On Thursday, Cal men’s basketball held on to defeat Stanford at Maples Pavilion by a final score of 64-59. Connor Vanover and his braided hair led the way for the Golden Bears with 24 points, 5 rebounds, and 6 blocks while KZ Okpala was the top performer for the Cardinal with 21 points and 8 rebounds. Cal improves to 8-22 overall and 3-15 in the Pac-12 while Stanford falls to 15-15 overall and 8-10 in the Pac-12. After starting 0-15 in Pac-12 play, Cal closes out the regular season on a three-game winning streak.
“Just a great overall team win,” Cal head coach Wyking Jones said of his team’s win. “I thought that everybody that played gave us something. Helped us to get the victory. Connor Vanover obviously, had an unbelievable shooting night tonight. But what’s most impressive for me on this stat sheet is he had 6 blocks. So, he did a great job protecting the middle for us tonight and just very very happy with the team win.”
While this win was obviously huge for Cal, the loss was just as painful on the other side for Stanford. It was senior day for Josh Sharma and the Cardinal wanted to send out their big man the right way. Instead, they went toes up against the bottom team of the Pac-12 who also happens to be their main rival.
“I want to apologize for Josh,” Stanford head coach Jerod Haase said of how much this loss hurt. “This hurts me, and the thing is it hurts the rest of the guys, too. And so that was the first message. A lot of guys are hurting in the locker room and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. That shows how much they care and want to do the right thing.
“And then the message is that we’re going to have to execute the game plan better as we put it in front of them for the conference tournament. But we are going to go in as healthy as we possibly can both mentally and physically with the intent to play great. I think by the time we get to next week I really believe we’re going to have a team that’s very confident and hungry. But that’s my job between now and the road to get us to that spot.”
“That one hurts,” Sharma added. “It hurts.”
Cal outplayed Stanford from the opening tip, going up 8-2 with 16:15 to go in the first half. Vanover had all eight of those points on 3-3 shooting from the field, catching fire early. Cal would then proceed to go on a 9-0 run to lead 17-2 with 14:28 to go as Vanover continued to be the braided flame thrower with 13 points.
“I thought he was fantastic, I thought he set the tone for the entire game early,” Haase said of Vanover. “I do think we could have challenged a couple of shots early a little better, but it wasn’t miserable breakdowns in execution and then after he made one or two, the confidence skyrocketed, and he played great from there…I wasn’t surprised when shots were going in. I mean the scouting report was very clear that he’s a shooter and very capable. So, it wasn’t something that it was a surprise that any single play that he made, but certainly he played a fantastic game and I think his confidence soared after the beginning of the game.”
With 11:58 to go, it continued to be all Cal as they led 19-5. Paris Austin started to get things going a bit for Cal with 4 points. Cal really couldn’t have asked for a better start.
Rather than crawling back in the game, Stanford continued to struggle, trailing 24-8 with 7:36 to go in the half. Okpala was doing his part for the Cardinal, scoring 7 of those 8 points. The issue was no one else was able to get into any sort of rhythm. As for Vanover, he continued to do damage with 16 points on 6-7 shooting from the field. Combined with their lousy shooting, Stanford’s inability to figure out Vanover is what got them in such a hole.
“I think it’s just my confidence and the momentum coming down the stretch,” Vanover said of what got him going. “So, we’ve won three in a row and I think me throughout the season I just keep getting better. It’s all about my teammates. They give me the ball. So, they really had a big part of it, but I was just out there, made my first shot, and I just kept shooting from there. It feels good. I feel like I could shoot it from anywhere.”
With 3:34 to go in the half, Stanford finally started to show some signs of life, trailing 32-20. Okpala was up to 11 points, doing a stellar job of leading the Cardinal while Vanover was up to 18 points. As for Austin, he was up to 8 points and 2 assists, doing a good job of inserting himself into the action.
“Oh, I’m happy. I’m happy when he makes shots,” Austin said of Vanover’s shooting. “It makes it so much easier for me. As soon as they double me off the pick and roll, I know that I could just throw it up to him and I get a good shot.”
At the end of the half, Stanford got within 10 points after a transition slam from Okpala that gave him 13 points. Unfortunately for the Cardinal, Matt Bradley struck back with a 3-pointer at the buzzer to give Cal a 37-24 halftime lead.
“It was a momentum play for us,” Jones said of Bradley’s buzzer beater. “Because they go down, they get a dunk, they would have ran into the locker room with momentum feeling really good about their chances of making a comeback and closing the gap and then we hit a three, so we get a chance to walk into the locker room feeling good about what we had done in the first half. So, it was very important. Very important just for the psyche of both teams.”
Rather than closing the gap, Stanford continued to struggle coming out of halftime as Cal went up 45-24 with 16:42 to go. Vanover was up to 21 points for Cal, keeping his foot on the gas. Justice Sueing (8 points) and Matt Bradley (6 points) were doing a solid job at giving Vanover some assistance. Okpala was doing a good job of leading Stanford, but the issue was he wasn’t getting enough help as Sharma was the second highest scorer on the team with just 4 points.
With 11:45 to go, Cal led 49-31 as Bradley joined the double-digit club with 10 points. Sharma started to get things going for Stanford a bit with 9 points while Okpala (15 points) continued to pace the Cardinal. Stanford was running out of time to make a comeback. With 8:07 to go, it continued to be more of the same as Cal would lead 49-33. Play was stopped briefly as an official went down with an apparent leg injury. Fortunately, he was able to stay in the game.
Every time Stanford tried to make a move to get back in the game, Cal found a way to answer. A 3-point play by Austin to give Cal a 54-38 lead was a prime example of that. Rather than allowing Stanford to get back in the game, Cal kept finding ways to push them away.
After missing their first 21 three-point attempts, Stanford finally got a three-pointer to fall from Marcus Sheffield, cutting Cal’s lead to 9 points (54-45) with 4:00 to go. Right on cue, Bradley struck back again for Cal with a huge bucket inside to extend Cal’s lead to 11 points (56-45). After making that clutch bucket, Bradley did a little bit of acting to draw a foul on Oscar da Silva. As a result, he went to the foul line and knocked down both foul shots, giving Cal a 58-45 lead with 3:19 to go.
“We preach KYP, Know Your Personnel,” Jones said of his team’s strong perimeter defense. “So, when you’re closing out on guys, know who you’re closing out to and what they want to do. So, you’re not going to close out to a guy that wants to drive the ball the same way you’re going to close it out to Cormac Ryan. So just making sure that we paid close attention to our different coverages and knowing who we’re closing out to and what they want to do. So that was the main thing. So, we did a really good job of closing out to Cormac Ryan and jamming him and just making sure that the guys that really shoot the ball for them weren’t comfortable on the catch.”
After that, Okpala made a huge 3-pointer, which would inspire Cormac Ryan to make a 3-pointer of his own, cutting Cal’s lead to seven points (58-51) with 2:39 to go. Okpala would then get to the foul line and make one of two, making it a 58-52 lead for Cal. Then, it was Ryan again with a 3-pointer, shaving Cal’s lead down to three point (58-55) with 1:23 to go. After looking like they were dead in the water, Ryan and Okpala went on a 10-0 run all by themselves to get the Cardinal back in the game.
“Just to keep making plays,” Jones said of what his message was to his team after Stanford made that run. “Make your free throws, they have to foul us. I really didn’t say much. I felt good about our connection and our ability to make plays when we really needed to make plays. The back-door from Justice to Connor for the and-1. That was a great play and a great read. I just continued to believe that our guys would make the right play and that they would continue to play together. So, they didn’t need a pep talk. I trusted that they were going to be able to make plays.”
Right as it looked like Cal might have a meltdown at Maples Pavilion, it was Vanover to the rescue with a dunk plus the foul. He would make his foul shot and give Cal a 61-55 lead with 56.7 to go. Stanford wasn’t done yet though as Sharma got a huge dunk inside to cut Cal’s lead to four points (61-57) with 44.8 to go. Similar to last year’s win at Maples, Grant Anticevich came up big for Cal in the final moments, knocking down a pair of free throws to give Cal a 63-57 lead with 35 seconds to go.
From there, Cal was able to hang on and walk out of Maples Pavilion with a 64-59 win. It got a little scary at the end for the Golden Bears, but to their credit, they found a way to pull out the win. In what has been a very rough season for Cal, to finish out the regular season on a three game winning streak speaks to their mental toughness and belief in each other.
“Just the resilience of our program, our guys, our staff, myself staying positive through the hard times and staying together and continuing to believe in each other and continuing to love each other,” Jones said of what this winning streak means. “Really just being a family and knowing that ok, we can go through this. As long as we stick together and believe, then we can make some things happen. So, it means a lot to me and it’s a credit to everyone in the program that we continue to fight and get better. From game in, game out.”
As for Stanford, this loss stings. Not only do they lose on senior day, but they also go into the Pac-12 Tournament on a two-game losing skid. The absence of Daejon Davis (foot) looms large in this game as he is their primary ball handler and point guard. The lack of a true floor general was apparent tonight as the Cardinal offense failed to get into any sort of rhythm in the first half.
“We’ve had a variety of injuries throughout the year, just rolled ankles and one guy here, one guy there,” Haase said of not having Davis. “And so, the chemistry and the cohesion probably isn’t what I would like for it to be. Daejon is a big part of what we do. He always is defensively. He applies so much pressure and can guard the basketball at a high level. His experience through a lot of games after a couple years now is important and he’s an important piece of this team and so we do miss him out there and having said that, a lot of confidence in all the guys, including Bryce and Cormac to play the point.”
Up next for Cal is the Pac-12 Tournament next Wednesday. While they don’t yet know the opponent, we do know that they’ll be playing at 2:30 PM PST on Pac-12 Networks.
“I think our confidence level is high,” Austin said of how Cal is feeling going into the Pac-12 Tournament. “We’ve always continued to just to fight, like coach said. We always stay together and we feel like we can beat anybody. But we just gotta do it together. So, going into the Pac-12 Tournament we got good energy and we’re excited to play.
“No, I’m not surprised. Because every day we come in with the same mindset. We fight and we continue to fight. Even when we were losing, Coach Wy talked about how our coaching staff did a great job coming in every day being positive. There’s been a couple of times where we were down, Coach Wy got in front of us and he said you know, I love you guys. After a loss we were all down and he just talked about how we gotta continue to stay together, fight, telling us different quotes about adversity and us just staying together. Our coaching staff has done a really good job of keeping us together.”
