who is nervous for a true road game?

[AlaskaSU]

What worries me is people can get behind our D in the zone. The Grizz didn't exploit it, probably because we were so much bigger than them. Cal's good and Baye, Rak and DC2 need to keep and eye on that, they go 6'9", 610" & 6'10", that's more than The GRizz. Other than that, their 6'6" guard got 19 last night. So.. we should win but let's watch our backs and their front.[/quote
They only start 2 bigs. 6'6" Crabbe will play SF.

 

[AlaskaSU]

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.

Crabbe will not guard CJ. They will zone us.

 

[Niastri]

Probably correct, the UNLV post game says they hadn't done that very often. Southerland or Fair, Crabbe has to guard a guy who is bigger and taller than him. Their stiff big men will have to sit on the bench if they are going to zone us. I imagine we will find the lane and create foul troubles with their slow interior guys, and create lots of open shots from beyond the arc.

I really don't think that Cal is going to be able to score on us. We will cluster their two scorers and make the rest of a bad team find a way to beat us. We might not score, but we will keep them to 54 points and win by 15.

Cal turns it over a fair amount, and when they shoot too many bad threes, we might be able to transition them. We aren't really a transition team lately, Montana notwithstanding... But we can smoke a team when they present the chance. As always our defense is our key, and our offense merely allows us to win.

The teams that beat us this year mostly beat us because our offense was bad, not because we couldn't defend them effectively. I don't see Cal as a team that can take us out of our offense. They have turned the corner on defense, but I really don't think they are going to dominate us and make us look bad like some of the Big East teams did when allowed to beat us up.

 

[BlackKnight76]

We're a bad bad match-up for them. I did a Q&A with Keeley and their SB Nation blog yesterday...their fans in the comments were not too optimistic unless they get uncharacteristically hot from three, where they only shoot 30% normally.

 

[Niastri]

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.

We can't shoot this badly again and still win. Syracuse was by far the better team and won by only 6. Next game we will be a slightly better team and we need not to give away 8-9 points on our shooting and defense. We should have crushed this Cal team and we only just controlled them.

Their hearts should have been on the floor like Maine and Montana in the past. We will need to play and shoot much better than this to beat Indiana.

We beat them with Keita and the fact that they had to guard Fair. I mentioned that Crabbe might guard Fair, and instead they went big man then double team once Fair destroyed them in the first half. Montgomery actually screwed up badly by making his big guys guard Fair and thus fell right into our matchup problem. In my preview, I thought he would go with one big man and he waited until Fair hurt them before making the adjustment.

Montgomery had a good adjustment, and Fair only had a few points in the second half. I figured Fair would hurt them all game long, but the correction was good. Montgomery kept this from a blow out with his coaching.

Keita is McNeil.

Nothing this game went exactly as I predicted, but nothing was ever in doubt.

Wallace took 8 threes, lol. We got him to shoot a lot, and he managed to hurt the guys who are actual good players on his team.

Fair was going to crush this team, and so he did.

Crabbe and Cobbs are the only guys who can score over there, and JB does little better than destroy opponents who have few scoring choices.

Home game for Cal or not, we were never in doubt. This was the best tournament game I have ever watched in terms of concern. Not once did I think we would lose, starting yesterday. Weird.