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Cal claims first conference championship since 1960
By Morris Phillips February 27, 2010 |
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Over the last 50 seasons, Cal has produced better players and even had better teams. But this group distinguished itself Saturday by beating Arizona State, 62-46, and capturing at least a share of Cal’s first regular-season conference championship since 1960. Better players? Sure, Jason Kidd, Kevin Johnson and Shareef Adbur-Rahim, to name three. Better teams? Yeah, the 93’ and 97’ teams made Sweet 16 appearances and featured future pros Kidd and Ed Gray. But Mike Montgomery’s second team in Berkeley avoided repeated embarrassing losses to conference lightweights and had the good fortune of catching perennial contenders UCLA and Arizona in down times. In a showdown with the second-place Sun Devils, the Bears (20-9, 12-5) broke open a close game with unselfish ball movement and suffocating defense that limited Arizona State to just 16 second-half points. After settling for some tough shots in the opening 20 minutes, after which they trailed by a point, the Bears worked for better opportunities in a second half in which they shot 54 percent. “For this group of kids to come out and play as well as we did, particularly the second half today, with everything that was on the line, I thought that was pretty impressive,” Montgomery said. “They just got in a mindset, defensively, that we haven’t been in all that much, and really did a good job. We shared the ball, didn’t care who scored, and the next thing you know, we were up double figures.” Cal’s four senior starters, in their final game, combined to score 48 of the 62 points. Jamal Boykin and Patrick Christopher each contributed 14 points, and Theo Robertson scored 13. Christopher took on the important defensive challenge of stopping Sun Devil’s shooter Ty Abbott, and he was limited to eight points, missing all six of his 3-point attempts. Montgomery preferred the Senior Day festivities before the game be downplayed, but the tradeoff was having those seniors and their parents mobbed by the students as the stands emptied after the final horn. “The whole game just seemed like a fantasy in a lot of ways. It’s exciting to see our fans excited about Cal Basketball and we hope we can continue to ride this out,” Boykin said. “We didn’t expect all that to occur: being out there with the fans, your teammates and the coaches, the whole confetti, cutting down the nets. It was a crazy experience and awesome to be part of it,” Robertson said. In the final 11 minutes of the game, ASU managed just two baskets as Cal increased a two-point lead to 18, prior to Sun Devils’ Victor Rudd’s dunk in the final seconds. During one stretch, Arizona State missed 11 of 12 shots as the Cal defense tightened. Of course, Jorge Gutierrez was on the floor for most of that stretch, contributing help defense as well as a circus shot that turned into a three-point play when Jerren Shipp fouled him on the attempt. Gutierrez’ free throw put the Bears up 47-42 with 10:30 remaining. “He just has a great sense of who’s in trouble or where the ball’s looking to go and getting himself in a position to help. Then he can rebound the ball and make some nice strides to the basket,” Montgomery said of Gutierrez, who was the only contributor off Cal’s bench, playing 20 minutes. With the league crown secure as well as the top-seed in the conference tournament, the Bears can now focus on putting themselves in the best position for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament should they fail to win the conference tournament, which begins March 10. By winning their final league contest at Stanford, and their first two games in Staples Center, the Bears could finish 23-10 with wins in nine of their final 11 games. By beating Stanford next Saturday, the Bears would also win the conference regular season outright and avoid being the first Pac-10 champion to win only 12 of their 18 conference games. Of course, with no wins over the RPI Top 50 and no games remaining against Top 50 opponents, the Bears are squarely on the NCAA bubble. But if they win three more games before losing in the conference championship game, they would compare favorably to other teams on the tourney’s fringe. Currently, ESPN’s Bracketology has the Bears as only a 10-seed, assuming them to be the conference tournament champion and the league’s only invitee. But today, that storyline takes a backseat to the Bears’ long-awaited run to the conference regular season championship. |
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