Please calm me down and tell me this is a better matchup tahn unlv, please, someone
Cal is 21-11 after beating UNLV yesterday.
At home, Cal has lost to (with margin of defeat in parentheses) UNLV (1), Creighton (10), Harvard (5), UCLA (14), Washington (15), and Stanford (13), all at home. Stanford beat them on the road as well, also by double digits. Stanford lost 14 times and could only muster a .500 record in the Pac12. A home game for Cal doesn't make it a sure thing.
It took Cal a late seven game winning streak mostly against the weaker teams in the Pac 12 to even get to a 12th seed in the dance.
Cal's best wins (by ranking at the time) are against Arizona (#7) and Oregon (#10 and #23). They have only played 5 ranked teams all year. Syracuse played 7 ranked teams in our most recent 10 game stretch.
Cal relies heavily on two perimeter players, Crabbe and Cobbs, for their scoring. Their third best scorer, Kravish, is a 6'9 center who weighs only 225 and is foul prone. They have two bigger guys
(at 6'10" 235 and 6'10" 265), but they get many fewer minutes. Their forwards are all perimeter type players. Our worst problems come from dump and chase type rebounding teams who block shots. Cal is not that team.
Both of Cal's best rebounders play the same position. Crabbe is their third best rebounder, and plays every minute unless he is in foul trouble.
Crabbe is a bit foul prone at times, and will have to guard CJ Fair, who is taller and heavier.
The three best 3 point shooters for Cal (Crabbe, Cobbs and Wallace) combine for 10.75 three point attempts per game but only make 3.4 per game (31.4%). As we know, our zone encourages bad shooters to shoot more often, and Cal doesn't have anybody good enough to be afraid of. Wallace should probably be told to shoot less, as he averages 22% and takes almost 3 a game.
Syracuse is coming off a cakewalk victory where our minutes leaders were Triche and MCW at 29. Each of them average at least 33 mpg. Cal is coming of a stress filled nail biter where only 7 people played and their top four players all played 34 plus. Crabbe only played 34 because he was in foul trouble.
UNLV, not a world beater team, missed 16 shots in a row at one point, and Cal beat them by 3 points.
These are the reasons that Syracuse will win by 15 tomorrow, in spite of the horrible "protection" granted the "protected seed" Syracuse and UNLV teams.