We didn’t come close to playing our best basketball and still got a win on the road at UT and a top 5 team. We got little to nothing from both Wallace and Toppin on the offensive end, Oscar was good but still struggled trying to go over UT’s big man. CJ and Reeves a respectable 5-15 from 3 but both missed at least a couple each that were wide open they would admit they have to make. Not sure if many realize but we had only scored 8 points during the first 11:30 of the 2nd half.
Defensively we were so much more active today, thought CJ played his best defensive game by far this year. Still gave up way too many easy looks and got extremely fortunate with UT missing some shots they would normally make. Biggest gripe with Cal today is not changing up defensively at least for a few minutes in the 2nd half when UT was getting just about any shot they wanted for a stretch.
Today was a big first step in trying to salvage the season and knowing we can play even much better than we did today leaves a lot of room for optimism. Will cal recognize we are better when Wheelers minutes are limited and will he ever try switching up defenses (even for a small periods of time) to help break up the other teams rhythm. Those two things along with getting Livingston and Thero more experience over the next two months will determine IMO if the cats can do a complete about face from the start of this season.
Defensively we were so much more active today, thought CJ played his best defensive game by far this year. Still gave up way too many easy looks and got extremely fortunate with UT missing some shots they would normally make. Biggest gripe with Cal today is not changing up defensively at least for a few minutes in the 2nd half when UT was getting just about any shot they wanted for a stretch.
Today was a big first step in trying to salvage the season and knowing we can play even much better than we did today leaves a lot of room for optimism. Will cal recognize we are better when Wheelers minutes are limited and will he ever try switching up defenses (even for a small periods of time) to help break up the other teams rhythm. Those two things along with getting Livingston and Thero more experience over the next two months will determine IMO if the cats can do a complete about face from the start of this season.
