On Friday, #18 Cal women’s basketball fell in overtime to UCLA by a final score of 84-79. Michaela Onyenwere led the way for the Bruins with 29 points and 8 rebounds while Kristine Anigwe was the top performer for the Golden Bears with 32 points and 14 rebounds. UCLA improves to 9-5 on the season and 2-0 in the Pac-12 while Cal falls to 9-3 overall and 0-1 in the Pac-12. This is the third straight loss for the Golden Bears after starting the season 9-0.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever been this emotional after a game that wasn’t the last game of the season,” Cal head coach Lindsay Gottlieb said after the game. “A lot of different, end of the season game is a different type of emotion, but the best way I can say it is I’m so invested in this team. I’m riding with this team. I told them in the locker room, we all have conversations after the game, you can call and make commentary on the officiating. I said I’m inclined to do that, but I’m not going to do that right now. Because I’m going to talk about our team and at the end of the day, we fought really hard against a great team to put ourselves in a situation to win, but we also did some things that were under our control to get a deficit in the first place.
“This conference is really really good. I would be very truthful if you look every single time and say gosh, that’s a toss-up game. Gosh, this game is going to be really hard to win. So, the way that we can separate is not the conference getting easier, is not anyone on our schedule, me trying to paint them as any less good than what they are, it’s us being better and us doing things all the time that separate us. So, we did that for a lot of this game, we really did, we just didn’t do it for all 40 minutes. Again, credit them, they’re really good. They’re like a gazillion times better than their record, but they also did their version of them really well. And we didn’t handle the things that they do well early on. So, that’s on us.
“I thought there were some things down the stretch that should have gone differently. Both things under our control, like the boxout on the free throw line, but also the other stuff that was out of our control. That happens sometimes. It’s hard when it’s in such a critical situation, but more so we have to be better in order to be the elite team that we want to be. Nothing’s going to get easier. We’re going to get better and I think this team understands that.”
From the opening tip, this game was a battle. UCLA went up 9-7 with 4:36 to go in the 1st quarter behind 5 points from Lajahna Drummer, who did a really nice job of setting the tone early for the Bruins. UCLA would proceed to hold a 17-16 lead at the end of the 1st quarter thanks to some poor shooting from Cal and quality playing from Onyenwere who had 9 of those 17 points. Cal was shooting 6-16 (37.5%) from the field and 2-7 (28.6%) from 3-point range, so they really were lucky to only be down by one point after the 1st quarter.
To open the 2nd quarter, Cal came out really sloppy as UCLA extended their lead 29-24 with 5:08 to go in the quarter. Kennedy Burke had a pretty layup off of a turnover from Jaelyn Brown which pretty much summed up how things were going so far. UCLA was putting good pressure on Cal, forcing them to play a bit scrambled and out of control, resulting in 7 early turnovers.
After holding a 37-32 lead with 1:00 to go in the 2nd quarter, UCLA would close out the quarter on a 5-0 run to go up 42-32 at halftime after Lindsey Corsaro hit a huge 3-pointer right before time expired. At the half, Michaela Onyenwere had 13 points for UCLA while Kristine Anigwe (9 points) and McKenzie Forbes (8 points) were the top scorers for Cal.
UCLA was getting a lot of easy baskets in the 1st half, shooting 18-36 (50%) from the field on just 5 three-point attempts. They were doing most of their damage inside the arc and Cal was not able to stop them. Cal in contrast was shooting 12-26 (46.2%) from the field, unable to get into a good offensive flow. With only 5 assists and 11 turnovers at halftime, it was clear that UCLA’s defensive pressure was doing its job.
During the first few minutes of the 3rd quarter, UCLA and Cal were playing each other dead even. Cal was getting some shots to fall, but UCLA continued to shoot at a 50% clip from the field, leading 48-38 with 6:57 to go in the quarter. Cal would soon flip the script and start playing much better defense, holding UCLA to 5-16 (31.3%) shooting from the field in the quarter. Cal also started to play much better offense, getting Kristine Anigwe much more involved offensively. As a result, Cal went on an 11-0 run to go up 55-53 at the end of the 3rd quarter after Asha Thomas hit a clutch floater of her own as the buzzer sounded.
“Give credit to Cal,” UCLA head coach Cori Close said of the 3rd quarter. “They’re a really good basketball team. They were missing shots in that first half and we were making shots. I thought we were getting pretty good shots. The one thing that we weren’t doing is we weren’t getting second shot opportunities in that 3rd quarter. We went down significantly on the rebounding margin in that particular quarter and we weren’t making our shots. Their zone sort of made us slow down a little bit. We weren’t able to play at the tempo that we would like to play.”
After owning the 3rd quarter 23-11, Cal was unable to carry that momentum into the 4th quarter with as much gusto as they would have liked. UCLA was able to recapture the lead 63-59 with 4:50 to go, getting themselves right back in the game. Cal to their credit battled back and took a 67-66 lead after Kristine Anigwe hit a huge layup and Asha Thomas hit a pair of free throws. With 1:54 to go, Cal found themselves in another toss up game. Asha Thomas was able to hit a huge circus shot to put Cal up 71-68, but UCLA was able to tie the game right back up after getting three points the hard way. Lajahna Drummer went 1-2 from the foul line with her miss fortuitously dropping into the hands of Michaela Onyenwere who got the put-back.
Tied 71-71 with 17.5 seconds to go, Cal had the ball and was in prime position to win the game. In the following possession, Cal was unable to get the look they wanted, resulting in a wild shot from McKenzie Forbes that had no shot of going in. UCLA got the ball back with 4.2 seconds to go, but also was unable to score, resulting in overtime.
UCLA opened up overtime really strong, scoring the first five points of the period. Lajahna Drummer got a nice bucket inside followed by another strong bucket inside from Kennedy Burke. With a 76-71 lead, things really started to look like they were going in UCLA’s favor. Cal however was able to battle back as Asha Thomas hit a clutch three to keep her team in it. With 21.2 seconds to go, Cal had the ball and an opportunity to get a quick two or make a 3-pointer to tie the game up. Unfortunately for them, they were unable to draw up the right play, resulting in a forced 3-point attempt from Kianna Smith. Japreece Dean would then go on to ice the game at the foul line for UCLA, resulting in an 84-79 result.
“Pressure, pressure, pressure,” Lindsay Gottlieb said of what UCLA did to force the ball into the hands of Smith and Forbes. “There’s a couple of different ways to play us. There’s the sagging, put everyone on Kristine and let people shoot, which I don’t think that’s a good formula per se because we have people who can shoot and then there’s the pressure the heck out of everyone, so no matter how much Kristine’s open we might only get to her half the time…We turned the ball over too much. It’s more so it happened in waves. So, the first half we were really bad at what we were supposed to do offensively and then the second half we were way better. But I would say most of the time that we didn’t get the look that we wanted it was because of the pressure on the ball.”
One of the things that was frustrating for Cal was the way the game was officiated. At a crucial moment in overtime, it looked like Jaelyn Brown got fouled at midcourt, but instead the refs swallowed their whistles, resulting in a transition bucket for UCLA. Shortly thereafter, Kristine Anigwe would get called for a very questionable foul, resulting in free throws made for UCLA.
“I did not,” Lindsay Gottlieb said if she got an explanation on that scrum involving Jaelyn Brown. “I was able to talk to the other two officials that were not involved in it. I was incredibly calm. I said tell me what I can say to not get a T, to not get in trouble, like I really want to know. One official said they didn’t see the play and the other person said it wasn’t his call. So, the person that was involved, it didn’t rotate around to where he was near me. But, so I got zero explanation whatsoever. It was kind of a back-to-back thing. There was that call, which lost us a possession, gave them a run out, and then the next call right after that was a critical one with what looked like a blocked shot by Kristine.”
For Cal, this loss really stings. After losing to Harvard, they were eager to right the ship and open up Pac-12 play with a win. Instead, they find themselves in the midst of a two-game losing skid with a must-win game on Sunday against USC. It’s not the spot they would like to be in, but they have to make the best of it and not allow things to get any worse.
“We play USC, I think we’re all focused on getting a win,” Kristine Anigwe said. “I don’t think anybody wants to lose three in a row. We were close with UConn, we lost to Harvard, this game was close, next game has to be a win. I don’t see anything else. I don’t see anything that’s going to change that. Our mentality is focused. I believe in this team. We’re gonna do damage in the Pac, I think. We got our feet wet with this game. We were down 10 at half, we got back in the game. I think we understood what it took to get back in the game and we just couldn’t finish it.
“Bad plays by us. Again, if we’re not down by 10 we win the game. Next time we play them, it’s going to be a different result. I think we’re all focused on USC, we’re focused on everyone else now. We know how it feels to lose. It’s not going to happen like this again. If we lose it’s not going to happen like this.”
Up next: Cal’s game against USC tips off at 3:00 PM PST on Sunday. That game will air on Pac-12 Networks.
