On Friday, Cal women’s basketball fell to #10 Arizona at home by a final score of 59-50. Arizona senior guard Aari McDonald led the way for the Wildcats with 28 points and 4 rebounds while Cal freshman forward Dalayah Daniels finished with a career-high 24 points and 10 rebounds. Arizona improves to 15-2 overall and 13-2 in the Pac-12 while Cal falls to 0-11 overall and 0-14 in the Pac-12.
“I think there’s no question that this team has improved since we last saw them in January we really focused on taking care of the ball,” Cal head coach Charmin Smith said after the game. “Last time we had 31 turnovers. Much better this time with 18. We just had certain game goals that we wanted to accomplish to prove to ourselves that we’re better than the first time around…There are a lot of things out there that are positive as you mentioned. One of our goals was to have double digit scoring each quarter. And that fourth quarter got us there. They were able to pull away in the fourth.”
Early on, Arizona led 11-10 with 4:20 to go in the 1st quarter. Aari McDonald was up to 5 points for the Wildcats while Dalayah Daniels was up to 6 points for the Bears. Cal was battling hard. At the end of the 1st quarter, Arizona would lead 18-13. McDonald was up to 12 points on 5-8 shooting from the field while Daniels was up to 9 points on 3-3 shooting from the field and 3-4 shooting from the foul line. Both players were doing all they could to keep their team in the game. The 2nd quarter was going to be crucial for Cal as they’ve struggled in the 2nd quarter all season.
With 6:35 to go in the half, Arizona was up 24-15. McDonald was up to 14 points for the Wildcats on 6-11 shooting from the field. Daniels still had 9 points, needing more help. Towards the end of the half, Daniels got that help as Arizona led 28-23 at halftime. McDonald was up to 16 points while Daniels had 11 points. Ugonne Onyiah was up to 5 points for Cal on 2-3 shooting from the field.
With 7:03 to go in the 3rd quarter, Arizona led 30-28. The refs were checking to see if freshman guard Mia Mastrov committed a flagrant foul with her elbow, but they ruled it a common foul. Just a little incidental contact. Cal continued to fight, but the question was could they finish the quarter strong and keep it close going into the 4th quarter.
Arizona would then lead 33-30 with 4:52 to go in the 3rd quarter as McDonald was up to 18 points for Arizona while Daniels was up to 15 points for Cal. Neither player was getting much support from their teammates at the moment. At the end of the 3rd, the game was tied up 43-43. Daniels was having an amazing performance for Cal with 23 points while McDonald had 22 points for Arizona. It was a barn burner at Haas Pavilion.
With 4:14 to go in the game, Arizona led 51-46. Cal was still hanging tough, but time was starting to slip away. With 1:19 to go, Arizona led 55-50. Cal now needed to get a stop and then a bucket if they were going to win.
In the end, Cal was unable to get the stop and bucket needed to get back in the game. Arizona walked out with a 59-50 win. It was another tough loss for this winless Cal team, but of all the games they’ve played this season, they looked the most cohesive and together. The addition of Mastrov has given this team much needed relief in the backcourt and in general, they played like a team that is finally starting to figure things out.
“We’ve been saying it all week. As I mentioned we are a lot better than we were in January,” Smith said. “We had two weeks of practice with a limited number of people, but we worked on a lot of things. We believed if we could force them the shots we wanted and not allow them to get in transition and get easy layup, we’d be in a good position to win this game…They had a little bit more than we did, but we are always looking for a way to stay in the game and have a shot…We wanted to have belief from the jump.”
“Kinda just piggybacking on what Coach Charmin said, she continues to instill confidence and love,” Daniels added. “I went in with an aggressive mentality. Offensive and defensive minded…My focus was on aggressiveness and trying to finish…I think their team wasn’t ready for what we brought to them today. We’re a young team and I think this was a statement tonight event thought it didn’t go as we wanted.”
I rarely call any losses “moral victories”, but this one felt about as close to a “moral victory” as you can get. With all that this team has gone through with the injuries, and pauses due to COVID-19, seeing them battle like this is definitely an encouraging sign and hope for a brighter future.
“I think we played well,” Daniels said. “Obviously there were things we could have done better. But we still learned it from it and grew.”
“Honestly, it was the whole team,” Onyiah added. “Like today, we had something in our DNA and our bones. Like we can do it. We’re a really good team and we gotta prove it. The energy on the bench was really hyper up there. It was amazing I felt like the energy today was one of our best energies and we can play.”
Up next for Cal is another home against Arizona State. That game will tipoff on Sunday at 1:00 PM PST on Cal Live Stream.
