RTC is providing game-by-game coverage throughout Thursday from the San Jose pod.
Three Key Takeaways.
- Cal Tried Very Hard to Give This Away. California outplayed, outhustled and outlasted UNLV in the #5/#12 match-up this evening, but the Bears certainly made an adventure out of it at the free throw line. After taking what seemed to be a commanding seven-point lead and heading to the line to salt things away with 45 seconds left, the Bears proceeded to miss eight of their next 12 attempts, giving UNLV multiple opportunities to stop the clock and narrow the gap. Although the lead was reduced to one point with a couple of ticks left, the Rebels never got the lead and their disappointing season mercifully came to an end. As for the rest of the game, the Bears clearly were not going to give this game up without a best effort after last year’s First Four debacle in Dayton against South Florida. Allen Crabbe (19 points), Justin Cobbs (13 points), Richard Solomon (11 points) and Robert Thurman (12 points) ate up the lazy UNLV interior defense, repeatedly and effectively driving and dishing for dunks and layups. Cal deserved to win the game, frankly, but the Bears were still lucky to finish off the victory.
- Same As It Ever Was With UNLV. University of No Legitimacy in Vegas, that’s the Runnin’ Rebels new name after this season. When you can bring out a frontcourt of a future lottery pick in Anthony Bennett, two other talented guys in Mike Moser and Khem Birch, and a solid if not spectacular backcourt of Anthony Marshall and Bryce Dejean-Jones and Katin Reinhardt… well, let’s just say that Billy Donovan won a couple of national titles with a similar makeup. Dave Rice? He lost to Fresno State, got run out of his own gym by New Mexico in the MW championship game, and suffered a complete meltdown of disinterest and desperation as a #5 seed against California today. Bennett finished with 13/11 on 3-of-10 shooting but he barely cared, while Moser spent much of the game looking lost. This is the team that the Rebels became, for better or worse, and UNLV fans will have to live with an offseason of what might have been with this much talent on the roster.
- Is the Pac-12 Actually Good This Year? With the #12 seed Cal Bears and Oregon Ducks out of the Pac-12 knocking off #5 seeds here in San Jose, and #6 seed Arizona easily handling bracket darling #11 Belmont in Salt Lake City as well, the question needs to be asked. UCLA and Colorado have yet to play, but with an early 3-0 record in three games that many were choosing league members to lose, this could be a harbinger that perhaps the conference really was quite a bit better than people thought it was this year. It’s worth tracking the rest of the weekend, that’s for sure.
Star of the Game. Robert Thurman, California. Not only did Thurman come off the bench for 19 solid post minutes that include a plurality of chin-ups on the rim, but he also helped to neutralize the size and strength of UNLV’s Anthony Bennett inside. Perhaps even more impressively, his hustle and scrap was contagious among his teammates, as he at one point met Bennett at the rim for a big-time block that seemingly shocked everyone — perhaps even Thurman himself.
Sights & Sounds. Make no mistake about this: San Jose, California, is Bear territory. Silicon Valley and rival Stanford may be physically closer in location, but Berkeley is a huge public school and even with a late afternoon tip time on a Thursday, Cal fans filled the place. Now, nobody would ever confuse your average Cal fan with one from, say, Kentucky, but they showed up and were vocal throughout the game. Annnnnnd, the #5 seed UNLV was rewarded by getting sent to the Bay Area? Hmmm….
Quotable.
- “We knew that there was an inherent advantage to them playing so close to their campus. […] Some of their comments, we knew that they were treating it as a home game.” — UNLV head coach Dave Rice, in response to a question about the #5 seed having to travel to the Bay Area to play locally-based Cal.
What’s Next? California will advance to Saturday’s Round of 32 where it will await the winner of tonight’s game between Syracuse and Montana.