Scouting report: No. 3 Arizona Wildcats vs. Cal Golden Bears

The Star's Bruce Pascoe breaks down the starting lineups, storylines and stats as the No. 3-ranked Arizona Wildcats travel to face the Cal Golden Bears Sunday afternoon in Berkeley.

What: No. 3 Arizona (15-1, 5-0) at Cal (9-9, 2-5)

Where: Haas Pavilion, Berkeley, Calif.

When: 1 p.m.

TV: Pac-12 Networks

Radio: 1290-AM

Social media: @TheWildcaster on Twitter / TheWildcaster on Facebook

Probable starters: Arizona

G Kerr Kriisa (6-3 sophomore)

G Dalen Terry (6-6 sophomore)

F Bennedict Mathurin (6-6 sophomore) 

F Azuolas Tubelis (6-11 sophomore) OR Pelle Larsson (6-5 sophomore)

C Christian Koloko (7-0 junior)

Probable starters: Cal

G Jordan Shepherd (6-4 senior)

G Jarred Hyder (6-3 sophomore)

F Jalen Celestine (6-6 sophomore)

F Grant Anticevich (6-8 senior)

C Andre Kelly (6-8 junior)

How they match up

The series: Arizona has won nine in a row against California and four consecutive games at Haas Pavilion, last losing 74-73 on Jan. 23. 2016, when Gabe York missed a six-foot runner just before time expired. The teams did not play at Berkeley last season because of the Pac-12’s unbalanced schedule, and Arizona won the only meeting, 71-50 on Jan. 30 at McKale Center, where James Akinjo had 20 points, eight assists and no turnovers against his hometown team.

This season: The Wildcats and Bears are scheduled to play again at McKale Center on March 5 in the final game before Pac-12 Tournament play.

Cal overview: Despite losing leading scorer Matt Bradley from a 12th-place finish last season, the Bears were making modest improvement until they ran into health issues and lost their last four straight. They have already matched their win total of nine games from last season and, while they haven’t won away from Haas Pavilion, Cal played both Washington and Washington State within single digits on the road last weekend. The Bears then had the entire week to prepare for Arizona since they had moved up their home game with ASU to Jan. 2.

Cal is sound defensively, especially when Joel Brown is healthy and at the point, but is a mediocre shooting team both from two-point (48.9) and 3-point (33.1) range. They are a good defensive rebounding team (77.9%) but only rebound 24.8% of their missed shots, the No. 276th offensive rebounding percentage, in part because they send multiple players back on defense quickly.

Three veterans are Cal’s primary threats: Center Andre Kelly, forward Grant Anticevich and grad transfer guard Jordan Shepard.

At 6-foot-9 and 255 pounds, Kelly knows how to make the most of his size: He’s shooting 60.5% from two-point range and is a rough rebounder inside, with the 77th best defensive rebounding percentage nationally (24.0).

The 6-9 Anticevich takes 59% of his shots from beyond the 3-point line, hitting long-range shots at 35.1% mark while Shepherd is a multi-dimensional scorer who knows how to get to the line, drawing 4.6 fouls per 40 minutes played and hitting free throws at a 79.3% rate.

The Golden Bears’ primary point guard, Brown is a strong defender and passer but is not much of a scoring threat, having made just six 3-pointers all season and shooting just 40.6% from the free throw line. Sophomore Jalen Celestine is a promising wing player while junior guard Jarred Hyder and backup point guard Makale Foreman have both been been slow to come off offseason surgeries.

He said it: “They're an experienced team. Some of their best players have been in college for four or five years, Kelly, Shepard and Anticevich. Those are the three key players that we’ve go to focus on. They have some athleticism on the wings. 

“(Kelly) has been around the block. He knows how to use his body and he has really good hands. (Anticevich) is very comfortable dribbling the ball. He’s a catch and shoot guy. He’s a modern four-man with an old-school skill set. We can’t let him get going because he’s a very solid player. (Shepherd) is exactly what you would call a scorer. He’s not a great shooter but he makes shots and he can get hot. He can drive and get to the rim, gets to the free throw line. He’s a fifth-year guy and he gets to play Arizona. He’s gonna be fired up.

“They try to control the pace of the game. Both offense and defense obviously contribute to that. Defensively, they're just a solid team. They play mostly man to man but they go to the zone sometimes. They try to slow you down, try to take away your initial action. That's gonna be part of our challenge: Can we establish our pace like we did at Stanford?”

— UA assistant coach Riccardo Fois, who scouted the Bears.

Key player (Cal): Andre Kelly

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Cal’s last-place finish last season helped keep Kelly off the conference’s honor rolls but he’s making a bid for all conference honors this time. He’s the Pac-12’s second-leading rebounder (8.7) behind only USC’s Isaiah Mobley, and a savvy, efficient scorer inside.

Key player (Arizona): Oumar Ballo

Azuolas Tubelis might sit out or play a limited role for precautionary reasons Sunday because of his sprained ankle, meaning Ballo will have another big opportunity against the Bears after taking advantage of 22 minutes at Stanford, collecting 21 points and six rebounds.

Sidelines

Arizona 'bona fide' title contender, Fox says

Only three months ago, Arizona was picked to finish in a fourth-place tie with Oregon State in the Pac-12 race. So a Bay Area reporter happened to mention to Cal coach Mark Fox on Friday that the Wildcats were supposed to be down a bit this season.

“I never thought they were gonna be down,” Fox responded. "We always felt they might have the most talented team in the conference. They may have a chance to be one of the best teams in America which is to Tommy's credit. He's been able to keep everybody on board.

"I think their strengths are numerous. They have length at the rim that is advantageous for them both on offense and defense. They have a lottery pick on the wing (Bennedict Mathurin), who is a matchup nightmare for just about every team and then they have great guard play and and the ability to shoot the 3.

"So they're a terrific team. Their offense and their passing gets a lot of a lot of compliments as it should. I think their defense is being overlooked because their offense is so great and I think their defense helps create a lot of their offense. They are a bona fide contender for the national championship."

Futile flight

It’s never an easy trip getting to Pullman, Washington, for a game against WSU but Cal’s Joel Brown had it even worse last weekend.

Having been isolated for COVID-19 protocol reasons, Brown missed the Bears’ game at Washington on Jan. 12 and the team’s subsequent trip across the state to Pullman. But he was cleared the morning of Cal's game at WSU on Jan. 15, with a chance to race there in time for tipoff.

Thanks t a travel delay, he didn't quite make it. Brown arrived in the first half, then jumped into second-half warmups. But he wound up playing just over a minute in the second half before Fox realized it was all for naught.

“Had things been on time, he would have arrived before tipoff,” Fox said. “We missed him. We needed him on the floor. He hadn’t practiced or touched a ball in a week so we gave it one roll of the dice, one swing of the bat, and we could tell as soon as he was in the game that he was out of rhythm. He just wasn’t himself.”

Fox said he also wanted to give Brown a shot because backup guard Makale Foreman has continued to struggle after having a foot injury.

“I thought we owed it to him to give him a chance, and our team welcomed it,” Fox said of Brown. “But obviously, it’s hard to play in those circumstances. If he had a chance to go through warm-ups, maybe things are different. It was worth a shot but it just didn’t work out.”

Shuffling the deck

The Pac-12’s whirlwind rescheduling efforts over New Year’s weekend may have handed Cal an advantage Sunday.

UA, ASU and Cal were all left without games that weekend because of their opponents' COVID issues but Cal and ASU were paired up to play on Jan.2 while UA was asked to make up its postponed Dec. 2 game with Washington on Jan. 3.

So, because Cal already had hosted ASU, the Bears didn't have to face the Sun Devils this weekend and thus had the last week off to prepare for Arizona.

Yet it wasn’t a perfect situation for Fox, either. The Cal coach said he wanted to play a road game but ASU's facility issues kept the Sun Devils from hosting either Cal or UA that weekend, meaning the Jan.2 ASU-Cal game had to be played in Berkeley.

Now, the Golden Bears will now have to play seven of their final 12 games away from Haas Pavilion.

“We ended up playing three Pac-12 games at home in a week, and that’s really going to make the back of our schedule road-heavy,” Fox said. “But it did open up this week and it just so happened that Joel was out with COVID and we needed a couple of days to regroup. We needed a couple of days of rest and hopefully we’ll get healthier entering this tough stretch.”

Fans can attend UCLA-Arizona game

UCLA will have the support of its fans for its Tuesday night showdown against Arizona on Tuesday at Pauley Pavilion.

As did Stanford and USC, UCLA had banned fans temporarily from attending indoor events because of recent COVID spread, saying they would be kept out at least until Friday while it continued to monitor the situation.

Then, on late Friday afternoon, UCLA announced fans could begin attending events this weekend. The Bruins' men's basketball team is scheduled to play at Colorado on Saturday and will return home Tuesday to play Arizona in a makeup game that was originally scheduled for Dec. 30.

Proof of vaccination or a negative test is required. Ticket prices start at $39.

Numbers game

1 – Arizona’s rank in two-point field goal percentage defense (39.4).

4 – Arizona’s Kenpom.com rank in adjusted defensive efficiency (giving up just 88.3 points per 100 possessions).

334 – Cal’s rank in ratio of 3-pointers taken to field goals taken (29.5).

307- Cal’s rank in free throws attempted to field goals attempted (24.9)