Mike Montgomery, the basketball coach for the California Golden Bears, must have given quite a speech at halftime during his team’s game with UCLA, because after the Bruins fought hard and trailed by only a point at the end of the first 20 minutes, the second 20 minutes was, well,
I won’t say that it was like the Harlem Globetrotters versus the Washington Generals, but it was more like the big brother realizing his height and strength advantage in a fight, flexing his muscles, and beating up his pesky little brother, the final score being:
Cal 85 – UCLA 69, before a full house of 9,750 rabid Bear fans at Haas Pavilion on the Berkeley campus, the Bruins’ worst loss to their U.C. brethren since 92-63 loss to them on February 1, 2001.
The Bears used a second half blitzing to outscore UCLA by 15 points.
No less than six Cal players scored in double figures, led by guards Allen Crabbe, Jorge Gutierrez and Justin Cobbs’ burning of Ben Howland’s team for 49 points combined. Crabbe led the Bears with 20 points, including four three-pointers, while Gutierrez contributed 16 points and Cobbs 13; both Gutierrez and Cobbs had eight assists, and forward David Kravish schooled the UCLA front line in scoring a career-high 13 points.
As for the Bruins, Tyler Lamb and David Wear were the only ones that stepped up, with Lamb leading everyone in scoring 26 points while Wear contributed 17. The other Bruins – not so much.
Lazeric Jones followed up his good performance against Stanford by laying an egg against their Bay Area rivals, managing a mere five points on 2-of-7 shooting. Joshua Smith scored only six, and the rest…
Let’s just say that they didn’t show up, and leave it at that.
If this was indeed a test to see how good UCLA’s basketball squad was after winning five straight against what was mostly cupcakes, then the Bruins failed, especially against Cal, who shot a whopping 65% in their win and left the Bruins at .500 overall, 7-7, with – more importantly – a record of 0-2 in the Pac-12 Conference.
If things are to get better with this team, they need to get better fast with the Arizona schools, particularly Arizona’s always-tough Wildcats, coming up next at the Honda Center.