It was far from an ideal return but one the Bears sorely needed. Amid a two-game slide, Andrej Stojakovic returned from a hip injury to a team strained to its max on offense. And while Stojakovic only finished with 6 points on 2-of-12 shooting from the field, his return eased the burden of Cal’s primary scorers, opening up the floor for them in ways that just weren’t possible while he was out.

“Anytime Andrej Stojakovic is out on the court, he brings tremendous gravity,” head coach Mark Madsen said postgame. “He hasn't [practiced] fullcourt live in probably two and a half

weeks and so we accelerated his timeframe coming back without having done all the things that sometimes a player wants to do, and I was proud of him for stepping forward and making a big contribution.”

Stojakovic certainly had a lot of rust to brush off in his return against NC State. The box score tells the story of a player who struggled to find his rhythm, but live, there was a certain learning curve he had to solve in real-time.

To put it bluntly, he was tentative. Something he was quite the opposite of before his injury. Whether it was him trying to avoid being a gunslinger who throws a wrench in the rhythm the team built while he was gone or the fact that these were his first real reps in over two weeks, Stojakovic wasn’t pushing his typical pace; he wasn’t exerting his presence when he had the ball.

He just looked out of practice. There was a moment when there was visible confusion between Stojakovic about the play the Bears were running. Stojakovic lined up on the wrong wing and Madsen couldn’t help but step onto the court and give his guy a love-kiss shove in the right direction.