If the Cal men's basketball team wishes to continue shooting the country's second-best mark of 56.6 percent from the field, Monday night's 28-of-58 offering simply won't cut it.

But it was certainly good enough against woeful North Carolina A&T, as the Bears (4-0) ran away with an 82-47 win over the Aggies (2-2) at Haas Pavilion. Cal jumped out to a double-digit lead on forward Omondi Amoke's three-point play with 7:44 left in the first half and never looked back.

"We turned them over a little bit," coach Mike Montgomery said. "(The Aggies) had 19 turnovers. We picked up the pressure."

He also noted of his players: "I think they're really trying on defense."

With the ball, point guard Jerome Randle had another top-notch effort, scoring 20 points for the Bears on near-impeccable shooting. The junior went 6-of-10 from the field and 4-of-5 from both downtown and the stripe.

Although Randle tied his season low of two assists, A&T coach Jerry Eaves said after the game that Cal's "floor general" did plenty to get teammates involved, not to mention his "one-man press" that countered the Aggies' full-court efforts on the opposing end.

"It's nothing for me," Randle said of facing a press defense. "I don't mean to sound cocky, but I just use my speed. I like it when teams press. It's easy to get the ball to the middle and open up the game to my teammates. You just have to be patient."

Eaves also spoke in high regards of Cal's bigs, who often drifted deep into the basket and created uncontested layups against A&T's press.

Forward Jamal Boykin finished with nine points and seven rebounds, while center Jordan Wilkes had eight and four, along with two blocks.

"When we took the ball out of (Randle's) hands, the big guys-Wilkes-did a good job of attacking the basket," Eaves added.

Montgomery also noted the Bears' showing against such a scheme as one of the keys to their win.

"I thought that we did a pretty good job understanding what they wanted to do," he said. "They pretty much want to get you with their defense -Louisville, one-two-two, just press, trap sometimes, run-and-jump-and we didn't really turn it over very much against it."

The Aggies, meanwhile, struggled to put points on the board, shooting a dismal 33.3 percent.

Guard Ed Jones, who leads A&T in scoring with 15.5 per contest, fell apart with a 1-for-8 night from the field in a two-point effort, a lot of which could be attributed to Cal forward Theo Robertson's constant pestering.

While Robertson (seven points, five assists) didn't sink many of his shots either, the junior said he tried to find other ways to contribute.

"Today, my shot wasn't falling, but I didn't want to be a liability to the team," Robertson said. "You've always got to do something else. I didn't want to get down on myself, and I knew I just had to play position defense and try to make things tough for (Jones). I saw a lot of film on him during the week and knew that he was kind of their go-to guy."

In Robertson's stead, Amoke poured in 11 points off the bench, while guard Patrick Christopher added 10 for the Bears.

Tags: CAL MEN'S BASKETBALL, MIKE MONTGOMERY, JEROME RANDLE, PATRICK CHRISTOPER