Cal Fails to Cover 22-Point Spread in Loss to No. 2 Arizona

Cal finished the regular season with a humbling defeat, losing to No. 2-ranked Arizona 89-61 on Saturday afternoon at McKale Center in Tucson, Arizona.

Arizona (28-3, 18-2 Pac-12) was favored by 22 points, and Cal (12-19, 5-15) could not cover that point spread, losing by 28 to the Wildcats, who finished with a 17-0 record on their home court.

Cal has only the Pac-12 tournament to look forward to, starting with a Wednesday night game in Las Vegas.

The Bears played Saturday's game without Joel Brown, who was sidelined by a knee injury, but Cal can't claim that Brown's absence was the difference in the game. Cal trailed by just nine points at halftime, but Arizona dominated the second half when the Wildcats made 65.2 percent of their shots.

"They have a great team obviously," Cal coach Mark Fox said afterward. "I thought we competed pretty well in the first half. Made some costly errors that allowed them to have a lead at the half. Had we played a little smarter in the first half, I think we could have been even or maybe we could have had a lead.

"And then in the second half we just didn't play well. Our defense against a great team like that with their size advantage was certainly exposed tonight, because they shot way too high a percentage."

Arizona's 7-foot Oumar Ballo played just 17 minutes off the bench, but he scored 16 points on 7-for-7 shooting, helping Arizona's bench outscore Cal's reserves 46-12.

Swingman Bennedict Maturin, who is expected to be named Pac-12 player of the year, added 13 points in 27 minutes of court time for the Wildcats, who shot 62.5 percent from the field for the game. Pelle Larsson and Justin Kier had 13 points apiece for Arizona.

Arizona scored 96 and 89 points in its two games against the Bears this season and the Wildcats won the two games by a combined margin of 53 points.

Jordan Shepherd had 16 points and Makale Foreman, who got the start in place of Brown, added 12 points for Cal, which shot just 38.5 percent. Lars Thiemann added 11 points despite playing with a sprained ankle.

Arizona had already cinched the Pac-12 regular-season title and the No. 1 seed in next week's Pac-12 tournament before Saturday's game began.

Cal did not finish last in the conference as it did last year. Instead the Bears finished alone in 10th place and earned the No. 10 seed in the Pac-12 tournament. If Utah had defeated Colorado Saturday night, the Bears would have tied the Utes for 10th place, and Cal would have been the the 11th seed in the conference tournament because Utah beat Cal twice during the season. But since Utah lost to the Buffs, Cal gets the No. 10 seed and will face the No. 7 seed in the first round of the Pac-12 tournament in a 6 p.m. game on Wednesday.

"First thing, we got to figure out who's going to be healthy enough to play," Fox said, noting that Andre Kelly is out for the season, Brown missed Saturday's game with a knee problem and Thiemann has been battling an ankle injury. "We need to regroup, rest, try to continue to improve and figure out who we play. It's a fresh start and a new beginning and hopefully we'll play with a fresh approach."

In Mark Fox's three seasons as the Bears head coach, Cal finished tied for eighth in 2019-20, 12th last season and 10th or tied for 10th this season. The Bears had a losing overall record all three seasons -- 14-18 in 2019-20, 9-20 last year and 12-19 this season with at least one more game to play.

Arizona controlled the game from the start and turned a nine-point halftime advantage into a 20-point lead with 9:42 left in the second half. The margin grew to 23 points with 7:01 remaining, and the final six minutes amounted to garbage time as Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd sat most of his starters.

Arizona took command early in the first half, and the Bears did well to get the deficit down to nine points at halftime.

Thanks to a 19-1 run, the Wildcats led by 19 points with 4:21 left in the half, and seemed to be cruising. Ballo came off the Arizona bench to score 11 points on 5-for-5 shooting in just eight minutes of court time in the first half.

But led by Shepherd, who finished the half with 10 points, Cal outscored Arizona 14-4 to finish the half, cutting the Arizona lead to 40-31 at intermission.

Mathurin scored on a dunk three seconds into the game, but that was his only field goal of the first half. He had just four points at the break. Tubelis had just one point in the first 20 minutes.

Cal shot just 37 percent from the field in the first half, wile Arizona made 60 percent of their first-half shots..

Cover photo of Mark Fox by Soobum Im, USA TODAY Sports

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