Following an embarrassing home loss to rival Stanford on Thursday, Cal men’s basketball hopes to deliver some payback on Super Bowl Sunday on The Farm. Tipoff is set for 7:00 PM PST on FS1 and KGO 810 AM.
Keys to bouncing back: Given that these teams just played, this preview is going to look a little bit different. I’m going to dive straight into my keys to the game for Cal. If you missed the preview from earlier this week, read that here.
The first thing Cal needs to do to defeat Stanford on Sunday is slow down Oscar da Silva. da Silva ate Cal for lunch with his 24 points and 11 rebounds. Cal had no answer for him inside and was too slow. Cal has to find a way to better defend the paint and not allow da Silva to get whatever he wants inside. If da Silva replicates the type of success he had on Thursday, Cal might as well head out early and see if they can grab something to go from the Stanford Coffee House (COHO) before heading back to Berkeley.
The second thing Cal needs to do is take better care of the basketball. Some of the turnovers that Cal had on Thursday were almost comical. Careless passes into the stands and just general sloppy play. Cal will not win at Stanford if they play bedraggled basketball once again.
Finally, Cal has to get Matt Bradley more help. Bradley played really well against Stanford with 24 points on 6-12 shooting from the field, 5-7 shooting from 3-point range, and 7-7 shooting from the foul line. The only guy who gave him even a semblance of support was Andre Kelly, who finished with 15 points and 7 rebounds. The rest of the team was pretty close to non-existent on both ends of the floor. If it’s once again Bradley out there playing hero ball while the rest of his “talent deficient” teammates (borrowing Mark Fox’s words) are giving little production, we’ll see a similar result to what we saw on Thursday.
Prediction: Cal is capable of not getting maimed at Maples Pavilion and actually playing a competitive game. We’ve seen them play competitive games and put themselves in a position to win. The problem is they’re just in a really bad funk right now and Stanford has a lot on the line. Stanford is projected as one of the last four teams in the tourney, but if they lose to Cal at home, that will be considered a horrible loss.
I expect Stanford to come out focused from the tip, Cal to get off to a slow start, and for this to be one-way traffic for the Cardinal. Stanford 75 Cal 55 is my prediction.
