Cal Basketball: After Late-Night Loss, Mark Fox Praises Team's Efforts vs. COVID-19

It was too late on Thursday night, perhaps too late in the season, for Cal coach Mark Fox to feel like dissecting the details of the Bears’ 61-58 loss to Colorado in the quarterfinals of the Pac-12 tournament at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Fox praised his team for playing “super hard,” but after a defeat that ended the most challenging of seasons in the worst year most people have experienced, he wasn’t eager to talk X’s and Os.

“Under the circumstances of the season and all that these players have had to endure, which I don’t think people have any idea, it was an effort that I was proud of but we came up short,” Fox said.

The Bears finished 9-20, the program’s third 20-loss season in four years, and they haven’t advanced to the semifinal round of the Pac-12 tournament since 2012.

But the COVID-19 pandemic trumped every other obstacle, and Fox was proud of how his players stood up to everything that came with it, including significant health and safety restrictions.

“I told them that a year ago we didn’t have a chance to experience this pain because we didn’t get a chance to play the game,” he said, referring to the 2020 Pac-12 tournament, where the Bears also opened with a win over Stanford then were sent home when the event was abruptly shut down.

“These kids have been away from their families,” he said. “Haven’t been allowed to even see their parents or their brothers or their sisters. They haven’t come to any games until yesterday.

“They haven’t been able to go to the barber shop. We’ve been cutting each other’s hair. They don’t have a locker room. They show up every day and dressed not the sidelines. They don’t have a film room. It’s been an unbelievable ask of these young people.

“Because they love to play, they signed up for it, they didn’t complain about it and we went through thousands of COVID tests without one positive. What I told them I was proud of them because there’s going to be hard times in life and you’ve got to get through them. Sometimes you’ve got to get through them before you start succeeding.

"What they’ve endured in the last several months is something I have a lot of respect for.”

The night after Cal played its best defensive game of the season in an 18-point win over Stanford, the Bears’ issues were mostly at the other end of the floor.

Matt Bradley scored 29 points in Cal's win over Colorado last month, so the league's best defensive team, trapped the Bears' leading scorer seemingly every time he touched the ball. The Bears had no answer for it.

Bradley was scoreless in the first half but his teammates couldn’t get much going, either. The Bears held the lead until the final 4 minutes of the half then went into the break down 24-20.

“I won’t be critical of our players’ execution in that situation,” Fox said. “It wasn’t as clean as we wanted but I thought our intent and our decision was the right way.”

Foul trouble became an issue for Bradley and others, including point guard Joel Brown, who did much of the defensive work in holding CU star McKinley Wright IV to a 4-for-14 shooting night.

The Buffaloes built their lead to 13 points with 7 1/2 minutes left before Cal charged back. Bradley scored eight of his 10 points in span of 2 1/2 minutes and the Bears were down just 53-49 when he made a 3-pointer with 3:52 left.

But he fouled out the next trip down the floor on defense and the outcome seemed sealed. Not quite. A difficult 3-pointer by freshman Jalen Celestine with 40 seconds left pulled the Bears within 61-58 and the Buffaloes turned the ball over with 11 second remaining.

Makale Foreman dribbled behind a screen and got a decent look at a 3-point shot but the ball wouldn’t go down. “That’s Makale’s shot,” said senior Grant Anticevich, recalling Foreman making basically the same shot to beat USF.

Anticevich led the Bears with 11 points, Bradley scored 10 after missing his first eight shots, and Celestine and DJ Thorpe each had nine points, a career-best for Thorpe off the bench.

The 23rd-ranked Buffaloes (21-7) will play in Friday night’s semifinal against No. 24 USC (22-6), with both teams projected to easily make the NCAA tournament field.

Cover photo of Mark Fox by Stephen R. Sylvanie, USA Today

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo

Add us as a preferred source on Google