Cal Approaching High-Water Mark For Victories Since 2016-17

It’s the middle of January and the Cal basketball program is quietly making massive strides.

The bar has been low at Haas Pavilion in recent years, but coach Mark Madsen’s third team is continuing to elevate expectations.

With a win Saturday at Stanford, the Bears would have their 15th victory of the season — more than they’ve accumulated since going 21-13 back in 2016-17 in coach Cuonzo Martin’s third and final season.

Since then, pretty grim.

The Bears won just eight games each of the next two seasons under first-time head coach Wyking Jones. He was replaced in 2019-20 by veteran coach Mark Fox and he did little better, winning 14, 9 and 12 games in his first three seasons before careening to a program-worst 3-29 record in 2022-23.

Madsen brought a new energy to Berkeley, said the Bears would aspire to be nationally relevant. He has recruited higher-level players, although he has not yet achieved roster continuity.

Jaylon Tyson arrived as a transfer from Texas Tech in Year 1 and helped the Bears go from 2-18 to 9-11 in their farewell Pac-12 season. He was so good he entered the NBA draft and went to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round.

Madsen recruited Stanford transfer Andrej Stojakovic and freshman Jeremiah Wilkinson before last season, and the two combined to average about 33 points. In its first ACC season, Cal won 14 games overall, but Stojakovic and Wilkinson before departed via the transfer portal.

This team, led by transfers Dai Dai Ames, Justin Pippen and John Camden, is 14-5 overall and snapped a three-game losing streak with an 84-78 win over No. 14 North Carolina on Saturday.

Coupled with its Nov. 25 win over No. 18 UCLA at Chase Center in San Francisco, Cal has two top-25 victories in the same season for the first time since 2015-16. The Bears entered this season with a 1-21 ledger against top-25 opponents since the start of the 2019-20 campaign (their only victory a 76-62 win over Colorado on Feb. 27, 2020).

The Bears still have work to do to become a national player. Their NET computer ranking on Monday was No. 59. That places them 11th among ACC teams, a couple slots higher than their position as tied for 13th at 2-4 in the conference standings.

But the win over Carolina — where the Bears led by 19 points with 8 1/2 minutes to play before holding on at the finish — provides a lift.

“We had a good week last week,” Madsen said, referring also to the Duke game, where the Bears led for much of the first half before succumbing 71-56. “We played Duke, I thought, pretty well for 32 minutes. When it came down to it, Duke stretched that lead and had a decisive win.

“For Carolina, we worked on moving the ball. We moved it," he said. “We knew we had to get better at getting back in transition defense against Carolina. We did a decent job of it. And our guys flew around.”

They also shot 14 for 26 from the 3-point arc, getting 3s from seven different players, including four from Camden and three each from Pippen and Ames.

Stanford freshmanEbuka Okorie attacks the basket against North Carolina | Eakin Howard-Imagn Images

Madsen said Stanford (14-5, 3-3), which also split the weekend series against UNC and Duke, will provide a big challenge. The Bears are acutely aware of freshman guard Ebuka Okorie, who had a Stanford freshman-record 36 points along with nine assists in the 95-90 win over Carolina.

“He is one of the top freshmen in the country,” Madsen said. “He has done a great job himself, Ebuka has, of taking his game to a very high level. The Stanford staff has done a great job of helping develop him and putting him the right situations.

“Nobody has been able to stop him this year. You go out there and you try to limit him as best you can.”

Okorie is the ACC’s No. 2 scorer at 22.1 points per game, trailing only another freshman, Duke’s Cameron Boozer, who is averaging 23.2.

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