On Thursday at 6:00 PM PST on FS1, Cal men’s basketball will take on the Arizona Wildcats at the McKale Center in Tucson. Cal comes into the game at 5-20 overall and 0-13 in the Pac-12 while Arizona comes in at 14-12 overall and 5-8 in the Pac-12. This is the second meeting of the year between the two teams. Arizona defeated Cal in Berkeley 87-65 back on January 12th.
Last time out: On Saturday, Cal had an embarrassing showing against USC in Berkeley, losing 89-66. Bennie Boatwright had a career night for the Trojans with 36 points and a USC record 10 3-pointers while Justice Sueing led the way for the Golden Bears with 17 points and 5 rebounds.
RECAP: Cal gets lit up by USC’s three-point barrage
On Arizona: A lot has changed for Arizona since they last played Cal. Freshman guard Brandon Williams is out indefinitely with a knee injury and will not play on Thursday while sophomore forward Emmanuel Akot has announced his decision to transfer. Akot will finish out the semester at Arizona but is no longer with the program. As a result of these major changes, the Wildcats are on a seven game losing skid, falling all the way to 10th place in the Pac-12.
With Williams out and Akot gone, the Wildcats need others to step up in their absence. The two guys who most need to pick things up are sophomore guard Brandon Randolph (13.4 points) and redshirt junior forward Chase Jeter (11.5 points & 7.0 rebounds). They’re the only two active players scoring in double figures per game, making them the best offensive threats for the Wildcats at the moment.
With that said, it’s not like they’re the only talented players on this Wildcats team. Senior forward Ryan Luther (17 points) and redshirt junior guard Dylan Smith (16 points) had nice outings in their last game against Colorado, doing a good job of stepping up their play as well. The Wildcats are in need of finding a new identity and the hope for them is a home game against Cal can be the first step towards establishing that identity with the Pac-12 tournament fast approaching.
GOAZCATS.com-Press conference video: Sean Miller (2.20.19)
Keys to the game: Aside from hypnotizing Arizona into not showing up to the arena, it’s hard to figure out a way that Cal can actually win this game considering the way they played on Saturday against USC. That said, Cal had been playing solid basketball for few games in a row, so there is hope that they can maybe make this game semi-competitive.
In order to avoid getting blown off the court, the first thing Cal needs to do is defend Jeter, who had 23 points and 9 rebounds against them in Berkeley. If Cal can defend him better, that will really put the pressure on the other Arizona players to step up their game and do more than they’re used to doing. While it’s easy to envision another big night for Jeter, Connor Vanover has been playing better as of late, doing a better job of holding his own in the paint and not getting pushed around like a giraffe on skates. If Vanover can keep up his steady play inside and do a solid job protecting the paint, that more than anything will help Cal keep this game reasonably competitive.
The second thing Cal needs to do is defend the perimeter. After getting lit up like a Christmas tree on Saturday from 3-point range, perimeter defense should be atop the list of priorities for this Cal team. Ryan Luther (38.2%), Dylan Smith (37.9%), Justin Coleman (37.6%), and Alex Barcello (30.8%) can all make it rain from deep while Brandon Randolph (29.3%) averages over one 3-pointer made per game. Cal will have their work cut out for them in this department, no doubt.
Lastly, Cal needs to come out with a lot of energy and focus. After rolling over and dying within the first few minutes of their game against USC, Cal needs to prove to Arizona that they will not make that mistake twice in a row. One player to really look for in the first few minutes will be Darius McNeill, who has the capability to get the hot hand. If he’s able to knock down some threes early and get himself into a groove, his teammates should be able to feed off that. The reality is that while they may not be the most talented team on the court, there’s no reason for Cal to not at least bring the fight.
Quotes: Cal head coach Wyking Jones spoke to the media in advance of Thursday’s game. Below are quotes pertaining to the game.
Q: Could you give us your thoughts on Arizona and what you guys need to do to be successful in that game?
WJ: “In the first game, Chase Jeter played really well, and he really hurt us inside. I think that our interior defense has improved, so I think we’ll do a much better job against them. We allowed them to get out in transition. That’s not something that we typically do. So, we have to do a better job of making them earn it, making them run their offense against our set defense. So, we have to do a better job. Especially with them being at home, you have to do a better job of getting back in transition. We let SC catch fire behind three, we gotta do a much much better job defending the three and locating shooters and keeping guys, we allowed too much penetration to kick outs to shooters against SC. We gotta do a much better job of that in this game.”
Q: Have you been able to identify any reason for why they’ve lost seven straight games?
WJ: “Well, Brandon Randolph when we played him the first time, he was playing very very good basketball, he was leading them in scoring, he was playing with a lot of confidence, it seems like he’s going through a little bit of a slump right now, so that hurts them. Brandon Williams being hurt, obviously hurts them, and then losing [Emmanuel] Akot to a transfer this time of the year, that would hurt any program to lose a player that’s in your, I wanna say he was in their starting lineup for the majority of the games that he played, so to lose a guy, one of your starters, this time of year, it would hurt any team and it’s hurting them, it’s throwing them off a little bit.”
Q: Coach you mentioned that going on the road could help teams rally around each other with an us against the world mentality. Do you expect something like that from your guys this week?
WJ: “I do. I do. I’m looking forward to the games. Both places have really really good environments to play basketball games, they both draw well, it should be a great crowd at Arizona and it should be a great crowd at Arizona State. So yeah, I do think that our guys will be able to, like you said, band together and hopefully play good basketball in those environments.”
Q: With all those issues with Arizona that you mentioned, do you feel this is a different deal than last time?
WJ: “No, I mean, they’re still a good basketball team. They still got talented guys, they’re still Arizona basketball. So, it would be [wrong] for us to go into this game thinking that we have the upper hand because they’re on the losing streak and they got some guys out. We’re going to play them just like we would play anybody else and assume that they’re going to give us their best shot, so no we absolutely don’t want my guys thinking that we’re not in an underdog situation. We still have to go play a road game at Arizona.”
Q: I’m more asking do you feel you have a more even shot at them this time? WJ: “Besides the game to SC, we had been playing really really good basketball and so we were competing, and we were in games late and at this point we just wanna get back to being in games, being competitive, giving ourselves a chance to win, so that’s just our approach.”
Q: How’s the health? Everybody ready to go?
WJ: “Yep. Yep. Knock on wood. Everybody’s healthy.”
