Rebounding Continues to be a Thorn in Cal Bears' Paw

Cal basketball coach Mark Madsen is 50 years old and the father of five, but in college and the NBA he made his living as a rebounder.

But rebounding has been a chronic shortcoming with his Golden Bears this season. They rank 17th in the ACC in rebound margin at minus-2.14 and last Saturday in a 72-56 loss to Pitt the Bears were outrebounded for the fifth time in their past six games.

“It showed up again against Pitt,” Madsen said this week. “We had some missed box-out assignments, really at every position. And then we didn’t gang rebound.”

Of particular concern were nine offensive rebounds the Bears surrendered, leading to 15 second-chance points for the Panthers.

“We worked on it intensively leading up to Pitt because one of their strongest metrics is offensive rebounding. I was on the court myself, asking guys to block me out in different scenarios. Clearly, even with that, I didn’t get it done. I didn’t prepare our guys well enough.”

So, the Bears (20-9, 8-8 ACC) once more focused on the issue when they gathered Monday for the first time since the Pitt contest.

“Pitt did a really nice job attacking the glass and we didn’t do a good enough job keeping the rebounders of the glass,” Madsen said. “We watched some of those clips this morning in our film session and I expect the guys to respond and be better.”

Nicknamed “Mad Dog” during his playing days, Madsen understands the role rebounding plays on any successful team. He grabbed more than 800 rebounds during his four seasons at Stanford, and each one of those NCAA tournament teams enjoyed a substantial advantage on the boards vs. their opponents.

The previous nine Cal teams to win at least 20 games all generated positive rebounding margins. The most recent Bears squad that reached 20 victories with a negative rebounding ledger was the 2001-02 squad.

Those Bears, featuring Joe Shipp, Brian Wethers, Shantay Legans and Amit Tamir, went 23-9, finished second in the Pac-10 with a 12-6 record and reached the second round of the NCAA tournament before losing 63-50 at Pitt.

They did all that despite being outrebounded 35.6 to 34.0 on the season. The team’s top rebounder: freshman Jamal Sampson, who grabbed 6.5 per game, then bolted the program after one year.

The current Cal team is similar to that squad with respect to having a strong perimeter group led by guards Dai Dai Ames and Justin Pippen.

Likewise, forwards John Camden and Chris Bell are more skilled than bruising. At 6-foot-8, Camden shoots 41 percent from the 3-point arc and averages 4.7 rebounds. Bell, at 6-7, converts 39 percent from deep but contributes just 2.6 rebounds per game.

The Bears’ two most physical players are centers Lee Dort and Milos Ilic, who have combined for exactly 300 rebounds, an average of 10.3 per game. Both are also capable passers but neither has effective shooting range beyond the paint so Madsen rarely has paired them on the floor together.

Cal closes the ACC regular-season with games Wednesday at last-place Georgia Tech (11-18, 2-14, loser of 10 straight) and Saturday at Wake Forest 15-14, 6-10, but trailing Cal just 63 to 69 in the NET rankings).

On Tuesday morning, the Bears were ranked as the No. 74 team in ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi’s projection of the 68 teams in the NCAA tournament field. So with their postseason hopes hanging in the balance, they better hit the boards this week at Atlanta and Winston-Salem.

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