On Sunday, Cal men’s basketball fell to Harvard by a final score of 71-63. Harvard senior forward Chris Lewis led the way for the Crimson with 19 points and 4 rebounds while Cal sophomore guard Matt Bradley was the top performer for the Golden Bears with 15 points and 6 rebounds. Harvard improves to 9-4 on the season while Cal falls to 6-7.

“I was very disappointed in two things in our first half,” Cal head coach Mark Fox said after the game. “I didn’t think we defended very well and we allowed them to shoot 57 percent from the field, which you’re going to have a hard time winning at that number and I think the free throw attempt count was 14 to 1 in the first half and so those two numbers were disappointing for us and then to compound that at the other end, we had eight turnovers in the first half and so it’s one of the things that we talked about a lot with this team is we have to take better care of the ball and I thought in the second half we corrected all those things to a degree. We only had one turnover.

“Our defense improved in the second half, but not to the level it needs to to win. And then when you’re playing from behind, it’s hard to climb all the way back out of the hole that you dug yourself. And so, credit to Harvard who is a battle tested, experienced, good team. And obviously our team has got a lot of work to do.”

Harvard got out to an early 9-4 lead with 15:27 to go in the half. For Harvard, Lewis had 4 points inside, Noah Kirkwood had a bucket inside, and Christian Juzang had a 3-pointer fall. For Cal, Grant Anticevich had a nice jump hook while Lars Thiemann threw up a tricky shot that went in.

With 11:47 to go in the half, Harvard was up 14-11. Andre Kelly connected on a pretty 3-pointer for Cal while Juhwan Harris-Dyson finished strong inside for two points. Lewis was up to six points for Harvard after blowing by a flat footed Thiemann for the reverse dunk.

With 7:29 to go in the half, Harvard was up 24-16. Justin Bassey found a cutting Chris Ledlum for the easy slam. The Crimson were shooting 9-15 (60.0%) from the field while the Golden Bears were shooting 7-16 (43.8%). Cal had to step it up on both ends.

With 6:29 to go in the half, Harvard was up 26-16 as Kirkwood had an easy layup in transition. Bradley had 0 points for Cal, desperately needing to get going. If Cal was going to get back in the game, they were going to have to get some production out of him.

With 3:37 to go in the half, Harvard led 31-20 as they were shooting 11-19 (57.9%) from the field. Cal in contrast was shooting 9-23 (39.1%) from the field. The one bright spot for Cal was the fact that Bradley was finally on the board with 2 points.

At halftime, Harvard led 34-24. Lewis led the charge for the Crimson with 9 points and 2 rebounds while Anticevich had 8 points and 3 rebounds for the Golden Bears. Cal’s offense was very sluggish with not a lot of motion. Hence their struggle to get going on offense. What made things even worse for Cal was the fact that Harvard was beating them like a drum without their best player, Bryce Aiken, who could be seen on the sidelines in a walking boot. Cal was given a bit of a break there with his absence and they so far were unable to take advantage.

With 17:03 to go, Harvard led 36-27 as Lewis and Bradley traded baskets. Trading baskets was not what Cal needed. If they were going to pull off the comeback, they were going to need to get some stops on defense.

With 15:53 to go, Harvard was up 36-29 as Cal looked like they might turn the corner after a put-back dunk by Kelly and a travel by Kirkwood. Cal would fail to capitalize on the possible momentum created by Kelly’s dunk as they would trail 46-36 with 11:51 to go. Bradley was up to 8 points and would attempt two more foul shots, doing a good job at getting to the foul line. Cal was trying to get back in the game by getting to the foul line, something they failed to do in the first half with just one attempt in contrast to Harvard, who shot 14 foul shots.

“No, I think I was just trying to get going,” Bradley said when asked if getting to the foul line was intentional. “I know I had another rough game and that was just an attempt for me probably get some buckets. Help the team out, but I wouldn’t getting to the foul line. Just get our team going. Try to get some easy buckets, I really don’t know. But, it was a great effort and it was good play calling.”

With 9:35 to go, Harvard was up 49-39 as Lewis was now up to 15 points and 3 rebounds for the Crimson. He was having his way inside. Cal really needed to wake up on offense and do a better job defending the middle. With 7:06 go, Harvard was now up 53-39 as Cal was shooting an abysmal 4-18 (22.2%) from the field. The offense was horrendous.

Up 58-45 with 5:22 to go, all continued to go Harvard’s way as only a Festivus miracle could save the Golden Bears. No matter how many ways you try to dissect this bad boy, it was ugly for Cal. Ball movement was bad, defense was stagnant, etc. Nothing good you could really say.

Rather than caving in completely, Cal to their credit continued to battle and appeared to have some life as they were on a 7-0 run to cut Harvard’s lead to 8 points (58-50) with 3:50 to go. Unfortunately for Cal, Christian Juzang suddenly got fouled attempting a 3-pointer, sucking all the air out of Cal’s momentum.

“I think we addressed the things we needed to fix at halftime,” Anticevich said. “We got some of those things sorted and playing hard and competing. So, I think that’s the main thing. Created a bit of momentum for us, unfortunately we weren’t able to were able to finish it off. Finish out the game, but yeah.”

With 1:19 to go, Harvard would lead 62-54 as Cal was hoping to steal back some points by winning a free throw battle. While things got a little bit interesting, Harvard didn’t bend much, as they would walk out with a 71-63 win. They did a good job attacking Cal’s press, resulting in one more easy dunk for Lewis.

“I thought we were able to finish some plays there,” Fox said. “I don’t think we have the depth to do that [play up tempo] all the time, nor the skill to do that all the time because we just we don’t have a ton of guys who can shoot the ball, but I thought that we fought back. We had a moment there where I thought we were starting to give into adversity and to our kids’ credit we decided to battle back a little bit and gave ourselves somewhat of a chance in the end, but it’s a 7 point game with 10 seconds to go. And you look back at some of the errors. Missed front end of a one and one, couple more missed free throws here, and one less turnover and all of a sudden maybe with 10 seconds to go you’re up one. We’re not that far away, but we’re a long way away from the level of consistency that is needed.”

For Cal, this loss is pretty painful. No way to put it generously. This is embarrassing. Harvard came in as 3.5 point favorites and I turned to others on press row asking if the guys in Vegas knew Aiken was out. That line seemed kinda crazy considering his absence. Instead, that line gave Cal too much slack, who nearly lost by double digits. When you’re playing at home and in desperate need of a win, you have to get the job done. Especially when you’re playing against a non-ranked mid-major team that is without their best player.

“We know where we need to improve and stuff,” Bradley said. “So, we’re going to jump back in practice, do what we need to do, and we feel pretty confident going into Pac-12. I feel. [We need to focus on] defense, defensive rebounding, there’s a lot of things that we need to do. Just, everybody buying into what coach is saying. He has a plan for us and if we all follow along to it I feel like we’ll be successful. So, that hasn’t been the case and we’re looking forward to the Pac-12 and jumping into what he’s saying.”

Up next for Cal is a road game at Stanford to tip off Pac-12 play. That game will tipoff on Thursday, January 2nd at 8:00 PM PST on ESPN2.

Note: For more analysis on this game, read Trace Travers’ Takeaways from Haas.