Dai Dai Ames, Justin Pippen Power Cal to its Best Start in Nine Seasons

Cal basketball is off to its best start since 2016-17 after a 79-72 victory over Utah at Haas Pavilion on Tuesday night.

That 7-1 opening dash is as far as coach Mark Madsen wants to take things right now.

“Utah’s a great basketball team and they’re playing really well right now,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of tough games still left on our (non-conference) schedule. I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves here.

“We have a lot of very tough, scrappy teams, and they all do something different. So we have our work cut out for us, every single game.”

Perhaps, but the Bears figure to be favored in their five remaining non-conference games — all of them at home and beginning Saturday against Pacific (6-2). Win that one, and Cal has its best since 2014-15, when they opened 10-1.

Cal, if it takes care of business against Pacific, Dominican, Northwestern State, Morgan State and Columbia, would take a 12-1 record into the start of ACC play.

No Cal team has done that since Pete Newell’s last team back in 1959-60. The defending national champion Bears won 26 of their first 27 that season before losing in a return trip to the Final Four. Not even Jason Kidd’s teams of the early 1990s avoided more than one stumble early.

This team isn’t that, but on the heels of an 80-72 win over UCLA last week at Chase Center, this is pretty big stuff for a program hoping to assemble its first winning season since 2016-17.

“It’s encouraging because we had a good win last week,” Madsen said. “If you have a lapse for a game like this, if you don’t come out and play well, then that previous win against UCLA doesn’t mean as much.

“You have to be able to have the maturity and poise to be able to handle success, to not get complacent.”

The Bears trailed by as many as eight points in the first half against the Utes (6-3), who were coming off a 75-74 neutral-site win over Ole Miss.

But Cal outscored Utah 22-6 over the final 7 minutes of the first half and held on after the visitors twice cut the margin to two points in the last 5 minutes.

Dai Dai Ames hit six straight free throws in the final 50.3 seconds to cap a 23-point performance, his highest-scoring game with the Bears. And backcourt mate Justin Pippen made a key blocked shot in the last minute and finished with a career-high 25 points.

“You can’t lose at home, especially in these non-conference games," Pippen said after the Bears improved to 6-0 at Haas. “We can’t lose at home, not in front of our fans.”

The Bears shot 22 for 24 from the free throw line, outrebounded Utah 36-32 and committed just three turnovers in the second half to avoid fueling a Utah comeback.

Forward John Camden scored 13 points and center Lee Dort continues to show improvement after posting eight points, 11 rebounds and three assists to generate a team-best plus-18 margin when he was on the floor.

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