Cal Basketball: So Much Has Changed Since Bears Last Faced UCLA

The low point of Cal’s basketball season may have come on Jan. 19, when the Bears visited UCLA and lost 50-40, their smallest point total in 32 years.

Much will be different on Thursday in Las Vegas when the teams meet for the first time since that day, and not just because the Bears and Bruins have evolved over the past eight weeks.

When 10th-seeded Cal (14-18) and No. 2 seed UCLA (19-12) meet at 6 p.m.in the quarterfinals of the Pac-12 tournament — if they actually do meet, and that could change at any time — they will do so under circumstances both surreal and sadly necessary.

T-Mobile Arena will welcome only essential staff, TV network partners, credentialed media, and limited family and friends as part of a strategy to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Cal players, including senior Paris Austin, said after the Bears’ 63-51 opening-round win over Stanford, that they agree health and safety have priority over playing basketball in front of a crowd.

As fast as things are now changing, we won’t rule out any scenario, including possibly the complete cessation of the Pac-12 tournament. Still, the difference between this situation and the NBA, which suspended its season, is that no Pac-12 player has tested positive for the disease, as Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz did on Wednesday.

Presuming the game will be played, albeit in a near vacuum as a purely TV event, the Bears hope to demonstrate they have improved as much as the Bruins since Jan. 19.

In that one, Cal actually led 25-24 after a layup by Grant Anticevich with 16:57 left. Then the Bears went 10 minutes, 59 seconds without scoring, missing 15 straight shots while turning the ball over four times.

The Bruins scored 14 consecutive points to lead 38-25 before Matt Bradley hit a jump shot with 5:58 left.

Cal shot 30 percent in the game, including 3-for-17 on 3-pointers, and attempted just four free throws.

Afterward, UCLA’s Mick Cronin showed some empathy for his fellow first-year coach, Mark Fox.

“Look, in fairness to Mark, they're in rebuilding mode. They've got a young team,” Cronin said. “They missed some open shots, just like we did. Shooting changes a lot."

Uh, sure it does. If the shots don’t go in . . . well, you don’t get points.

The Bears are 6-8 since that day, including their only two victories of the season that occurred outside Haas Pavilion. They also beat then-No. 21 Colorado, although the Buffaloes aren’t looking quite so imposing these days.

Most notably, Cal is coming off a decisive win over Stanford, its first in the Pac-12 tournament in three years. The Bears shot well, defended at a high level and clobbered the Cardinal on the boards. All in all, one of their best performances of the season.

Now they try to replicate it against a UCLA squad that had lost three in a row and six of seven when it faced Cal the first time. But the win over the Bears triggered a run of 11 victories in 14 games by UCLA, which would have earned a share of the Pac-12 title except it lost 54-52 to USC last Saturday.

Fox is impressed.

“It's been a long time since we played UCLA. They're a completely different team,” Fox said after the Stanford win. “When we played them, I told our staff, I said: They're getting ready to get hot. I could tell that their team -- that they made a transition, either the day before we played them or during that game. We couldn't score, their defense was elite. And it's remained that way.”

Fox, explaining that the Bears' coaching staff planned to be up late Wednesday night to “figure out how we can make a basket or two,” knows that Cronin and his assistants would be doing the same thing.

“Our team is different now, too,” he said. “And so hopefully we'll be able to regroup and come back tomorrow and compete.”

*** In the video below, coach Mark Fox talks after a recent game about how he got sick of hearing how bad his Cal would be this season. He didn't believe it then, and he doesn't believe it now.