Oregon 80, Cal 68
Despite its blowout loss at Stanford, don’t expect the No. 10 Ducks to go 0-for-2 in this week’s road trip to the Bay Area. A team as balanced and deep as Oregon should not lose to a team as erratic and thin as Cal.
There are many blueprints Cal coach Mike Montgomery can borrow from the Oregon-Stanford game: First, outpace the Ducks. Second, outrebound Oregon. Third, shoot over 50 percent from beyond the perimeter.
Sound simple? Hardly. Like in a football game, there is almost no team in the Pac-12 that can catch up to Oregon’s speed. In rebounding, the Bears must lock down forward Arsalan Kazemi, who records 9.5 rebounds per game. Unless Allen Crabbe finds his 3-point mojo and heats up, there are no other shooting options in the Cal roster.
If none works, there is a fourth point in Montgomery’s gameplan for Saturday — pray.
— Seung Y. Lee, Daily Cal sports editor
Oregon 72, Cal 65
Make no mistake, Oregon’s blowout loss to Stanford on Wednesday at Maples Pavilion was a stomach punch of a loss. The Ducks will want to hurriedly show to AP voters that the gift of a Top 10 ranking wasn’t unjustified.
This will be their final opportunity to do that before the new set of rankings come out on Monday.
Oregon is likely to drop a couple spots, but if the squad doesn’t want to drop out altogether, it will have to come out of the gate hard and try to employ its recent formula for success: let the big guys, like Tony Woods and Arsalan Kazemi, do the heavy lifting before the guards, like Damyean Dotson, ice the game.
But Cal matches Oregon in rebounds per game, with 38. And if guard Allen Crabbe can get hot from the perimeter, the Bears could make the Ducks’ road trip to the Bay an unmitigated disaster.
— Matt Walks, Daily Emerald sports editor
Contact Seung Y. Lee at [email protected]