Cal coach Mark Fox seemed thrown off by the question in his postgame radio interview Saturday when asked about pulling off such a significant upset.
"I guess no one thought we would win, but it doesn't matter what other people think," he said.
The Golden Bears certainly played like a team unintimidated by their own struggles this season, or the fact that Oregon had won 10 of its last 11 games.
Cal scored 24 straight points during a more than 8-and-a-half-minute stretch in the first half and really never looked back, providing no real openings to the Ducks in closing out a 78-64 win at Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene, Ore.
After losing 10 straight games and its top player to injury, Cal (11-15, 4-11 Pac-12) has now picked up back-to-back road wins, including its first victory in Eugene since 2014.
Fox, who has taken plenty of criticism from fans in the midst of what is on track to be a third straight losing season to start his tenure, was asked what a win like this means to him. Again, he countered.
"It's not about me -- this is about our team and our program. This isn't about me. This is about trying to reestablish Cal. That's what this is about, and these young people today performed really at a high level to give us a great win," he said. "It's one that they can be proud of, it's one that we can build off of, but we expected to win. We didn't come here thinking, 'Let's just try to keep it close.' That's the mentality that we had. Fortunately, we had that play-to-win mentality and it helped us become successful today."
Veteran guard Jordan Shepherd scored a career-high 33 points on 9-of-15 shooting (13 of 15 from the foul line) to lead the way as the only Bear to score in double figures.
Grant Anticevich had 8 points and 7 rebounds, Jalen Celestine added 8 points and 6 boards and Makale Foreman also chipped in 8 points.
The Bears shot 52 percent from the field overall and 83.3 percent (20 of 24) from the foul line to make sure that comfortable early lead never got tight again.
Just as important, Cal held Oregon (16-8, 9-4) to 37.9-percent shooting and just 5 of 27 from 3-point range with more turnovers (11) than assists (9), leaving coach Dana Altman frustrated afterward about the lack of ball movement.
"I'm really proud of our team. We had a lot of young guys that played well. I felt like before the game that we had great preparation and really played well. We had some burps, we didn't play perfect, we turned it over too much, we made some errors, but we competed with great belief and execution most of the game and really, really super proud of these guys," Fox said.
There were really two pivotal sequences in the game.
The first, obviously, was an extended one on that 24-0 run. Oregon had jumped out to a 12-5 lead and looked like it was going to set the tempo for the game, but the dynamics changed suddenly and starkly as Cal slowed it down, got hot from the field and stuck to its game plan.
Working mostly off high screens on the offensive end, executed well by Lars Thiemann, the Bears went to work with a patient offensive approach and balanced contributions.
It started with a pull-up jumper by Shepherd, followed on the next possession by another mid-range jumper from Kuany Kuany, a 3-pointer from Sam Alajiki, a steal by Alajiki leading to a layup and free throw from Thiemann, and a Celestine steal leading to his own mid-range jumper as the Bears scored on five straight possessions to build their momentum.
The run continued soon thereafter when Kuany scored inside and made the ensuing free throw, Foreman knocked down a jumper a couple possessions later, Shepherd followed a little later with a driving layup, Anticevich then drained a 3-pointer and Shepherd scored on a fastbreak layup to put Cal ahead 29-12.
All the while Oregon just kept clanking 3s and putting together other empty possessions, missing 10 straight shots in all.
"The one thing that I felt like, and this goes back to the big picture, a year ago Oregon's matchups, we were smaller across the board. They've had to move some guys around, they're basically playing three little guards, so if you look at the matchups we have some advantages and it's harder to score against us. Our defense was key during that stretch," Fox said. "And then we told our team, 'Take the mid-range jumper. Don't try to challenge this guy at the rim. They're going to take away the 3. Take the mid-range jumper -- it's still a great shot in basketball.' We made several of them and got on a little roll and then fortunately never really looked back."
After Oregon's Jacob Young missed the front end of a one-and-one with 15.2 seconds left in the first half, Shepherd capped the phenomenal start by splitting two defenders at the top of the key and throwing down a monstrous two-handed dunk just before the buzzer to make it a 38-22 lead at halftime.
The game never got closer than 11 points the rest of the way, but as noted, there was one other key sequence.
Will Richardson had just hit a 3 to draw Oregon to within 51-40 with just under 8 minutes to play, but the Ducks then left Foreman all alone on the other end for a wide-open 3-pointer of his own.
Quincy Guerrier then missed two free throws for Oregon, and Cal capitalized once more as Anticevich took Guerrier off the dribble at the other end for a driving layup to make it a 56-40 game.
Fox said that media timeout right before that sequence was important for his team.
"We really were disappointed in our start to the half. They got to the free throw line it seemed like every single time, and we were not pleased with our mental attachment to start the second half. But at the timeout, everyone was little bit emotional, I just said, 'Will you guys stop? We're still up by 14. Calm down and just do your jobs,'" he said. "We composed ourselves and we got to the game late, we had some lineups where we didn't even try to run offense because we were just too disjointed, and that's where we miss Andre [Kelly]. Because they went small, we couldn't play Lars, so we just decided to keep the ball in Shep's hands and he really finished the game well."
Cal was playing its fifth game without Kelly, its leading rebounder and second-leading scorer, but perhaps the Bears are adjusting to the reality that the big man won't be part of the equation the rest of the season.
Cal returns home for its next three games, starting Thursday against Colorado, while looking to keep this late season momentum going after sweeping the Oregon State-Oregon road swing.
"You've got to take it one at a time. It will be good to be back at home if we can get some energy back in the building, and we need to have that. That's such an advantage in college basketball, so hopefully we'll have some decent crowds because you need them," Fox said. "We'll have some challenges without Andre the rest of the way -- there's just no way to hide that. So we're going to have to make sure that every game we're extremely diligent on how we're trying to play. That's the only we can compensate for the loss of a good player."
