Scouting report: No. 2 Arizona Wildcats vs. Cal Golden Bears

The Star's Bruce Pascoe breaks down the starting lineups, storylines and stats as the No. 2-ranked Arizona Wildcats face Cal Saturday afternoon.

What: Cal (12-18, 5-14) at No. 2 Arizona (27-3, 17-2)

Where: McKale Center

When: 3 p.m.

TV: Pac-12 Networks

Radio: 1290-AM, 107.5-FM

Social media: @TheWildcaster on Twitter / TheWildcaster on Facebook

Probable starters

ARIZONA

G Justin Kier (6-4 senior)

G Dalen Terry (6-7 sophomore)

F Bennedict Mathurin (6-6 sophomore)

F Azuolas Tubelis (6-11 sophomore)

C Christian Koloko (7-0 junior)

CALIFORNIA

G Joel Brown (6-3 junior)

G Jordan Shepherd (6-4 senior)

F Jalen Celestine (6-6 sophomore)

F Grant Anticevich (6-8 senior)

C Lars Theimann (7-1 junior)

How they match up

The last time: Azuolas Tubelis sat out with a high ankle sprain suffered three days earlier at Stanford, but the Wildcats beat the Bears in 96-71 on Jan. 23 at Haas Pavilion in Berkeley, California. The Wildcats mostly went with a smaller lineup featuring guard Pelle Larsson at power forward while center Christian Koloko led the Wildcats with 19 points and 13 rebounds, and Oumar Ballo added 14 points. Cal coach Mark Fox was ejected in the first half after picking up two technical fouls.

The last time at McKale Center: Arizona won the only meeting between the two teams last season, 71-50 on Jan. 30 at McKale Center. Then-UA guard James Akinjo had 20 points, eight assists and no turnovers against his hometown team while Arizona held Cal to 38.3% shooting and scored 15 points off 16 turnovers.

What’s new with the Bears: After losing 10 straight games that included the loss to Arizona on Jan. 23 – while standout forward Andre Kelly suffered a season-ending injury at USC on Jan. 29 -- the Bears pulled off an improbable sweep at Oregon State and Oregon last month. It was their first Pac-12 road sweep since 2015-16. They also held Stanford to just 23.5% shooting in a 53-39 win over the Cardinal at Haas Pavilion last week but fell apart on Thursday at ASU, allowing the Sun Devils to shoot 53.6% while shooting just 30.5% themselves in a 71-44 loss.

Without Kelly, 7-footer Lars Thiemann has started nine straight games in the low post. Thiemann scored a career-high 16 points against Utah on Feb. 19 and was a key figure in Cal’s defense against Stanford last Saturday, when he had six points, eight rebounds, four assists, two steals and two blocks.

Jordan Shepherd, a veteran who played a combined 111 games at Charlotte and Oklahoma before arriving at Cal this season, has been the Bears’ biggest threat. He's the fourth-leading scorer in Pac-12 games, averaging 15.1 points.

The Bears have mostly continued to go at point guard with Joel Brown, who has a 2-1 assist-turnover ratio in conference play but has missed all 13 3-pointers he’s tried against Pac-12 teams.

Kelly (60.7%) was the Bears’ most efficient shooter and now, after Theimann (53.7%), the Bears don’t have anybody averaging more than 13 minutes a game who shoots better than 41% from the field. From 3-point range, Cal is shooting only 29.1% in Pac-12 play, though reserve Sam Alajiki has made 13 of 23 long-range shots in conference play (56.5%). However, the Bears outrebounded five of their past six opponents before ASU had 38 rebounds to Cal’s 34 on Thursday.

He said it: “The first thing worth noting is they beat Oregon. You gotta respect the way they found their team and came together after losing one of their best players. I think the injury brought them together. They're always competing. They beat Stanford pretty heavily last week and obviously we saw Stanford gave us a fight. So I expect Cal to come here with nothing to lose and we’ve got to bring it.

“(Against Stanford) if you really watch that game, they played incredibly hard and Stanford obviously wasn’t ready for that fight. They broke the game apart and Stanford couldn’t score on them.

“They’re a very solid team, they like to control the pace and they don’t beat themselves. They have a lot of experienced guys, three fifth-year guys and that’s not normally the case when you play teams that have struggled but they’ve had a lot of COVID, injuries and all that.

“They have some really good players who can get going like Shepherd and Celestine. The best way to describe Shepherd is he’s a scorer. He’s a streaky shooter, he had games like Stanford where he made four (of seven) 3s. He attacks the rim, he can get fouled, he attacks in transition. The biggest thing with him is we gotta make him work for everything and I thought when we played them at their place we did (Shepherd scored 21 points but was 7 for 19 from the field). You can’t forget about everybody else while you do that, but he certainly is going to be focus of our attention because he's a really good player.” — UA assistant coach Riccardo Fois, who scouted the Bears

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Key players

CAL — Jordan Shepherd

The veteran guard, who played a combined 111 games at Charlotte and Oklahoma before arriving at Cal this season, has thrived in the spotlight of bigger games. After scoring 21 against UA earlier this season, he had 33 points to lead Cal to an upset at Oregon and 28 in a rivalry win over Stanford last Saturday.

ARIZONA — Bennedict Mathurin

With another strong outing Saturday in what is expected to be his final game at McKale, Mathurin might be able to pick up both the Pac-12 Player of the Week and Player of the Year awards early next week. He already had 19 points at USC to help the Wildcats clinch the Pac-12 title on Tuesday and poured in another 24 against Stanford.

Sidelines

They shouldn't be fooled anymore

Two weeks ago, just two days after Oregon was drummed 81-57 at ASU on a Thursday, the Ducks ventured into McKale and forced the Wildcats to pull out their narrowest regulation win of the season, just 84-81.

A week ago, just two days after Colorado rolled over on its own floor during an 82-65 loss to the Sun Devils, the Buffaloes reinvented themselves and handed Arizona its worst loss of the season, 79-63.

And on Thursday night, just five days after Stanford could only put in 25.3% of its shots during a dreary 53-39 loss at Cal, the Cardinal trailed Arizona by just five points with six minutes to go.

It's not hard to see the pattern here. Certainly, UA coach Tommy Lloyd does.

“It seems like we're kind of running into a lot of these scenarios where the team that is next on our schedule has a tough game before us,” Lloyd said UA’s 81-69 win over Stanford. “And their coaches are good coaches. They get their guys to respond and these teams are coming on playing spirited. So tons of credit to Stanford, but I’m also happy with how our guys responded.”

The Wildcats might have to make sure they respond just as well Saturday: Because California is coming off a brutal 71-44 loss at ASU on Thursday.

Cal coach Mark Fox said the Bears “really collapsed on the defensive end in the second half” at ASU, which, if trends hold up, means the Bears will probably be terrific on defense Saturday.

“Our guys are used to it and that’s part of it,” UA assistant coach Ricky Fois said. “That’s what good teams do. I have no doubt Cal and their coaches are going to come here and give us a fight. We have to show maturity, which we have all year. Colorado caught us by surprise and I think those were learned lessons for us in building the program where we want to be.”

Ukraine situation hits home

Swedish guard Pelle Larsson said he and his UA teammates from the other side of the Baltic Sea, Kerr Kriisa (Estonia) and the Tubelis twins (Lithuania) have kept up with the Russia-Ukraine news and it’s not been fun.

“I think it's terrible,” Larsson said. “Obviously we don't want any war anywhere the world. Not to get too political, but what's going on now is terrible and I think it needs to stop.”

Larsson said the players go over over daily updates from the region and try to do what they can.

“It's something we look at and talk about,” Larsson said. “But there's not much we can do here except support them and trying to help with charities.”

Shhhh

Lloyd has made it clear during his first season with the Wildcats that he doesn’t really like to talk about injuries, especially those that his players can play through, and suspensions or other personnel issues.

So it was, then, that after Thursday’s game Lloyd said guard Kriisa was dealing with “just bumps and bruises” while wearing shoulder tape and that Dalen Terry was “fine” despite having to be helped off the floor after Stanford’s Spencer Jones landed on his lower right leg during an inadvertent collision under the basket.

Meanwhile, Lloyd said reserve freshman guard Shane Nowell would be back in uniform on Saturday after sitting out the past three games because of “some things we wanted to address behind the scenes.”

Numbers game

2 — Cal’s Pac-12 ranking in defensive rebounding percentage in conference games (74.0)

2 — UA managers who will be honored during Senior Day ceremonies Saturday: Luke Handley of Chicago and Austin Torres of Tucson.

10 — Straight games Cal has lost to Arizona, since the Bears beat the Wildcats 74-73 on Jan. 23, 2016.

29.9 — Cal’s 3-point shooting percentage in Pac-12 games, the worst in the conference.

137 — Games played for Cal by super senior Grant Anticevich, a school record.