Cal ready to begin basketball regular season

Theo Robertson showed no ill effects from last year's
hip injury in Cal's exhibition opener.

On my day off, I began researching Cal's next men's basketball opponent, Pacific.  I'll get more into that matchup as the week wears on, but for now I thought I'd bring you some of the Mike Montgomery media quotes.

The Bears faced Seattle Pacific in their only exhibition.  They were able to trounce them 91-70, but the game was still in doubt up until about the 13-minute mark of the second half.  Good win, but as you can imagine their will be plenty of things that coach Mike Montgomery will want improved before they face Pacific Saturday evening.

Here are some of the questions and answers from the media conference with Montgomery yesterday:

Q: After viewing the tape of the exhibition game, do you have different thoughts than you had going in?

No, it was kind of what I thought. When Seattle Pacific made two or three passes and sprinted through, I thought we were in trouble because the pace of the game was different than what we've been playing in practice. There was a lot of stuff we hadn't worked on.

It amazes me that basketball teams only get a few weeks prior to the start of a new season in order to practice.  When you consider new recruits, a new head coach, and a completely different scheme, plus the restrictions the players have on how much practice they can do, three weeks isn't very long.  Here's more of what Montgomery said about it.

We are probably behind a lot of teams because we're trying to get the basics in and give the team a template that covers as many situations as we can. When you are starting new, everything is new and harder to learn.

Cal also has some injury concerns.  Unfortunately, those concerns relate to the position that they are lacking in the most - big men.

We have big guy issues with Harper Kamp practicing only one every four days because he is one of our best big guys. It has me really concerned and we'll try to get him on the floor as much as we can. He is day to day. The question with him is how much the knee can tolerate and how strong we can get the quad. With Harper hurt it changes our lineup a little, makes us play smaller. I only have Jamal (Boykin), Omondi (Amoke) and Max (Zhang) to play along Jordan Wilkes, and that means Theo (Robertson) plays the four, which makes us play some long range guys at the three.

Robertson really looked good against Seattle Pacific.  He was 10 for 14 from the field, a perfect eight for eight in free throws, four rebounds, one assist, and one steal, and scored 29 points in only 28 minutes.  At 6'6" and 225 lbs, he can play any position on a college floor - including a very small center.  Apparently, his injury from last year hasn't had any lingering affects on his play.

Montgomery took an opportunity to also point out that his one and only recruit this year is looking good too as he continued to explain his size dillema:

We like what we've seen with Jorge (Gutierrez) going in, but he is only 6-3, so then how do you rebound the ball? So maybe we go bigger and move Patrick (Christopher) to three, but that presents new problems.

Christopher measures at 6'5" and 215 lbs, while Gutierrez is 6'3" and 185 lbs, so Montgomery would definitely be giving up size at the two-guard spot, but also playing a freshman at such a criticle scoring position would make life difficult if he were to go cold.

Q: Does that mean Jordan [Wilkes] gets a lot of minutes?

Well, yes, we have numbers issues. We don't have a lot of depth, or a lot of big guys. We have Taylor (Harrison) and Harper on the sidelines, who are two guys who should be getting fairly significant minutes. We lost our two big guys from last year and didn't replace them. There are three guys that you might have had that you don't, so we're going to have to work around that.

The two guys that Montgomery is referring to is NBA center DeVon Hardin (Oklahoma City) and power forward Ryan Anderson (New Jersey).  Hardin at 6'11" and Anderson at 6'10", along with their significant talents, will really be missed by the Bears this season.  Talk to Nellie Mike.  I'm only saying.

Q: Are you worried about the other team for this first game?

We have to worry because Pacific is so well coached. They are a very veteran team. They're going to be able to execute certain nuances very well. If you make a mistake against Pacific, they'll make you pay for it. We're younger and we will make mistakes by contrast. They took a tour this year which gave them some extra practices and allowed them to integrate their system and mess around with some new stuff. They come into the season ahead.

Montgomery has good reason to worry.  Pacific is coached by Bob Thomason, who had it not been for his strong enthusiasm to stay at his alma mater, may have been Montgomery's replacement at Stanford.  The Tigers stress defense, something that the Bears are still working on, and they can shoot the lights out of the building.  They can play a slow, plodding, half-court game or they can run with the best of them, but they play defense well in both settings.

Pacific's biggest weakness is their lack of size and an overall athleticism.  When Pacific is playing well, you need to have both of those advantages to beat them.  Pacific, won all three of their games on their trip to Canada and have come back to the states to beat both Chico State and Cal State Stanislaus handily, making them 5-0 in their exhibition season compared to Cal's 1-0.

The thing I don't know for sure is how we'll adjust to game level intensity and close situations. We have not yet needed to stop anyone and we are not ever threatened in practice against each other. Now the question is, who is going to step up and be better than we thought or be the dominant rebounder in a real game. We have some guys who will probably play better when the lights are on. We had a lot of breakdowns on defense (in the exhibition game), we haven't really gotten these guys to take defense personally. They're trying, but there's a difference between trying and refusing to let a team score.

Q: Are you way behind on defense compared to offense?

No, its about equal. Some of our nuances on offense have had breakdowns. Some guys might be better equipped to make plays on offense than on defense, but it's the execution that is hurting. We've been working a lot on all of these things, and we have to back off now because these guys are starting to fatigue. They have been out there three hours plus everyday. We don't have a lot of depth. We need to back off and crisp it up a little bit.

While the men have been mired in mediocrity in recent seasons, the lady Bears have been a dominant force on the college basketball scene.  They will open the season ranked ninth in the nation and have already done some good things in their exhibition season.

The lady Bears will open the season on Friday at 1pm at Haas Pavilion against Albany, then on Sunday at 2pm they'll meet Nevada.  They have won their past five season openers and have a 29 game home non-conference winning streak (hopefully, that's not a jinx).  Besides being ranked #9 in the AP and USA Today Coaches polls, they are ranked #2 by Athlon Sports Magazine and #8 by Lindy's.

Could it be that Cal has a shot at winning a women's national title?  Being in the class of a UCONN and Tennessee is a definitely a good start.

In their two exhibition games, they've breezed to victory.  Head coach Joanne Boyle is still looking for more improvement, which is probably why this team has such high expectations on the year.  Against Chico State, the Bears easily triumphed 95-51, but Boyle still wasn't completely happy with thier performance:

It is good to get a game underneath our belt. We have been practicing pretty hard the last couple of weeks. It is nice to play a team that doesn't know you at all. It forces you to work on your stuff. I'll be honest, I wasn't happy at all in the first half with our defense. I think we were sloppy at times. I think we did a much better job in the second half.

That first half that she's referring to Cal outscored the Wildcats 47-30, and in the second half they outscored them 48-21.  I guess it stands to reason that anything more than 21 points in a half is unacceptable.  I kid, I kid.  For the game, Cal had five players score in double figures with star center, Ashley Walker, recording a double-double by scoring 15 points on 6 for 12 shooting and 10 rebounds.

Against Vanguard, and before you ask a quick google search reveals it's in Southern California, the Golden Bears maintained a strong defensive presence beating the NAIA national champion Lions 87-37.  Apparently, Boyle wasn't joking about defense.  The Bears outpaced the Lions 50-16 in the first half and 37-21 in the second half (there's that 21-point limit again).  After the game, Boyle had this to say about Cal's performance:

I thought it was a good game for us. In general, we needed to come back strong off Chico State. Even though we beat Chico State, it was very, very sloppy. So we really focused on our defense and our transition in this game. I thought in the first half, we did a really good job of pushing the ball and getting the looks we wanted early. I thought we did a much better job defensively. We had some breakdowns in the first part of the second half on defensive communication and lazy turnovers. But other than that, I thought it was a good game for us.

The Bears again had five players score in double figures, led by guard Alexis Gray-Lawson.  Lawson scored 21 points on 6 for 8 shooting from the field and 7 of 10 from the line.  She was also two for three beyond the arc and had three steals to aid in Cal's defensive effort.  Walker again put up big points with 20, but missed her second consecutive double-double by getting eight rebounds.

Boyle was asked about defense being a primary team focus:

I'm a defensive coach. I've always preached that and played that way and watched people play. I just feel like you have to have that. There are games when the ball's not going to go in the basket, so you have to be able to play defense and rebound.

The Bears are expecting to get forward/center Devanei Hampton back later this week or early next week, and they are waiting on the return of forward/center Rama N'diaye later in the month.  This has forced them to play a little smaller than they might otherwise do.  Gray-Lawson doesn't seem to mind.  When asked about the affect of missing the two players she said:

It makes our guards a lot stronger. We're seeing a lot of the rotations that usually wouldn't happen if everybody was healthy. With people sitting out, it's helping everybody else to be a lot stronger. So when everyone else is back, we'll be a lot stronger as a team.

It will definitely help with the defense, I guess.