On Saturday, Cal men’s basketball fell to Arizona by a final score of 87-65. Chase Jeter led the way for the Wildcats with 23 points and 9 rebounds while Justice Sueing was the top performer for the Golden Bears with 27 points and 5 rebounds. Arizona improves to 13-4 overall and 4-0 in the Pac-12 while Cal falls to 5-11 overall and 0-4 in the Pac-12.
“Before the game I challenged our guys to pick up their sense of urgency defensively,” Cal head coach Wyking Jones said after the game. “For whatever reason we didn’t have it tonight. We didn’t have it tonight. The two things that we worked on the most this week, which was shooting, because we’re a very good shooting team, we got a ton of shots the last two days and free throws, we struggled with tonight. Darius McNeill goes 3-for-10 and he has wide open looks and we go into the locker room down 12 and if he hits a couple shots, if we make our free throws, I think we’re right there and they don’t have such momentum coming into the second half. But we have to improve our sense of urgency on the defensive end. It’s a major major problem for us right now.
“We’re an athletic team, we’re a quick team, we’re undersized, so we shouldn’t be getting taken off the bounce the way we’re getting taken off the bounce, opening up the floor for guys to kick out to wide open shooters. Defense gets sucked in, we get beat off the bounce, somebody has to help from the corner, defense gets sucked in, kick out and they get wide open looks. So, we have to do a much better job containing the dribble in the man, in the zone, no matter what defense we’re in. And that’s a major problem right now.”
Cal got off to a strong start in this game, leading 8-7 with 17:10 to go in the half. Justice Sueing had 5 quick points for Cal while Matt Bradley nailed a 3-pointer. Brandon Williams had the hot hand early for Arizona, scoring 5 of their first 7 points. Williams’ hot shooting would continue as he would score 10 of his team’s first 14 points, giving them a 14-10 lead with 14:25 to go in the half.
Over the next couple of minutes, both teams really struggled to score. Cal had 0 field goals made over a stretch that lasted over 4 minutes while Arizona had 0 points in a stretch that lasted over 3 minutes. Thanks to a couple of free throws made from Paris Austin, Cal was able to trim Arizona’s lead down to two (14-12), but it was clear that their offense needed a spark.
After a couple of free throws made from Chase Jeter and Justin Coleman, Arizona went up 18-12, looking like they might start to gain some separation. Rather than letting Arizona extend their lead, Cal got things going on their end. Paris Austin found Connor Vanover for a pick and pop 3-pointer while Justice Sueing got a steal and slam dunk in transition. Trailing 19-17 with 7:59 to go in the half, Cal was hanging tough.
Over the next few minutes, Arizona started to slowly build up their lead once again. Chase Jeter started to get things going inside for Arizona, taking advantage of some mismatches inside. Jeter took Grant Anticevich to school on one play, faking him out with a pretty spin move as he laid it up uncontested. Such easy buckets were a frequent theme of the night. As a result of Arizona’s success inside, the Wildcats were able to take a 30-24 lead with 3:43 to go in the half and extend the lead 38-28 with 1:05 to go in the half after another bucket inside, this time from Ryan Luther.
During that final minute, Cal gave up yet another basket inside, this time off a fluke tip in from Chase Jeter that looked like it may have gone off the hand of Justice Sueing. Up 40-28 at the half, Arizona was in a really good spot. Chase Jeter had 13 points and 8 rebounds, getting virtually whatever he wanted inside.
“My two freshmen, they have to do a better job in interior defense,” Wyking Jones said bluntly. “We say take away left shoulder, take away left shoulder, Chase Jeter he wants to go over left shoulder, and we’re consistently giving that shot up. Make him shoot the ball with his left hand over his right shoulder. Some of that is inexperience, but at the same time there needs to be more effort. More sense of urgency when it comes to getting that stop and making the right defensive play and so right now for me, that’s what hurting us right now. The sense of urgency is not there right now, and we need to desperately improve that.”
The only Cal player that showed up in the first half was Justice Sueing, who had 12 points. Every other Cal player was struggling to get going, especially Darius McNeill, who had 0 points on 0-5 shooting from 3-point range. Cal was shooting 9-29 (32.1%) from the field, 3-11 (27.3%) from 3-point range, and 7-12 (58.3%) from the foul line. Shots were not falling, and they were getting eaten alive inside as Arizona had a 20-16 edge on the boards.
Arizona opened the second half on an 11-6 run as Chase Jeter quickly got up to 19 points. Cal wasn’t able to make the necessary adjustments at halftime to curb Arizona’s strong performance inside. On top of that, Arizona started to find a nice rhythm from beyond the arc as Brandon Randolph knocked down two threes, one of which was totally uncontested. Up 51-34 with 16:45 to go, Arizona was starting to run away with the game, requiring a drastic turnaround from Cal.
“We’re 16 games in at this point, so you can’t blame it on inexperience,” Wyking Jones said of his team’s inability to stop the bleeding. “There just has to be more effort. There has to be more effort. That’s what it comes down to. You gotta work harder. We tell our bigs do your work early. Do a better job of taking away the pass. Then you don’t have to guard in the post as much. So, Connor, Dre, they’re young, they’re talented, but they gotta do a better job and our guards, you gotta do a better job. Can’t keep getting blown by. You gotta be able to contain off the bounce. So, we got a lot of work to do.”
Over the next several minutes, it would be more of the same. Chase Jeter continued to do damage in the paint while Brandon Williams (16 points), Brandon Randolph (12 points), and Justin Coleman (13 points) would all enter double figures in scoring. A thunderous slam from Ira Lee put Arizona up 72-49 with 7:55 to go, putting an exclamation on a dominating Wildcats performance.
In the final minutes, Cal shooting guard Darius McNeill was able to get up to 9 points on 3-10 shooting from 3-point range, but the damage had already been done. Arizona walked out with an 87-65 victory, not being challenged much in the second half. Aside from Justice Sueing, nobody else on this Cal team showed up. Paris Austin, who returned to the starting lineup, finished with 8 points, 2 assists, and 3 turnovers, not producing like Cal would have hoped.
“Coach challenged me,” Justice Sueing said of his mindset coming into this game. “I haven’t been performing like how I should be, and I came into this game making sure that I was supposed to make plays for myself and my teammates. But regardless of how I performed it wasn’t good enough. It doesn’t matter because we lost the game. A lot of our guys didn’t shoot as well as they should have. Especially with us shooting so much, but just can’t have those lapses and Arizona really hurt us tonight on that.”
For Cal, this loss is disappointing in that they weren’t able to make any adjustments in the second half. It would have been nice to see them come out with some fire in the second half, but instead, they continued to get worked inside while also failing to establish any sort of offensive flow. These are the kind of losses that are the most frustrating.
“Like coach said, effort, I think that’s the biggest thing,” Justice Sueing said of what’s key in turning things around. “You keep going back to the fact that we’re young, but we’re a lot more than what we’re showing and we all know that and it’s disappointing to see us work so hard, especially with shooting being the emphasis, especially defense being the emphasis in practice…Once we figure out those little clicks in our offense and defense, mainly our defense, it will show. We still have more games to look into. So, I’m looking forward to that moving on. Keep getting better.”
“At this very moment, everybody is unhappy, at this moment,” Wyking Jones said of where he is team is at emotionally. “We gotta regroup on Monday. We gotta regroup on Monday. Still got a lot of games to play. Some guys are going to have to grow up quicker. They have to grow up quick. We’re young, but Justice he’s our veteran, he’s a sophomore. He’s our veteran. He’s the guy that I put all the pressure on, him and Paris, to get us going and he’s in the second year of college.
“So, we’re young, but we still gotta play the games, we still gotta be able to compete, we still gotta be able to execute and do the things that we need to do to win and we’re still going to continue to challenge our guys. They always come in with the right attitude. It’s not a situation where I have to deal with guys that don’t have the right attitude. They always have the right attitude. So as long as that’s the case, I’m hopeful that we can make a run at some point. So, but defensively we have to get better.”
Up next for Cal is a road trip to the Pacific Northwest to face the Washington schools. First stop will be Pullman on Thursday to face Washington State. That game will tipoff at 7:00 PM PST on Pac-12 Networks.
