On Friday, Cal men’s basketball defeated Cal Baptist 82-62 at Haas Pavilion, improving to 3-0 on the season while Cal Baptist falls to 2-2. Junior forward Grant Anticevich led the way for Cal with 23 points, 9 rebounds, and 4 assists on 5-5 shooting from 3-point range and 9-11 shooting from the field while Matt Bradley chipped in 16 points on 4-9 shooting from the field and 7-7 shooting from the foul line. Anticevich’s 5-5 shooting from beyond the arc tied the Cal record for best 3-point percentage in a game. The record was previously shared by Amit Tamir (vs. Arizona State in 2003) and Eric Vierneisel (vs. Washington in 2008).
“What what is? No, I don’t. What is that?” Anticevich said when asked if he knew who Tamir was. “Who?”
While not knowing whether or not Tamir was a person or an inanimate object, Anticevich did have nice things to say about his teammates and how they helped him get off to such an historic shooting performance.
“My teammates were being really unselfish as I’m out always,” Anticevich said. “They were getting me a lot of open shots and doing a lot of work for me and all I had to do is just catch it and put it in the hole, so I was doing the simple part, they were doing all the work getting me open.”
Despite the good vibes felt from Anticevich’s hot shooting, Cal head coach Mark Fox made it clear that he feels there’s a lot for his team to work on. Especially when it comes to holding onto a lead.
“We leave here with a win tonight and I’m hopeful that we can learn from tonight’s game much like after you lose a game,” Fox said in his opening post-game remarks. “Because we didn’t play particularly well in one portion of the first half and you have to be willing to learn on the games that you win and not just learn after you get your tail beat.
“To be honest with you, this group just hasn’t been ahead a lot and so we didn’t handle it very well: A great start. We handled it very immaturely to be honest with you and it cost us. It cost us a double-figure lead in the first half, and we were fortunate at halftime to self-correct and start playing some defense and leave here with a win over a well-coached quality team.”
Cal got off to a really nice 9-2 start with 17:37 to go in the first half as Anticevich got things going with two threes while Bradley had 3 points of his own. Cal would extend that lead to 10 points (16-6) with 15:05 to go in the half as Anticevich was up to 11 points on 4-4 shooting from the field and 3-3 shooting from beyond the arc.
“Grant had a really great game,” Bradley said. “Five-for-five, that’s big time. We have a lot of threats, so whether it’s him scoring, Kareem scoring, me, Andre, Paris, Joel; anybody can score on the team. I’m just glad it was him that got off tonight.”
With 10:30 to go in the half, Cal was up 27-16 as Anticevich was up to 14 points after yet another 3-pointer. Cal was shooting 10-15 (66.7%) from the field while Cal Baptist was shooting 5-14 (35.7%). All things were going Cal’s way early.
However, Cal’s lead wouldn’t last long as Cal Baptist gradually chipped away, getting it back to within single digits (27-20) with 8:27 to go in the first half. The Lancers continued to chip away even further as they would trail by just four points (34-30) with 3:31 to go in the half. At this point, Cal had 8 turnovers, many of which were offensive fouls. Due to their sloppy play, the Lancers were right back in this game.
“I think that’s a problem that we anticipated that we would have,” Fox said of coaching a team not used to having big leads. “I didn’t know if we would have it this early to be honest with you. But, we didn’t handle a double-figure lead very well at all. We were very immature once we built that lead. As I said in my opening statement, I hope that we can learn from that because it’s a natural problem to have for young players, but as they mature and hopefully get in that situation again, hopefully we’ll handle it a little better.”
At the half, the game was tied 40-40 as Cal squandered a double digit lead. Anticevich was up to 16 points and 6 rebounds, doing his part for the Golden Bears. The problem was careless play on offense and not focusing enough on defense. Ferron Flavors, Jr. was doing a nice job for Cal Baptist with 11 points and 4 rebounds.
“I think we come out strong and then sometimes we get a little bit relaxed and then pick it up again in the second half,” Anticevich said. “But, I feel like each game we’ve played, we’ve improved in playing the full forty minutes and our emphasis is to play hard. Play a full forty minute game and if it goes to overtime, however long the game goes for, to play hard that whole time. So, I think it’s something we’ve gotten better at every single game and it’s something we’ll be able to learn from and as coach said, self-correct. So, it was really good to see I think.”
To start the second half, Cal came out with some defensive energy sparked by a nice block by freshman center Lars Thiemann, who would go on to finish with 5 points and 1 rebound to go along with his block. While he is still a long ways from being a finished product, Thiemann is starting to show signs of why there is so much hype around his potential. Up 49-46 after a triple from Bradley, Cal was hoping to finally gain some distance from Cal Baptist with 15:28 to go.
Gain some distance from Cal Baptist is exactly what Cal did as they went on 13-0 run over a 3:40 stretch. Five quick points from Anticevich sparked that run and everyone else fed off of his energy. Up 64-48 with 11:04 to go, Cal looked to finally be in control of this game.
“I thought we decided we were going to start playing defense,” Fox said. “In the first half we just kinda let Grant shoot every ball in and then just think we could all fire the ball up there and I don’t think we guarded anybody the whole half. Maybe the first three minutes we played a little defense, but I was very disappointed in our defensive performance in the first half and we allowed six threes at forty percent and in the second half we decided that end was going to be more important to us and it led to some offense because we got some stops. But, saw some immaturity with our group, but I also saw some competitive response that when they were tied at the half to come back and play like we wanted to in the second half.”
With 8:42 to go, Cal was up 70-51 after Anticevich found Juhwan Harris-Dyson for the slam. Cal was moving the ball, getting everyone involved, and playing good fundamental team basketball. After a rocky final 10 minutes of the first half, everything was going Cal’s way.
Over the next few minutes, Cal would not allow Cal Baptist to get back in the game as they now led 76-56 with 5:16 to go. Anticevich (23 points), Bradley (14 points), and South (10 points) were all in double figures. At this point, Cal was just looking to finish strong and finish strong they did. If it wasn’t for a late 3-pointer from Tre Armstrong with three seconds left, Cal would have won by 23 points. Instead, Cal Baptist was able to stay within the 20 point margins, resulting in an 82-62 Cal victory.
“I feel like offensively we changed and also our intensity,” Bradley said of what changed in the second half. “We picked it up a lot in the second half. We denied three-point shots and we just manned up and guarded our man and a good overall effort from everybody.”
Overall, this was a good win for Cal, who finished strong and did not let Cal Baptist have any life towards the end. That said, Cal did blow a strong first half start and once again found themselves in a dog fight at halftime. Cal needs to come out of the gates stronger if they want to compete with more competitive programs.
Up next for Cal is a game on Monday against Prairie View. That game will tipoff at 7:00 PM PST at Haas Pavilion on Pac-12 Networks.
Note: Freshman forward Kuany Kuany did not play but did go through warmups and was dressed for action. That is certainly progress.
