On Sunday, Cal women’s basketball lost to #7 Oregon State by a final score of 82-74. Redshirt sophomore guard Destiny Slocum led the way for the Beavers with 26 points, 4 rebounds, and 4 assists while senior forward Kristine Anigwe had another monster game for the Golden Bears with 31 points and 18 rebounds. It was another day of setting records for Cal. Anigwe broke the school’s all-time rebounding record while senior Asha Thomas, who finished with 15 points on 5-14 shooting from 3-point range, became number one all-time in Cal women’s basketball history with the most threes. Oregon State improves to 20-4 overall and 10-2 in the Pac-12 while Cal falls to 14-9 overall and 5-7 in the Pac-12.
“We just went through the toughest stretch of four games, I think by statistical numbers that any team will have in the country all year, and yet I say this with a whole lot of respect for the teams that we played against, we’re disappointed,” Cal head coach Lindsay Gottlieb said after the game. “We were not happy to get one out of the four. We’re disappointed that we got one and we lost a really tough game today and that’s not taking anything away from Oregon State. That’s saying we know how good they are and yet we had a chance to win the game at home and that’s what our goal was, and we fell short of that.
“That being said, I think the way the team feels and the way that we played in a lot of ways sets us up to be able to do better things from here. If that’s the toughest stretch, it doesn’t get that much easier in the Pac-12. We have four of our final six on the road and teams are playing really well all over the league, but I think that we’ve probably learned some valuable lessons going through this stretch even though we wanted to be better than 1-3 of what we need to do to compete with the top ten teams in the country and win those games and at the same time I think it’s made us hungrier to do what we need to do in the final six regular season games.”
“Really proud of our team for bouncing back the way they did today after a loss the other night,” Oregon State head coach Scott Rueck said. “Tough place to play, tough team, veteran team in Cal. Just a dominating force in Kristine Anigwe. Been competing against her for four years now, I mean you just keep shaking your head at the motor that she has, that she plays with, her skillset. So, it’s just doing everything you can to slow her down, which is, nobody’s been able to do yet and nobody will. And so, you just have to counter. You gotta score at the other end, too. Make her work for everything.
“And then Asha’s got the heart of a lion. To hit huge shots in the second half, did she hit all five in the second half? It seemed like it. At least four, seemed like more than that actually, but I was proud of our team for just being resilient. Shaking off, a little bit of doubt that creeps in after each loss. There’s really no way around that and then they worked through that. I just thought we played with so much grit and toughness. Destiny did her thing, but we had great performances across the board. Trish Morris played a great game, the longest stretch she’s played I think in conference and her career high today on a big stage and so, I’m proud of the team.”
Cal got off to a solid start in this game, as Jaelyn Brown scored 9 of their first 13 points, really getting hot from beyond the arc. After being tied 13-13 midway through the 1st quarter, Cal was able to take a 20-15 lead at the end of the 1st quarter thanks to Brown’s hot shooting and also Anigwe, who had 8 points and 5 rebounds.
Cal continued to put pressure on Oregon State in the 2nd quarter, leading 34-24 with 4:47 to go. Anigwe was up to 14 points and 6 rebounds, creating all sorts of problems for Oregon State. Destiny Slocum was up to 9 points for Oregon State, doing a good job of leading her team, but three turnovers in the first half of the 2nd quarter really held Oregon State back.
Rather than finishing the quarter strong, Cal allowed Oregon State to get back into the game. Over the next couple of minutes, the Beavers would go on a 7-0 run as Slocum was up to 11 points. Rather than being up by double digits, Cal was up by only four points (35-31) with 2:10 to go. During the final couple of minutes, Oregon State would trim Cal’s lead down to just two points (37-35) at the half. Even though Cal still had the lead, Oregon State had all the momentum. Slocum was doing a good job of pacing her team with 13 points and 4 rebounds. Anigwe also was really shouldering the load for Cal with 17 points and 9 rebounds. Given how well both players were playing, it was going to be a matter of which team would get more support for their star players.
“I think we had spurts of shooting well and not shooting well,” Gottlieb said of that crucial stretch. “Like the overall numbers are ok, 33 percent from three is ok, but I felt like we could have shot the ball better. So maybe, I can’t remember exactly that when they cut down our lead there, I thought in the third quarter when they took a lead it was a couple of plays in a row where we weren’t locked in enough and they made us pay. I think they got two transition looks really quickly, a couple of and-1s. That stands out more to me. That run, I think the end of the second quarter was them battling back. Goodman had five quick ones off of a three and a two off the ball screen. I think that was a problem. They closed the gap more quickly than we would have wanted them to when we had the lead.”
“We shifted to zone during that stretch,” Rueck said. “At one point there was a timeout, I think I took a timeout about six and half minutes or so as the second quarter was not going the way we wanted. It was one of those moments where you gotta challenge, all of us have to challenge ourselves and say let’s respond here appropriately to this. Let’s compete and let’s knock shots down.
“I mean, this team’s not going to go anywhere. We have to make plays and I thought Aleah really stepped up and hit a couple huge shots right after that and really spearheaded that offensive spurt anyway. But our team did a nice job in our zone to slow them down because they had a ton of momentum.”
Oregon State did a good job of carrying their momentum into the 2nd half as they would lead 46-45 with 4:38 to go in the 3rd quarter. Slocum was up to 15 points, while Mikayla Pivec was up to 8 points after having scored just 2 points in the 1st half. Pivec would go on to have 12 of her 16 points in the 3rd quarter, doing a fantastic job of giving Slocum the help she needed. With a 59-51 lead at the end of the 3rd quarter, Oregon State was now in the driver’s seat.
“I think the key was just kinda settling in, relaxing,” Aleah Goodman said. “Taking care of the ball, definitely getting stops on the defensive end and then just playing our game on the offensive end. Getting to the rim, hitting shots, and I think that was the biggest thing for us is just defense leading into offense.”
Despite being down by 8 points going into the 4th quarter, Cal was able to get themselves back in the game after Receé Caldwell hit a huge 3-pointer to cut Oregon State’s lead down to just 3 points (66-63) with 6:32 to go. Thomas also started to get things going as well. After having a scoreless 1st half, Thomas scored 6 points in the 3rd quarter on 2-6 shooting from 3-point range before then scoring another 9 points in the 4th quarter on 3-6 shooting from 3-point range. Anigwe needed relief and Thomas definitely stepped up her game in that regard.
With 3:56 to go, Oregon State was clinging to a 72-70 lead, doing their best to hang on. A pair of free throws from Goodman and a layup from Slocum gave Oregon State a 76-70 lead before Anigwe knocked down a pair of free throws to make it a 76-72 game with 2:28 to go. Over the next couple of minutes, both teams would each trade baskets. Anigwe got a hook shot to fall in the paint while Joanna Grymek answered on the other end.
With a 78-74 lead with just 34.9 to go, Oregon State was in need of getting one more stop to put the game away for good. Cal was able to get a corner 3-point attempt from Thomas, but it wasn’t the best look in the world and it clanged off the rim, resulting in an empty possession. From there, Oregon State was able to skate away with an 82-74 victory, showing why they are the #7 ranked team in the country.
For Cal, this was a disappointing loss. Not so much because of who they lost to, but the way in which they lost. Up 10 midway through the 2nd quarter, Cal had an opportunity to go into halftime with a double digit lead and they failed to finish strong, instead allowing Oregon State to get themselves right back in the game.
On top of that, Cal’s defense did not improve in the way that it should have. I suggested Mo Mosley get more minutes, but she only saw the floor for one second. If playing her more isn’t a solution that Gottlieb is going to seriously explore, she’s going to have to find other ways to improve her defense. Cal is not going to do damage down the stretch of the Pac-12 season if their defense continues to be full of holes like swiss cheese.
“I feel like with defensively moving forward, I think we just need to be more aggressive and understand that, doing our game plan and sticking to it,” Anigwe said. “I feel like we’re going to do that. We’re going to be playing USC and UCLA and I’m very confident in our ability for the next game. I feel like this game taught us a lot of how those guards, they didn’t give up, they did their game plan and then eventually won.
“But for us, I’m really proud of this team because last year we would have crumbled and this year we actually fought. We were up by ten. People aren’t just up by ten to Oregon State. They’re a top ten team for a reason. We were up by ten, but we lost it because we lacked urgency. But, I guess that what this game really taught us. Staying urgent. Just keep going and don’t be satisfied and don’t give up.”
Touching more on the performances of Asha Thomas and Kristine Anigwe, it’s been hard for them to really celebrate the records that they’ve broken given that they lost both games this weekend. While they’re proud of their personal achievements, at the end of the day, their main focus is on getting wins.
“These records, legacy, that’s nice, but I think what’s more important is getting these wins really for us,” Thomas said. “At the position that we’re at right now. We need to get wins to prepare for the future and even look forward to the future. We just gotta be more hungry. We gotta really want it and I think this will set us up, but I don’t think we want to be in that position for us to get set up like that. Us two we’re gonna do what we need to do. Let’s just say that from now on.”
Up next for Cal is a road game against USC. That game will tipoff on Friday at 8:00 PM PST on Pac-12 Networks.
