Cal Basketball: 3 Reasons Why Fans Should Stay With Hoops For at Least Another Day

Cal fans, who may be paying more attention at this point to spring football, must be asking themselves: Why should I care about the Bears playing at the Pac-12 Tournament?

It’s a fair question. Cal is not going to win the event — heck, the Bears have just one victory all season outside the 94720 zip code, and would need to win four games in four days at Las Vegas to claim the title.

At 13-18 overall, the Bears are better than the dumpster fire that was the past two seasons. The bar wasn’t set very high, but first-year coach Mark Fox’s squad easily cleared it.

The Bears won just five Pac-12 games total the past two seasons, and reached 7-11 this year, even while being swept in Oregon last weekend. Still, their tie for eighth place became the No. 10 seed for the Pac-12 tournament because of tiebreakers, setting them up with a first-round game against Stanford on Wednesday at 6 p.m.

(Cal split its two regular-season games with Stanford, and in the video above, Cal coach Mark Fox discusses the Bears' loss to Stanford back on January 2.)

I will outline several reasons Cal hoops fans should stayed tuned for at least another day (or so), and the opening-round opponent tops the list:

Reason No. 1: Seriously, Cal can not only secure the season series against the Cardinal with a victory, but can perhaps mortally wound Stanford’s NCAA tournament dreams. If you’re a Cal fan, very few things exceed doing harm to the Cardinal.

Stanford is currently teetering on the NCAA bubble, listed by ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi as one of the Last Four In. A loss to a Cal team with a NET computer ranking of 148 won’t help its cause.

Reason No. 2: We are presuming the Bears will continue to make gradual improvement next season, and winning a conference tournament game would be good for the soul, good for confidence and perhaps even good for recruiting.

That last item is no joke. Cal will have at least a couple open scholarships to dole out this offseason (we recommend another point guard, perhaps a physical power forward type). Should the Bears go quietly on Wednesday evening, they will end the season on a three-game skid, which isn’t much of a selling point. But a victory would indicate progress is real.

Reason No. 3: Finally, just as a bowl game means more practice time for football games, every additional game a basketball team plays has tangible benefits. The conference tournament setting is different than any regular-season game, featuring hoopla and distraction, but also a greater sense of importance.

Don’t you imagine seniors Paris Austin and Kareem South would savor a win in Las Vegas as a final lasting memory to their Cal careers. And for Matt Bradley and the other Bears who will be returning a year from now, a victory would be a taste of a larger pie they hope to chomp on in the future.

So sure, a win over Stanford isn’t like to propel this Cal team to unimaginable heights. But can it be a small stepping stone to something better in the future? Absolutely.