This game was physical.
This game was an opportunity for the No. 24 Cal men’s basketball team to truly show off how good its defense is.
This game was freshman forward Ivan Rabb diving for a loose ball on Utah’s end of the court, only to fall onto a camera lens and bleed because of his efforts.
And it was in this 45-minute game, just as quickly as the blood was cleaned from below Rabb’s ear, that the Bears opportunity to prove that they really are able to keep up with some of the best to be Pac-12 Champion worthy slipped away.
But this time around, it wasn’t enough. And despite maintaining a lead for more than 14 minutes of the second half, foul trouble and missed shots doomed Cal once again.
On Friday in Las Vegas, the Bears (23-10) fell to No. 12 Utah (26-7) in overtime, 82-78, ending the team’s bid for the Pac-12 Championship and an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
The game could not have started out more differently from Cal’s performance the night before. With Pac-12 Player of the Year Jakob Poeltl scoring the first five points of the game, the Utes started the game with a dominating effort. Three other Utah players scored threes by the first timeout, with only Rabb and sophomore center Kingsley Okoroh scoring for the Bears, giving Utah a 14-4 lead.
After the timeout, Cal began to show glimpses of Thursday’s highlights, with the Bears going on a 10-0 run and finally tying Utah at 14 after the team’s first three of the game from junior guard Jordan Mathews. During the run, the Utes went 0-6, until breaking the drought with a free throw.
Brown, however, continued his struggles from the night before, shooting 0-7 in the first half. But he did manage to accumulate four of the team’s five assists.
A long three by Utah guard Brandon Taylor ended the team’s six-minute field goal deficit. And in a repeat from earlier in the game, with Okoroh on Poeltl once again, the Ute converted a three-point play, putting Utah up 21-17.
With the score going back and forth for much of the latter part of the first half, junior guard Jabari Bird’s three with just more than one minute left gave Cal the lead, 35-33. Senior guard Tyrone Wallace slowly established his dominance, scoring a game-high 13 points in the half, nine in the last six minutes alone, including a jumper from the free-throw line to push out the Bears lead even more to 37-33 going into the locker room.
Utah finally closed in on the Bears’ lead with guard Lorenzo Bonam’s first points of the night. But Brown was not to be outdone, finally getting his own first basket, to put Cal up 41-38. The Bears’ defense was finally having some success against Poeltl with Rook providing some key blocks. And while Cal kept the Utes’ shooting to 33 percent early in the half, to the Bears’ 47 percent, the Bears were simply not able to create a sizeable lead.
On offense for Cal, it was the leader Wallace who truly gave Cal the effort it needed to maintain the advantage. Scoring a three, his first of the game, with just more than nine minutes to play, he put the Bears up 51-45. The only thing that Cal could not stop was Poeltl, who scored a layup over Okoroh once again, immediately after the trey.
Brown may not have been the star that led the team in scoring in this game, but he was useful from the free throw line, going 6-8 from the line to 3-17 from the field, including a pair to give the Bears their biggest lead of the game, 56-49.
But foul trouble ended up hurting Brown on the other end as he picked up his fourth — albeit on a questionable call —allowing the Utes to minimize Cal’s lead to three. A layup by Bonam brought the Utes within one, but Rabb once again bailed the Bears out with a three-point play.
Four points from the line and a three-point play by Poeltl, who finished the game with a game-high 29 points, secured the Utes their first lead since there were more than 14 minutes to play in the game.
And just when it seemed that a miracle three-point play by Bird off an offensive rebound had secured the game for Cal, Bonam drove down the court and tied the game at 70, sending the teams to five more minutes of action.
Poeltl scored the opening three points of overtime, including free throws on Rabb’s fourth foul of the game. Brown scored three points of his own on a free throw and layup, but it was Utah’s ability to secure rebounds and Cal’s missed shots that doomed the third-seed.
Despite a last-minute three from Wallace — to add on to his excellent performance, finishing the game with 26 points and six rebounds — it was simply not enough, and Cal was sent packing, 82-78.
Alaina Getzenberg covers men’s basketball. Contact her at agetzenberg@dailycal.org.Follow her on Twitter @agetzenberg.