Cal Basketball: Bears Put Up a Fight on Senior Day But Lose Again

Cal played well enough to keep Washington State alum and Warriors star Klay Thompson at Haas Pavilion to the finish on Saturday afternoon.

But not well enough to win.

The Bears lost their 13th straight game, falling 63-57 to the Cougars before 1,725 fans in their final home game of the season.

Joel Brown and Kuany Kuany gave good efforts on Senior Day, but they could not prevent the Bears from falling to 3-26 overall, 2-16 in Pac-12 Conference play.

Brown had 13 points, nine assists and seven rebounds and Kuany 11 points and nine rebounds in their final appearances at Haas. Fellow senior Lars Thiemann was unavailable to play due to a foot injury he sustained Thursday against Washington.

Both players said it hadn’t sunk in yet that this was their final time at Haas.

“I’m proud of the effort we gave tonight,” Brown, a native of Brampton, Ontario, Canada, says in the video at the top of this story. “Obviously we didn’t get the win but we made a lot of strides and going forward we’ve got two games next week. I think there’s a lot of energy and positivity that we can grab from this."

Cal closes out the regular season with a pair of games in Oregon next week then play at the Pac-12 tournament in Las Vegas, beginning March 8.

Both Brown and Kuany took the time to thank the coaching staff for the opportunity to play Division I basketball.

“I feel like the whole group, everybody, came with a different level of energy today, gave great effort, which we really appreciate as seniors,” said Kuany, who grew up in Melbourne, Australia.

This has been a season like no other in program history. The Bears' loss total is a record and they must win once more or finish with their lowest victory total in more than a century.

Brown, the team's only healthy point guard still available, took a glass half-full approach to this disappointments of this season.

“There’s something you can gain from this,” he says in the video above. “I mean adversity happens and it tests your character. So it’s just about how you react and bounce back. For the whole team it’s a tough situation with the record, but I’ve learned a lot just looking myself in the mirror and just understanding, I’m playing basketball . . . this is what I love doing.

“Obviously you can look at the negatives, but I feel like there’s positives that many others don’t get.”

Coach Mark Fox, who talks in the video about his his seniors, said he was proud of his team’s effort.

“It’s difficult to lose a game where you made more baskets than the other team and shot a better percentage than the other team,” he said. “I thought we competed really well today. We just had a stretch, quite honestly, late there in the second half where we had a couple shots right there at the rim that we didn’t finish.”

WSU (15-15, 10-9) had key 7-0 spurts in each half that helped tilt the game in its direction.

The Bears had just six turnovers for the game, but five of them came in a span of six possessions midway through the first half, allowing the Cougars to stretch a 9-7 lead to 18-10.

Then, after pulling within 46-44 with 7 1/2 minutes to play, the Bears failed to cash great chances when freshman Grant Newell couldn’t finish a dunk in traffic and Kuany missed a layup. The Cougars responded with a burst that made it 53-44 and Cal couldn’t respond until a flurry in the final minute, when it was too late.

Completing his fourth season, Fox is now 38-84 as the Bears’ coach and widely assumed to be on his way out.

Asked if he has had conversations on the topic with Cal athletic director Jim Knowlton, Fox didn’t give away anything about where things are headed.

“My boss and I talk all the time. One the great things about Jim is his willingness to try to dig in and help people. So we’ve been in constant communication throughout the season.”

Thompson, coming off a 42-point performance that featured 12 3-pointers for the Warriors on Friday night, sat along the baseline near the WSU bench all afternoon.

He played six career games against Cal, averaging 20.7 points, including 36 in his final appearance at Haas on Jan. 11, 2011. But Cal won the game, led by Allen Crabbe's 30 points.

Sophomore forward Mouhamed Gueye led the Cougars on Saturday with 20 points, including 9-for-9 at the free throw line, and 10 rebounds. Junior guard TJ Bambi added 19 points for WSU, which shot just 33 percent from the field.

Cover photo of Cal freshman Grant Newell by Kyle Terada, USA Today

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

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