UCLA Bruins. The win puts them in first place and they come home against the Washington Huskies Thursday night and Saturday night with Washington State. The Bears are in first place can they hold on against the two Washington schools? Maybe. Washington, with Quincy Pondexter, will be the greater challenge. Cal is now 7-4 in conference, with three of the four losses being extremely close games. The only team to blow them out in conference is the Huskies. On the other hand, the University of Washington has not won a game outside the city limits of Seattle this year. If Cal can get a good week of practice (practice? practice? We're talking practice here, man) out of Markhuri Sanders-Frison and Jorge Gutierrez, in addition to some game contributions from them, they should do well. Cal is nearly as successful at home as Washington is, and I expect the Golden Bears to do a pretty good job of defending their house. Sportstalk: Cal is leading the Pac Ten but it's close, head coach Mike Montgomery says they have to focus on hitting their shots and keep it like that. They ran into a USC team whose offense led by MIke Gerrity 12 points and Dwight Lewis 13 points it's not a game scoring record but it was enough for a win. The other subject is Monty wants to shut off any offensive attack. Since the USC and Arizona loses do you see them stepping up their game? Mike Montgomery is very, very straightforward. "We are what we are. If we shoot well, we win, and if we don't, we probably won't." It's not possible to go on a 25-0 run unless the other team stops shooting; Cal stopped shooting, and an offensively impotent USC team was able to take advantage. When Cal was missing shots against UCLA, they allowed the Bruins to get out in transition and score. When Cal scores, not only do they put points on the board, they defend much, much better -- they are a good half-court defensive team, but not nearly as good in transition. It's not so much a question of stepping up their game, although they played outstanding defense in the final 30 minutes at Pauley. It's a question of running their offense in rhythm, making shots and rebounding, and they will score in transition off eefensive stops. If they exhibit patience in shot selection, they are an extremely effective team. Sportstalk: The Bears in the previous three games before the UCLA win have led in the last two minutes of the game to lose two of three of those games one thing that Monty has pointed out the team needs to close those games in the late seconds, how critical does every second count in a basketball game towards the end of a game? If I might, I will quote one of America's most beloved sportswriters, Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all minutes are created equal." The reason Cal didn't have to work on closing out the UCLA game is, they played in rhythm, with patience and ball movement, and made their shots, for the 28 minutes before the last two minutes. The first UCLA loss was pure luck; they held a lead with seconds to play, made a defensive stop, and bobbled the rebound. Michael Roll picke the ball off the floor and shot from his knees in one motion, and somehow hit the shot with fewer than two seconds remaining to win the game. If they played that sequence 100 times, he would not get, or hit, that shot more than one time. Still, when it does come down to the final minutes, Cal needs to rely on their seniors to do what seniors are supposed to do -- use their experience to exercise patience and get the good looks that lead to victory, like Nic Wise did against them.