Cal Basketball: Road Woes Continue for Bears in Lopsided Loss at Colorado
Cal coach Mark Fox acknowledged his team “burped” on offense midway through the first half, coughing up six straight turnovers that helped Colorado to engineer a 21-2 burst over a span of barely seven minutes.
But that’s not where he leveled his sharpest criticisms of the Bears after their 89-60 loss at the CU Events Center on Thursday afternoon.
“The second half we just collapsed. The dam broke,” Fox said. “We couldn’t get stops. Obviously, we’re disjointed offensively with the lineups we’re forced to play. That part is a little frustrating. But defensively, we just did not get the job done.”
After allowing just 11 points through more than 10 minutes, Cal surrendered 78 over the final 29-plus minutes. From the moment the Buffaloes began their game-changing 21-2 surge, they shot 62 percent (29-for-47) the rest of the game. CU scored 55 second-half points.
For the Bears (6-8, 1-6 Pac-12), the loss was the latest in a litany of struggles on the road. Cal is now 0-6 on the road this season and 2-26 on their opponent’s home floor since the start of the 2018-19 season.
Fox said on his postgame radio show that the Bears are “not even in the neighborhood of as good a defensive team as we were last year. That has to improve if the results are going to improve.”
Later, in a Zoom audio call with reporters, he added, “Our defense is nowhere near performing at the level it needs to to win a Pac-12 game on the road.”
Ranked No. 9 nationally by the NCAA’s NET computer ratings, Colorado (10-3, 4-2), remained unbeaten at home and won its third straight game overall.
The Buffaloes faced a Cal team without leading scorer Matt Bradley (17.8 points per game) for the third straight game because of a left ankle injury. His absence makes it difficult for the Bears to score because they have no one else who can consistently create his own offense.
Bradley made the trip but isn’t likely to play Saturday against Utah, either, according to Fox. “He had a terrible ankle sprain,” Fox said. “He’s got a ways to go. Unfortunately, he’s not as close as we would like him to be.”
Bradley previously missed two games because of a separate right ankle sprain.
Asked if the team misses more than his scoring, Fox was emphatic.
“Absolutely. He’s an all-league player. We miss him everywhere,” he said. “He’s a physical presence defensively. He’s a good rebounder. Obviously, he’s our leading scorer. Certainly we miss him.
“But we have to regroup. There’s going to be times he’s not there. One day he’ll be healthy again. But right now he’s not and until he is we have to step up.”
Junior forward Andre Kelly, coming off a 22-point performance in the Bears' win over Washington, led the way with 16 points on 6-for-7 shooting.
Makale Foreman added 13 points, including 10 in a stretch where the Bears built an 18-11 lead. Ryan Betley scored 12 points.
The Bears moved freshman Jalen Celestine, a 6-foot-6 shooting guard, to forward to help fill the void without reserve Kuany Kuany, still out with a concussion. Fox praised his efforts, which produced three points, three rebounds and two assists in a season-high 18 minutes.
Colorado got another breakout performance from freshman forward Jabari Walker, who had his second straight double-double with a career-high 23 points and 11 rebounds. He scored 17 first-half points, 11 of them during the 21-2 burst that transformed the 18-11 deficit into a 32-20 lead.
Orchestrating everything for the Buffs was senior point guard McKinley Wright IV, who was scoreless in the first half before assembling 13 points and a career-high 12 assists. In the process, the two-time All-Pac-12 selection broke CU’s career assists record.
Fox said it was Wright’s decision-making that exposed the Cal defense in the second half.
“It’s the defense after he passes it where we didn’t do a great job,” Fox said. "We didn’t recover quick enough, we didn’t rotate as we would have hoped. It was really the second option we didn’t defend well.”
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Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo
