Cal Beats Illinois-Chicago in NIT

Cal prolonged its 2025-26 season by beating Illinois-Chicago 91-73 in a first-round National Invitation Tournament game Wednesday night at Cal’s Haas Pavilion.

Cal will play a second-round game on Sunday at 6 p.m. against Saint Joseph's at Haas Pavilion. Saint Joseph's (23-11) defeated Colorado State 69-64 on the Rams' home court on Wednesday.

Cal’s Chris Bell scored a career-high 31 points on 10-for-12 shooting, including 7-for-8 on three-pointers in what would have been his final college game if the Bears had lost.

Justin Pippen scored 18 points with all 18 coming in the second half when he was 5-for-5 from the field, including 2-for-2 from distance, and 6-for-6 from the foul line.

The Bears made 15 of 28 three-point shots, including 9-for-13 in the second half while improving their record to 22-11.

This was Cal’s first national postseason tournament game since 2017 and the Bears first win in a postseason tournament since 2014 when Cal won two games in the NIT. Cal lost in the first round of the 2017 NIT and the first round of the 2016 NCAA tournament.

"Well, somebody told me it might be close to a decade that Cal hasn't had a postseason win," said Cal coach Mark Madsen, who understated the postseason victory drought. "So that's great to see. We wanted to be in the NCAA tournament; we did not play well enough throughout the course of the season to get in. But I believe that hopefully we can do something specail in the NIT, and it can be a springboard and a catalyst to going into next season. I think this year we'll retain more players than we've ever retained, and I'm very excited about that."

Asked whether he expects to retain Pippen, who is a sophomore, and Dai Dai Ames, who is a junior, Madsen said, "I expect to retain an incredible amount of our key guys, and we'll be talking more about that in the coming weeks."

UIC slipped to 19-16 because it could not keep up with Cal's long-range accuracy. Although the Flames scored 50 points in the paint and shot 50.9 percent overall, they were just 4-for-15 on three-point shots and 11-for-16 on free throws.

They could not match Cal's long-range accuracy, especially the shooting of Bell, who seemed to make key three-pointers when Cal needed them most.

"His work ethic reminds me of the work ethic of an NBA player," Madsen said of Bell, a senior,.

Nearly half of Cal's 57 field-goal attempts were three-point shots, which accounted for nearly half of Cal's points. Cal finished 15-for-28 on three-pointers, which is 53.6 percent..

Asked whether he is OK with his team taking 28 three-point shots, Madsen said, "Well, look, if we make over 50 percent of them."

Cal had a four-point lead at haltime and expanded the lead to 11 points with 11 minutes left. UIC made a few surges and got within three points with eight minutes remaining, but a three-pointer by John Camden ended that UIC threat, and the Bears blew the game open in the closing minutes.

Both teams shots 50 percent from the field in the first half, which ended with Cal holding a 39-35 lead.

UIC led for the most of the half and led by nine points at 15-6 less than six minutes into the game.

Cal got back into contention and finally took the lead at 34-33 with 1:48 left in the half on an alley-oop dunk by Chris Bell on a pass from D.J. Cambell.

That was part of a 9-0 Cal run that gave the Bears a six-point lead with 1:00 to go before halftime.

A Cal turnover enabled UIC to score the final bucket of the half and trim the Cal lead to four.

Bell led all scorers in the first half with 13 points on 5-for-6 shooting, including 2-for-3 on three-pointers.

Cal shot just one free throw in the first half and made it, while the Flames attempted 10 free throws, making six of them.

Justin Pippen did not score in the first half, and Dai Dai Ames had just four points before halftime and picked up his third personal foul late in the first half.

Fifteen of Cal’s 32 first-half field-goal attempts were three-pointers, and the Bears made six of those long-range shots.

NOTES

---Cal was a 6.5-point favorite in Wednesday’s game according to FanDuel and a 5.5-point favorite according to DraftKings. ESPN Analytics gave Cal a 78.2 percent chance to beat UIC.

---UIC finished tied for third place in the Missouri Valley Conference with a 12-8 conference mark. The Flames reached the title game of the MVC tournament before losing to Northern Iowa in the finals.

---Cal was the first team from a Power Five basketball conference that UIC faced this season. (Power Five conferences are the ACC, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Big East.)