Recap: Cal rolls past Pepperdine in regular season opener
On Tuesday, Cal men’s basketball defeated Pepperdine 87-71 in their regular season opener at Haas Pavilion in Berkeley. Sophomore guard Matt Bradley led the way for Cal with a career-high 25 points and 5 rebounds on 8-11 shooting from the field and 5-7 shooting from 3-point range while Andre Kelly (16 points), Kareem South (14 points), and Paris Austin (14 points) also scored in double figures. Junior guard Colbey Ross was the top performer for Pepperdine with 19 points and 7 assists. Cal improves to 1-0 on the season while Pepperdine falls to 0-1.
“I’m really proud of our players,” Cal head coach Mark Fox said after the game. “I’m really happy for our players and our team, but I’m really proud of these young guys for buying in to our vision and we have worked them extremely hard. When you demand that much of somebody as a coach, it needs to work out, so they’ll do it again and do it some more. But the players made all the plays and these kids deserve a lot of credit for really playing super hard tonight and beating a very good Pepperdine team. A team that obviously was getting a lot of pre-season attention and deservedly so. So, super happy for our kids.”
Fox made the decision to insert freshman guard Joel Brown into the starting lineup, a slight change from last week’s exhibition. Fox felt that their bench needed a little more experience and seasoning given the absence of junior guard Juhwan Harris-Dyson and freshman forward Kuany Kuany, who are both still out indefinitely.
“I just think that we’re gonna have kind of some lineups that will be constantly changing,” Fox said. “Matchup driven. Obviously with a couple injuries, I felt like having Paris and Andre coming off the bench would be important to us because our depth is a little hamstrung. I think we’re close to getting some of those guys back, but we were just a little bit thin and I wanted the bench to have some experience and not be totally green.”
Early on, Pepperdine got off to a 9-6 lead with 15:33 to go in the first half, shooting 4-9 from the field. Cal in contrast was shooting 1-4, struggling early to get going on offense. Cal wouldn’t be down for long as they would go up 18-13 with 10:09 to go in the half. Bradley and Kelly each had 5 points to go along with a 3-pointer. Jacobi Gordon knocked down a 3-pointer as well, giving Cal a nice 3-5 start from beyond the arc.
With 6:22 to go in the half, the game was tied up 22-22 as Pepperdine was on a 9-4 run, shooting 9-21 from the field. Cal’s defense was starting to show signs of weakness and Pepperdine was taking advantage. With 6:02 to go in the half, Bradley was called for a flagrant foul on Skylar Chavez, who made the hoop plus the harm. Pepperdine would carry that momentum to go up 32-28 with 3:53 to go in the half as they were shooting 4-6 from beyond the arc. Rather than letting that call get in their heads, Cal continued to fight, not letting it get them down.
With 1:42 to go in the half, Pepperdine was up 35-28 after Ross hit an acrobatic shot inside after being fouled by Brown. Pepperdine looked like they might go up by double digits, but South struck back for Cal was a huge 3-pointer to cut the lead to 4 points. Pepperdine quickly responded with a basket of their own to go up 37-31 with 1:06 to go in the half.
Cal got a crucial stop and was able to cut the deficit to just two points. Rather than being down by double digits at the half and in a world of hurt like they probably would have been last year; Cal was down 37-35. They had life and had weathered a difficult storm.
“Ross is a really good player,” Kelly said of Ross, who had 17 of his 19 points in the first half. “And this whole week during scouting our coaches were telling us we gotta guard him as a team. It’s a team job to slow him down and in the first half we didn’t do the best job of stopping him as team, but then the second half we came together and we did a better job of helping off on him to make sure we made him take difficult shots.”
Coming out of halftime, it continued to be a battle as Pepperdine was up 47-46 with 14:57 to go in the game. South (12 points) and Bradley (11 points) were doing a good job of pacing Cal, but it was the defense that was going to need to step up. During the next couple of minutes, Cal’s defense stepped up a notch and the ball movement got much better thanks to Austin, who dumped off a couple of pretty passes to Kelly inside. As a result, Cal was up 57-49 with 12:10 to go, shooting 20-37 from the field. Pepperdine in contrast was shooting 18-47 from the field, not doing nearly a good enough job of getting easy looks.
“Paris Austin, he played really hard,” Bradley said. “He attacked the rim, which opened up shots from the outside. Defensively, he played really well as well and he was a captain on the floor. He made sure everyone was composed and now because of him, he’s a big part of why we won…When he’s distributing, facilitating, playing his game, it makes it a lot easier.”
“Coach said he was really proud of us at half because there were some parts where the game could have gone either way and we just kept fighting back,” Kelly said of Fox’s halftime adjustments. “So, he came in the locker room really positive, letting us know ‘I’m really proud of you guys, you guys are fighting back, we’re right there. It’s only a two point game and we get the ball at the start of the half. We’re right there.’ So, he was reinforcing positive stuff to us, which was good.”
A couple of minutes later, Bradley erupted with back-to-back step back threes, going WILD. He was now up to 17 points as Cal extended their lead 63-51 with 9:10 to go. Cal had the momentum now and just needed to make sure they could finish the job. With 7:18 to go, Cal was up 67-53 as Kelly was up to 14 points and 6 rebounds. While Bradley stole the show with his electric shooting, it was truly a team effort to extend the lead.
“Put in a lot of work,” Bradley said of his 3-point shooting. “All of us this past summer and fall before season starts, so it felt good…Well the first half, I was in foul trouble and my teammates Juhwan, Jacobi, Andre, they were just telling me ‘Matt, you just gotta come out there and just set an example. Stay strong.’ And when I came back the second half, it was second nature. I wasn’t really thinking much. I was just playing and it felt really good.”
Over the next few minutes, Cal would slowly extend their lead to 16 points, leading 78-62 with 3:27 to go. Pepperdine was unable to get themselves back in the game as Cal continued to defend and share the ball. In the end, Cal would walk out with an 87-71 win, playing the most complete game they’ve played since the Cuonzo Martin era. Everyone got involved, everyone defended, and everyone bought in to what Fox was preaching. What makes this win even more sweet for Cal is the fact that they came in as two point underdogs. Rather than letting Las Vegas win, Cal put the wood to them, outperforming the spread by 18 points.
“You have to have a response to adversity,” Fox said. “We’ve talked about that from day one. Matt picked up his second foul and I sat him, and they made a little run and we had a chance to fold up. But we were just too determined to allow that to happen, so I thought the end of the first half was important, only to go in down two and then certainly in the second half, we played very determined basketball…We found something that worked and we stayed with it. In the second half offensively and we have a number of guys who can get to the basket and I think it complements our three-point shooting and those two things worked hand in hand in the second half.”
On that note, Cal’s next game will be against UNLV, who calls Las Vegas home. That game will tipoff on Tuesday, November 12th at 8:00 PM PST at Haas Pavilion.