All season long, the weakness in Cal's performance has been on the
defensive side of the ball. Until last night, Cal had been offering opponents a chance to
break out of their shooting slump, as the Bears entered the game 9th on defense in FG
percentage allowed. Braun's continued emphasis on shutting down the other team paid off as
Washington struggled all night long, finishing a mere 34% from the field. Unfortunately,
in their push to shore up the defense, the Bears themselves forgot how to shoot the
basketball.
A clearly overmatched Huskies team was able to hang with Cal for most of
the game, never trailing by more than 9 points until they pulled to within four late in
the second half. The key to their success was their ability to goad Cal into unforced
turnovers, blow wide open layups and to forget entirely about rebounding the basketball.
Coming into this game, Cal has been winning the battle of the boards as
they have outrebounded their opponents by four boards a game on average. Washington
has struggled all season, giving up 2 more rebounds than they grabbed. What caused the
reversal last night was the Huskies ability to break the Bears down off the dribble. Nate
Robinson, Washington's 5'9" PG jet, blew by whomever Cal put out to stop him.
He was joined by Curtis Allen and Will Conroy, who literally made swiss cheese out of the
Bears man-to-man defense. Ben Braun responded by having Cal shift into a 2-3 zone for most
of the second half. The zone prevented Cal from blocking out effectively and voila,
Washington ran their tip drill on the offensive boards all night long.
Yet, as we have seen all year long, this Bears team has no fear. Stepping
up and hitting big shots has become standard practice, the only question being which Cal
star will step up on a given night. Seeing Joe Shipp and Brian Wethers struggling with
their shot, Amit Tamir tested his bad leg and decided he could in fact carry the Bears to
victory, and proceeded to do so. Amit went 4 for 4 from three point range in the second
half including a spectacular fadeaway three from the left corner that served as the coup
de grace for the Huskies.
For the second straight game, Conor Famulener and Richard Midgley played
the role of unsung heroes. Midgley added 12 points to go along with 3 assists and 2 steals
as he was effective running the Bears half court offense all night. Famulener continued
his stellar play on defense in slowing down Washington star Doug Wrenn. Good things happen
when Cal has these two on the floor.
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