Mark Madsen On 3 Ways Cal Basketball Will Be Better This Season

It’s Year 3 of the Mark Madsen coaching era for Cal basketball, and he has some specific ideas for where he’s expecting to see improvement, starting Monday night when the Bears open their season against Cal State Bakersfield.

Tipoff is 7 p.m. at Haas Pavilion.

Here’s the rundown:

— Madsen says this will be a better passing team a year after the Bears ranked last in the ACC in assists per game at 10.45. Cal assisted on just 41 percent of its field goals. ACC champion Duke, by comparison, assisted on 59 percent of its baskets.

“First of all, this is an extremely unselfish team that loves to pass the ball and loves to make each other better,”Madsen said. “To have that, it makes (my) job as a coach easier because the ball naturally moves.”

— The Bears will be better defensively, Madsen promises, after finishing near the bottom of the ACC in most relevant categories: 16th in scoring defense (76.8 points allowed), and 17th in both field-goal defense (46.8 percent) and 3-point defense (37.6 percent).

“The guys have really bought in defensively and really committed defensively to self improvement and also collective team improvement. That’s very encouraging,” Madsen said. “We’ll do some different things this year defensively.”

— And Cal will be able to shoot the ball more efficiently, he says, especially from distance. That would be good news after the Bears ranked 16th last year in the conference in 3-point accuracy at 31.5 percent.

“On the offensive side, we’re a drastically improved shooting team,” Madsen said. “We were near the bottom of the ACC last year in 3-point percentage. That will not be the case this year. We have an outstanding shooting team.”

Of course, with 11 new scholarship players — and just three back from last year’s team that went 14-19 and was 6-14 in the ACC — the Bears will need time to mesh as a unit.

Gone are the team’s two top scorers from a year, then-sophomore Andrej Stojakovic (17.9 points), who transferred to Illinois, and freshman Jeremiah Wilkinson (15.1), now at Georgia.

Madsen said most players will experience a change in how they’re utilized this season.

“Anytime you mesh so many new players and guys are in different roles, guys are in new roles,” he said. “I wouldn’t even use the word concern. I would use the word opportunity. I think it’s a tremendous opportunity for us to integrate the players and for guys to step into those roles.”

Graduate forward John Camden, one of the newcomers, can’t wait to get the season started. He averaged 16.8 points and shot just under 42 percent from the 3-point arc at Delaware last season.

“We have a lot of potential. We’re definitely not hitting our stride yet,” he said. “It’s a selfless group of guys, which is the best-ever teammates to play with. So I’m excited for this year.”

Cal beat Bakersfield 86-73 in last year’s opener, although few players from either team return.

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