Cal Basketball: Bears Return Home But Can't Stop the Bleeding in Lopsided Loss to UW

Cal has now lost nine straight games after 84-63 defeat to red-hot Huskies.

The Cal basketball team was back at Haas Pavilion on Thursday night, but the comforts of playing at home didn’t change the grim trajectory of the Bears’ season.

Cal lost its ninth consecutive game, falling 84-63 to a Washington team that now has won six of its past seven games.

The Bears (9-14, 2-10) again played without senior forward Andre Kelly, his left foot in a boot as he watched from the bench for the second straight game. Cal had no one able to compensate for the production (13.4 points, 8.4 rebounds) he gives his team.

The Bears might be without Kelly for a while. Coach Mark Fox said Kelly was seeing another doctor immediately after the game, adding that he definitely will not play Saturday afternoon against Washington State. Beyond that, he offered no timetable or details on the nature of the injury,

The Huskies (12-8, 7-3) got big games from three veterans players. Jamal Bey shot 4 for 6 on 3’s and scored 20 points. Pac-12 scoring leader Terrell Brown Jr. didn’t get on the board for the first 8 minutes but wound up with 19 points. And Daejon Davis, grad transfer point guard from Stanford, had 19 points, including five 3’s, in his return to the Bay Area.

Cal led 2-0 and never again as the Huskies answered with 10 points to seize control they never surrendered. UW’s lead reached 61-38 with about 12 minutes left.

Five of Cal’s previous eight defeats came against Top-25 foes, and five of them were on the road, where the Bears have struggled for several years.

UW is not a Top-25 team and the game was in Berkeley, but Cal showed no consistency at either end of the floor. While Washington made 12 of 23 shots from 3-point distance, the Bears were 5 for 22 from deep.

This was Cal's fourth of five games in a 10-day stretch and Fox talks in the video below about how fatigue impacted the starters. "We have some tired guys," he said. "They didn't have the juice tonight."

As a result, Fox chose to sit most of his regulars for much of the second half. Instead, he played a lot of young players, including freshman forward Obinna Anyanwu, who had scored just six points in 14 previous games. Anyanwu had a team-high 10 points against the Huskies.

Freshman Sam Alajiki, in the video below, says fatigue was a factor, "but I don't think it's a good enough reason. We need to play better defense and guard the ball better."

Twelve players saw time on the court for the Bears and 11 of them scored as the starters averaged less than 5 minutes in the second half.

Senior guard Jordan Shepherd, the Bears’ leading scorer on the season, had six points on 2 for 8 from the field, and missed all three of his 3-point attempts. 

No one is having a tougher time than forward Grant Anticevich, who continues to labor. He scored seven points on 3 for 10 from the field, including 0 for 5 on 3’s, and played just three minutes in the second half.

The fifth-year senior from Australia, who shot 7 for 11 from beyond the arc against Pacific just before Christmas, is 3 for 24 on 3's over the past eight games.

Fox talks in the video below about how "he's going to have to come to his own rescue to some degree" by continuing to shoot the ball when he's open.

Cover photo of Cal guard Jordan Shepherd by Darren Yamashita, USA Today

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