Post by mhbruin on Feb 4, 2024 10:13:41 GMT -8
The red-hot Bears meet the red-hot Bruins. Bears have won 4 out of 5. The Bruins have won 4 in a row and 6 out of 7. Get ready for some major ursine violence.
Mark Madsen has done a very good job of restoring California to respectability in his first season. He has won everywhere he has played and coached. With some quality transfers and some good coaching, the Bears are a dangerous team.
METRICS
Most of the computers pick a Cal win. They have predicted a lot of losses for us that never happened in recent games.
Warren Nolan is the only computer that picks a UCLA win. He predicts we win our next 4 games.
When we first met Cal was #217 in the NET and #157 in KenPom.
We were #159 in the NET and #159 in KenPom. It was a matchup of two bad teams. Now it is at worst a matchup of two mediocre teams and at best a matchup of two good teams.
RECORDS
This will be a Quad 2 game for us and a Quad 3 game for the Bears.
Cal has three Quad 4 losses. I don't think any other Pac-12 team has more than one. They lost to Pacific, Montana State, and UTEP. Pacfic is 3-19 and #357 out of 362 teams in the NET. However, all of those losses were in November. Cal has improved a lot since then.
Cal's best wins are over Colorado, Washington State, and UCLA.
Playing at Haas Pavilion doesn't seem too daunting.
UCLA'S OFFENSE VS CALIFORNIA'S DEFENSE
Cal isn't a very good defensive team, but they are improving. UCLA isn't a very good offensive team, but we are improving. Who has improved more? Beats me.
Advantage: Cal, but a small edge.
UCLA'S DEFENSE VS CALIFORNIA'S OFFENSE
Cal is consistently mediocre at offense. They aren't terrible at most things. They just aren't good at anything. They don't shoot the ball well. They don't get offensive rebounds. They turn it ove quirt a bit, although they have been better at that lately.
Cal shoots a lot of threes. They are #56 in the US in three-point attempts. Here is Cal's record based on three-point precentage:
As go the threes, so go the Bears. The Bears shoot 34.5% on three for the season. We hold teams to 32.5%. We let them shoot 40% in the first game an lost.
When you play terrible defense you have to score a lot to have a chance to win, Defending the three may be the key to the game. When they shoot less thab 42% from the arc, they are 1-11, When they shoot less than 36%, they are 0-7.
Maybe missing Askew and Bowser isn't that bad. They were shooting 14% and 17% from the arc.
Honestly, it is hard to see how their offensive efficiency numbers aren't worse.
Their offense is better than ours, but our defense continues to be very good.
Advantage:UCLA
OTHER FACTORS
We have a slight edge on the boards.
Cal is terrible at taking care of the ball. Their 13 turnovers per game is #274 in the country. Their A/TO ratio is really bad, too.
They play at a moderate speed. We are still SLOW.
The Bears have lots of D1 experience, but they have an almost new roster, so they have little roster coutinuity. 4 members of their 6-man rotation were not on Cal last season, including their four leading scorers, their two leading rebounders, their three leaders in assists, their two leaders in steals, and their leaders in blocks.
One area where Cal has improved a lot is turnovers. Since our last meeting, they have gone from #274 in the country in turnovers per game to #150.
We have improved, too. We are averaging only 8 turnovers per game in our last 6 games.
As we will discuss below, they don't have much of a bench.
PLAYERS
Cal tried to create an entire roster of players with a first name which is a variation of Jalen, but they failed and had to settle for three of them. To fill out their roster. they went with a Fardaws, a Keonte, a Monty, and a Gus.
The Bears don't have much of a bench. They are #294 in bench minutes. Their depth has been hurt by the loss of three roation players to injury, ND Okafor, Devin Askew, and Monty Bowser. Askew and Bowser were part-time starters.
Basically, they go seven deep, but rely heaviy on their starters. In their overtime win over USC, the starters played 43, 40, 39, 37, and 36 minutes. Three subs played a total of 30 minutes. The starters played 87% of the mintues.
Rodney Brown and Gus Larson will play a few minutes, the only sub who plays significant minutes is Grant Newell.
They are a mature team with 3 fifth-year seniors and two juniors, but only 2 of the 7 current rotation players were on the team last season.
* 3-Pt Freq = Percent of his shots that are 3-point attempts.
Texas Tech must not like Mark Madsen much, since his two leading scorers and their leaders in rebounds, assist, steals, and blocks were playing for the Red Raiders last season. They may have been the biggest things to come out of Lubbok since Buddy Holly. When asked about building a new roster, Mark Madsen replied, "It's so easy."
Jaylon Tyson leads the team in points, assists, and steals. He leads all transfers in the country in scoring, and he is having an All-Pac-12 kind of season. He has scored in double figures in every game and goes over 20 in most games. He has scored 30 twice.
Tyson has had a massive improvement since last season, when he scored 10.7 per game for Texas Tech.
Lot of big time scorers do it by shooting a ton of shots while making a low percentage. (See Mack, Sebastian.) Tyson is not one of those guys. He shoots a good percentage and works hard on the boards. Tyson is a three-level scorer. He can drive to the hoop, pull up for the midrange, or shoot the three. He will beat his defender off the dribble or post him up. He has had five double-doubles this season.
Speaking of double-doubles, 25-year-old Fardaws Aimaqis a double-double machine. That doesn't mean he works at In-n-Out. He has had 15 double-doubles in 23 games. He leads the Bears in rebounds and blocks, and he is their second-leading scorer. He is very skilled around the basket and in the pick and roll. He also has pretty good range, and he can shoot the three.
Jalen Cone is the third part of their three-headed monster. He hasn't been a great shooter, but he isn't shy and it's mostly three-pointers. A stunning 75 PERCENT of his shots are threes. He attempts more than twice as many as Tyson, and more than four times as many as anyone else on the team. He shoots around 9 threes per game. He only makes 34% of them . I don't think we need to fear the Cone, but we need to defend him at the arc.
"When Jalen Cone is hot from long range, he’s really hot. When he’s not, well . . ."
"He went 7-for-37 (18.9%) on three-pointers over four consecutive games against Montana State, UTEP, Tulane and San Diego State, then, in the next two games, against Santa Clara and Butler, he made 14 three-point shots."
"Cone went 3-for-19 from distance in consecutive games against Stanford and Arizona, but in the next two games against Arizona State and USC, he went 8-for-12 from long range. And he made some tough three-pointers against USC on Wednesday:"
Tyson, Aimaq, and Cone take 59% of the Bears' shots.
Keonte Kennedy is their best ball handler and defender, but their worst shooter,
Kennedy has become a crowd favorite in Berkely. Here is some video of the Haas Pavillion fans.
Jalen Celestine is a deadly outside shooters on a low volume of shots. He only takes around three shots from the arc per game. He won't generally shoot off the dribble, but he is very good when he is set.
Rodney Brown Jr. is another very good outside shooters, but he only shoots around two of them per game.
CONCLUSION
Prior to the Stanford game I said the keys were:
Here's the report card:
I would say we got 3 out of 4, and the tempo didn't seem to bother us.
Here I think there are three keys:
Cal is no pushover. They have home wins over Washinton State and Colorado, who are both near the top of the conference standings. They won both those games with their short roster.
This is a chance for a rare road sweep. It won't be easy, but we are capable of pulling it off.
However, if I have a concern, it is Tyson. He scored 22 on us in the first game, and we showed little ability to guard him. We have had some trouble with skilled power forward types this season. When Stanford posted up Brandon Angel or Spencer Jones, we had no success defending them. We need Brandon Williams or Berke to step it up on defense without fouling.
Go Bruins!
Frank Sinatra is Another Keyonte Kennedy Fan
Mark Madsen has done a very good job of restoring California to respectability in his first season. He has won everywhere he has played and coached. With some quality transfers and some good coaching, the Bears are a dangerous team.
METRICS
UCLA Predicted Win % | Predicted Score | |
KenPom | 44% | 66-68 (-2) |
Torvick | 34% | 64-68 (-4) |
Warren Nolan | 69-65 (+4) | |
ESPN | 41% |
Most of the computers pick a Cal win. They have predicted a lot of losses for us that never happened in recent games.
Warren Nolan is the only computer that picks a UCLA win. He predicts we win our next 4 games.
California | UCLA | |
NET | 120 | 118 |
KenPom Rank | 106 | 91 |
Torvick Rank | 98 | 104 |
SOS | 41 | 52 |
Record | 10-13 | 12-11 |
When we first met Cal was #217 in the NET and #157 in KenPom.
We were #159 in the NET and #159 in KenPom. It was a matchup of two bad teams. Now it is at worst a matchup of two mediocre teams and at best a matchup of two good teams.
RECORDS
QUAD 1 | QUAD 2 | QUAD 3 | QUAD 4 | |
UCLA | 0-6 | 4-1 | 2-3 | 5-1 |
California | 0-5 | 3-3 | 6-2 | 1-3 |
This will be a Quad 2 game for us and a Quad 3 game for the Bears.
Cal has three Quad 4 losses. I don't think any other Pac-12 team has more than one. They lost to Pacific, Montana State, and UTEP. Pacfic is 3-19 and #357 out of 362 teams in the NET. However, all of those losses were in November. Cal has improved a lot since then.
Cal's best wins are over Colorado, Washington State, and UCLA.
UCLA Road | 4-4 |
California Road / Neutral | 8-5 |
Playing at Haas Pavilion doesn't seem too daunting.
UCLA'S OFFENSE VS CALIFORNIA'S DEFENSE
California Defense | UCLA Offense | |
KenPom Rank | 144 | 176 |
Torvick Rank | 122 | 198 |
Points per game (allowed / scored) | 77 | 66 |
FG Percent | 45% (244) | 42% (298) |
Effective FG Percent | (217) | (310) |
3-Pt Percent | 36% (290) | 33% (228) |
3-Pt Rate | 37% (153) | 29% (339) |
2-Pt Percent | 50% (159) | 45% (336) |
FT Percent | 73% (138) | |
Offensive Rebound Percent | 25% (36) | 31% (122) |
Assist Percent | 47% (89) | 50% (201) |
Turnovers (created / committed) | 15% (319) | 18% (190) |
Block Percent | 7% (274) | 7% (26) |
Cal isn't a very good defensive team, but they are improving. UCLA isn't a very good offensive team, but we are improving. Who has improved more? Beats me.
Advantage: Cal, but a small edge.
UCLA'S DEFENSE VS CALIFORNIA'S OFFENSE
UCLA Defense | California Offense | |
KenPom Rank | 35 | 93 |
Torvick Rank | 39 | 90 |
Points per game (allowed / scored) | 64 | 76 |
FG Percent | 41% (53) | 43% (272) |
Effective FG Percent | (95) | 50% (199) |
3-Pt Percent | 33% (111) | 35% (147) |
3-Pt Rate | 43% (329) | 41% (85) |
2-Pt Percent | 49% (112) | 49% (243) |
FT Percent | 73% (133) | |
Offensive Rebound Percent | 28% (111) | 30% (141) |
Turnovers (created / committed) | 19% (90) | 16% (117) |
Block Percent | 11% (87) | 9% (164) |
Cal is consistently mediocre at offense. They aren't terrible at most things. They just aren't good at anything. They don't shoot the ball well. They don't get offensive rebounds. They turn it ove quirt a bit, although they have been better at that lately.
Cal shoots a lot of threes. They are #56 in the US in three-point attempts. Here is Cal's record based on three-point precentage:
Three-Point Percent | Record |
33% or less | 1-8 |
Less than 40% | 3-12 |
40% or higher | 7-1 |
As go the threes, so go the Bears. The Bears shoot 34.5% on three for the season. We hold teams to 32.5%. We let them shoot 40% in the first game an lost.
When you play terrible defense you have to score a lot to have a chance to win, Defending the three may be the key to the game. When they shoot less thab 42% from the arc, they are 1-11, When they shoot less than 36%, they are 0-7.
Maybe missing Askew and Bowser isn't that bad. They were shooting 14% and 17% from the arc.
Honestly, it is hard to see how their offensive efficiency numbers aren't worse.
Their offense is better than ours, but our defense continues to be very good.
Advantage:UCLA
OTHER FACTORS
California | UCLA | |
Rebound Margin | 2.6 | 3.4 |
Turnover Margin | 1.2 | -0.6 |
Assist-Turnover Ratio | 1.1 (209) | 1.0 (246) |
Tempo | 159 | 336 |
D-1 Experience | 31 | 318 |
Continuity | 321 | 293 |
Average Height | 44 | 39 |
Bench Minutes | 294 | 252 |
We have a slight edge on the boards.
Cal is terrible at taking care of the ball. Their 13 turnovers per game is #274 in the country. Their A/TO ratio is really bad, too.
They play at a moderate speed. We are still SLOW.
The Bears have lots of D1 experience, but they have an almost new roster, so they have little roster coutinuity. 4 members of their 6-man rotation were not on Cal last season, including their four leading scorers, their two leading rebounders, their three leaders in assists, their two leaders in steals, and their leaders in blocks.
One area where Cal has improved a lot is turnovers. Since our last meeting, they have gone from #274 in the country in turnovers per game to #150.
We have improved, too. We are averaging only 8 turnovers per game in our last 6 games.
As we will discuss below, they don't have much of a bench.
PLAYERS
Cal tried to create an entire roster of players with a first name which is a variation of Jalen, but they failed and had to settle for three of them. To fill out their roster. they went with a Fardaws, a Keonte, a Monty, and a Gus.
The Bears don't have much of a bench. They are #294 in bench minutes. Their depth has been hurt by the loss of three roation players to injury, ND Okafor, Devin Askew, and Monty Bowser. Askew and Bowser were part-time starters.
Basically, they go seven deep, but rely heaviy on their starters. In their overtime win over USC, the starters played 43, 40, 39, 37, and 36 minutes. Three subs played a total of 30 minutes. The starters played 87% of the mintues.
Rodney Brown and Gus Larson will play a few minutes, the only sub who plays significant minutes is Grant Newell.
They are a mature team with 3 fifth-year seniors and two juniors, but only 2 of the 7 current rotation players were on the team last season.
Class | Size | Recruiting | Games | Minutes | Points | Rebounds / 40 Min. | Assists | Blocks / 40 Min. | FG % | 3-Pt % | 3-Pt Freq * | A/TO Ratio | Notes | |
Jaylon Tyson G | Jr | 6-7 | 4-star 36 | 22 | 34 | 20 | 9 | 3.3 | 49% | 37% | 31% | 1.0 | Transfer from Texas Tech | |
Fardaws Aimaq F | Sr 5 | 6-11 | Unranked | 23 | 33 | 15 | 14 | 2.4 | 1.3 | 48% | 32% | 13% | 1.1 | Transfer from Texas Tech |
Jalen Cone G | Sr 5 | 5-11 | 4-star 102 | 23 | 36 | 14 | 2.4 | 34% | 34% | 75% | 1.8 | Transfer from Northern Arizona | ||
Keonte Kennedy G | Sr 5 | 6-5 | 3-star 247 | 16 | 33 | 9 | 7 | 2.1 | 39% | 29% | 40% | 2.5 | Transfer from Memphis | |
Jalen Celestine G | Jr | 6-7 | #88 JUCO | 18 | 25 | 8 | 5 | 0.8 | 47% | 48% | 56% | 1.0 | ||
Grant Newell F | So | 6-9 | 3-star 299 | 23 | 22 | 6 | 6 | 0.5 | 43% | 31% | 41% | 0.4 | ||
Rodney Brown Jr. G | Fr | 6-6 | 3-star 174 | 23 | 14 | 4 | 0.7 | 43% | 44% | 61% | 0.9 | |||
Gus Larson | So | 6-10 | Unranked | 20 | 7 | 2 | 7 | 0.1 | 2.7 | 43% | 28% | Transfer from Penn |
* 3-Pt Freq = Percent of his shots that are 3-point attempts.
Texas Tech must not like Mark Madsen much, since his two leading scorers and their leaders in rebounds, assist, steals, and blocks were playing for the Red Raiders last season. They may have been the biggest things to come out of Lubbok since Buddy Holly. When asked about building a new roster, Mark Madsen replied, "It's so easy."
Jaylon Tyson leads the team in points, assists, and steals. He leads all transfers in the country in scoring, and he is having an All-Pac-12 kind of season. He has scored in double figures in every game and goes over 20 in most games. He has scored 30 twice.
Tyson has had a massive improvement since last season, when he scored 10.7 per game for Texas Tech.
Lot of big time scorers do it by shooting a ton of shots while making a low percentage. (See Mack, Sebastian.) Tyson is not one of those guys. He shoots a good percentage and works hard on the boards. Tyson is a three-level scorer. He can drive to the hoop, pull up for the midrange, or shoot the three. He will beat his defender off the dribble or post him up. He has had five double-doubles this season.
Speaking of double-doubles, 25-year-old Fardaws Aimaqis a double-double machine. That doesn't mean he works at In-n-Out. He has had 15 double-doubles in 23 games. He leads the Bears in rebounds and blocks, and he is their second-leading scorer. He is very skilled around the basket and in the pick and roll. He also has pretty good range, and he can shoot the three.
Jalen Cone is the third part of their three-headed monster. He hasn't been a great shooter, but he isn't shy and it's mostly three-pointers. A stunning 75 PERCENT of his shots are threes. He attempts more than twice as many as Tyson, and more than four times as many as anyone else on the team. He shoots around 9 threes per game. He only makes 34% of them . I don't think we need to fear the Cone, but we need to defend him at the arc.
"When Jalen Cone is hot from long range, he’s really hot. When he’s not, well . . ."
"He went 7-for-37 (18.9%) on three-pointers over four consecutive games against Montana State, UTEP, Tulane and San Diego State, then, in the next two games, against Santa Clara and Butler, he made 14 three-point shots."
"Cone went 3-for-19 from distance in consecutive games against Stanford and Arizona, but in the next two games against Arizona State and USC, he went 8-for-12 from long range. And he made some tough three-pointers against USC on Wednesday:"
Tyson, Aimaq, and Cone take 59% of the Bears' shots.
Keonte Kennedy is their best ball handler and defender, but their worst shooter,
Kennedy has become a crowd favorite in Berkely. Here is some video of the Haas Pavillion fans.
Jalen Celestine is a deadly outside shooters on a low volume of shots. He only takes around three shots from the arc per game. He won't generally shoot off the dribble, but he is very good when he is set.
Rodney Brown Jr. is another very good outside shooters, but he only shoots around two of them per game.
CONCLUSION
Prior to the Stanford game I said the keys were:
- Can we defend the three-point line? We did a good job in the second half of the Oregon game, but Stanford is the best 3-point shooting team in the Pac-12. Oregon is #3.
- Will Carlyle play? If not, they suffer from a serious lack of depth, and they could wear down as the game goes on.
- Can we get more shots than they do by beating them on the boards and getting turnovers?
- Can we control the tempo?
Here's the report card:
- Stanford shot 24% from the arc
- Carlyle played 19 minutes and scored 2 points on 1 of 9 shooting.
- They had two more rebounds than we did, but 6 more turnovers. We had the same number of shots, but we had 13 more free throws than Stanford.
- It was our highest scoring game of the season.
I would say we got 3 out of 4, and the tempo didn't seem to bother us.
Here I think there are three keys:
- Again, defend the three point line. They Aimaq will get his. We don't want them to light us up from the arc.
- Wear them down. They looked tired at the end of the USC game, and a lot of their shots were short. I expect a physical game which will take it's toll. If we keep it close, we have a good chance down the stretch.
- Compete on the boards. The Bears had 10 more rebounds than us in our first meeting.
Cal is no pushover. They have home wins over Washinton State and Colorado, who are both near the top of the conference standings. They won both those games with their short roster.
This is a chance for a rare road sweep. It won't be easy, but we are capable of pulling it off.
However, if I have a concern, it is Tyson. He scored 22 on us in the first game, and we showed little ability to guard him. We have had some trouble with skilled power forward types this season. When Stanford posted up Brandon Angel or Spencer Jones, we had no success defending them. We need Brandon Williams or Berke to step it up on defense without fouling.
Go Bruins!
Frank Sinatra is Another Keyonte Kennedy Fan