Cal breezes past Providence (MT) in Monday night exhibition
On Monday night, Cal men’s basketball took care of business against Providence (MT) by a final score of 81-52. Marcus Lee led the way for the Golden Bears with 17 points, 12 rebounds, and 2 blocks. Kingsley Okoroh had a personal block party of his own, finishing with 10 blocks to go along with his 14 points and 10 rebounds, giving him a triple-double for the night.
“I think we just wanted to be comfortable, we wanted to gel together,” Okoroh said after the game. “We’ve got many new faces. We just wanted everyone to know their roles, enjoy their first game as freshmen, and it was satisfying. I think we could have beaten them by more, but we’ll take the win any day.”
The highlight of the game was definitely the triple-double that Okoroh recorded. Even in an exhibition game, putting up the line he did tonight is very impressive. Okoroh admitted after the game that he didn’t know how close he was, but in the final minutes, he was able to snag that 10th rebound.
“No, I didn’t know,” he said. “I just focused on the game.”
Unlike the women’s exhibition game on Thursday, Cal was in control the whole way, taking a 44-24 lead into the half and outscoring Providence 37-28 in the second half. While the game itself was never in question, Cal head coach Wyking Jones felt there was a lot they could improve on before Friday’s season opener.
“We have some things we need to work on,” Jones said after the game. “As you all saw tonight, our main objective is to speed other teams up and sometimes we get caught up in letting ourselves get sped up as well. And so we have to do a better job of controlling our tempo. The main thing is we want to speed you up, make you make plays on the fly, keep you guessing, disrupt the point guard, ball handlers, but we can’t fall into that trap on the other side of the ball.”
Ideally, an exhibition game gives a head coach the chance to see his full roster in action and get an early feel for how everyone will gel. Unfortunately for Jones, Juhwan Harris-Dyson (illness), Justice Sueing (stress fracture), and Cole Welle (thumb), were unable to play.
“With Juhwan out, he’s our best second line defender and so for me and my staff, we’re wondering what would it be like with him in there. The press was good today, it has the potential to be very good with him on that second line because his anticipation, his quickness to the ball, his quickness to passing lanes, active hands, that’s our whole thing. Our whole thing is about having active hands to get deflections and he’s one of the best that we have at that.”
Following Monday night’s tune up, Cal will take the floor next in their regular season-opener on Friday night against UC Riverside at 9:00 PM PST. Wyking Jones expects Juhwan Harris-Dyson to play, but isn’t yet certain of the status of Justice Sueing or Cole Welle.