On Sunday, Cal women’s basketball played the top-five ranked UConn Huskies really tough on their home court in Storrs, Connecticut, losing 72-61 in a hard fought battle that many thought would be a lopsided game. UConn improves to 1-0 overall while Cal falls to 0-2.
Redshirt senior guard Sara Anastasieska had a career game for the Golden Bears, finishing with a career-high 25 points on 9-21 shooting from the field, 5-10 shooting from 3-point range, and 4-4 shooting from the foul line while junior forward Alaysia Styles finished with 13 points and 9 rebounds of her own. Sophomore guard Christyn Williams led the way for UConn with 24 points and 7 rebounds while junior forward Megan Walker finished with 21 points, 10 rebounds, and 1 block.
To Cal’s advantage, this game got off to a rocky start as UConn led 5-4 with 4:28 to go in the 1st quarter. Crystal Dangerfield and Olivia Nelson-Ododa got UConn off to a 5-0 lead, but the Huskies quickly went cold, scoring 0 points over a stretch that lasted 4:45. Anastasieska and Styles took advantage, each scoring a bucket for Cal.
To close out the quarter, Anastasieska scored six more points, giving her 8 points on 3-6 shooting from the field and 2-3 shooting from beyond the arc. Up 13-10, UConn was in for a fight thanks to Cal’s gritty defense and Anastasieska’s shooting.
Over the next several minutes, UConn slowly gained an even bigger lead, going up 31-21 with 3:08 to go in the 2nd quarter. Dangerfield (12 points) and Williams (11 points) were leading the Huskies, who appeared to be coming out of their funk. Rather than letting UConn extend their lead even more, Cal found a way to trim UConn’s lead to just seven points, trailing 37-30 at halftime. Anastasieska was up to 14 points for Cal, doing a great job of keeping her team in the game.
Coming out of halftime, UConn struggled to put Cal away as they were up 48-39 with 4:24 to go in the 3rd quarter. Anastasieska was up to 17 points on 6-14 shooting from the field and 3-7 shooting from 3-point range. Her stellar shooting continued to keep Cal in the game along with their defense, which was making it hard for UConn to get any easy baskets. At the end of the 3rd quarter, UConn finally looked like they might pull away with the type of win that was expected as they were up 61-47. Still, through three quarters Cal was not backing down. Styles was up to 11 points and 8 rebounds while Chen Yue was putting together a well-rounded stat line of her own with 6 points, 6 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 steal.
With 6:58 to go, the inevitable appeared to be happening as UConn was up 65-47 with 6:58 to go. Walker and Williams each had 19 points for UConn, forcing Cal head coach Charmin Smith to call for time. At this point, the message Smith had to be delivering to her team was to finish strong and not let their stellar performance go completely down the drain.
Whatever Smith said in her timeout worked as Anastasieska nailed a 3-pointer and Styles got a basket inside, giving Cal a 5-0 run. UConn called for time, now up 67-54 with 4:22 to go. From there, Cal was able to shave UConn’s lead down to 11 points, losing 72-61. Cal actually outscored UConn 14-11 in the 4th quarter, showing a tremendous amount of fight and grit down the stretch. Rather than giving up or throwing in the towel, they continued to battle, and it showed in the final score.
Even though they lost this game, Cal has a lot of positives to take away from this game. For starters, Sara Anastasieska appears ready to be a major contributor on this team as does Alaysia Styles. I wrote earlier about Cal needing some veterans to step up and veterans definitely stepped up today. Not to be forgotten is Chen Yue, who did a great job of scoring, rebounding, playing defense, and doing the dirty work inside. The players who Cal needs to step up did step up and that was a great thing to see.
When looking at Cal’s collective performance, three major things stand out. First, they held UConn to 27-65 (41.5%) shooting from the field. Charmin Smith has been preaching defense and it showed in today’s outcome. UConn had a tough time scoring, allowing Cal to stay in this game much longer than we thought. If Cal can continue to play this level of defense, they could make more noise in the Pac-12 than expected.
Secondly, Cal needs to get to the foul line more. Cal shot 100% at the foul line in this game, but only had four attempts. UConn in contrast got to the foul line 21 times and made 13 foul shots. That’s not a great percentage (61.9%) but they still got nine more points at the line than Cal. If Cal had gotten to the line more in this game, this could have easily been a single digit game and who knows, maybe even a win.
Lastly, Cal’s perimeter shooting was much better: 9-23 from 3-point range (39.1%). Their 24-68 (35.3%) shooting from the field was pretty bad, but by getting some threes to drop, that helped them hang around. If Cal can shoot better from the field and continue to make threes, they will not be an easy team to beat.
While this game ended up as a loss, it truly is a moral victory for Cal. Rather than getting blown off the court by the #5 team in the country on the road, they battled hard and made it a real game. If you didn’t know where Cal was picked at the beginning of the season, you would have thought they were a ranked team out there. Not a team picked to finish at the bottom of the Pac-12. If Cal can improve their shooting, cut back on turnovers, and continue to play gritty defense, this could be a much better season than expected. It’s a shame for Cal that they lost at Harvard on Friday, but by bouncing back today, they showed their toughness and ability to put a disappointing loss behind them.
Up next for Cal is a home game on Sunday, November 17 against UC Riverside. That game will tipoff at 5:00 PM PST and will air on Cal Live Stream.
