Cal Basketball Video: How Bears Thrive When PG Paris Austin is Distributing
In two of his best games last season, Cal point guard Paris Austin scored exactly nine points.
How can that be?
It's simple, really. Although Austin is a modern-day scoring point, the Bears have sometimes been at their best when Austin focused his energies on being a playmaker first, a scorer second.
With Cal preparing to face UNLV on Tuesday night, here's the evidence, albeit from the small sample size of just two games last seasons:
-- In a win over San Jose State, Austin had a career-high 11 assists and zero turnovers in 35 minutes on the floor. It was incidental that he scored nine points because his passing enable others to thrive.
-- In a much more significant win over eventual Pac-12 regular-season champion Washington - the Bears' first victory in two months last season, dating back to that win over SJSU - Austin had nine assists and zero turnovers . . along with nine points.
Now, I'm not suggesting that Austin is going to average 10 assists per game as he did in those two outings. The Bears do need him to be a scorer, but they don't need him to be their primary offensive option and they don't need him firing off a lot of 3-pointers (which he converted at just a 28-percent clip last season).
But when Paris is driving into the paint and either finding an open teammate or finishing at the rim, the Bears are better off.
Austin averaged 4.3 assists last season, but I believe he can - and should - try to hike that number to somewhere around 6 this year.
In the video above, shot after Cal's 87-71 season-opening win over Pepperdine last Tuesday, teammates Matt Bradley and Andre Kelly talk about how Austin impact the Bears when he's sharing the ball.
Bradley scored a career-high 25 points in the game and Kelly had 16 points and 10 rebounds.
Austin, the starting point guard all last season, actually came off the bench against Pepperdine, although coach Mark Fox said he wanted some experience when he went to his bench.
Either way, Austin wound up playing nearly 28 minutes. He scored 14 points (just 0-for-1 on 3's) and had three assists and zero turnovers. His assist total seemed low because it felt like Austin's impact on the game was greater than that.
But in two games (counting the exhibition win over St. Martin's, which doesn't count), Austin has 10 assists and zero turnovers in 57 minutes.
If the Bears can get that version of Austin tonight and going forward, they will be better for it.
