Jan 29th, 2010
At around 10 p.m. Thursday night, when Santa Clara led No. 8 Gonzaga by 14 points with 15 minutes left in a nationally televised game, one of the biggest upsets of the college season seemed to be taking place right here in the Bay Area.
Jamal Boykin is Cal's fourth-leading scorer, but it's no surprise when he scores 25 points as he did Thursday at Arizona State -- Associated Press Photo by Jeff Chiu
When folks on the East Coast read their morning paper over their first cup of coffee Friday morning, though, they will merely see that Gonzaga pulled out a 71-64 win, then turn the page without a second thought. The young Broncos started the day tied for last place in the West Coast Conference with a 1-4 record and ended the day tied for last with a 1-5 mark, because they scored only six points in the final 13:15.
With that, Santa Clara was no longer the story of the day. That honor belonged to Cal, which nearly blew a big lead itself, but held on for an important 78-70 road win over Arizona State, lifting the first-place Bears to 6-2 in the Pac-10 with a showdown against second-place Arizona awaiting Saturday in Tucson.
The Bears let a 16-point lead with less than 15 minutes left dwindle to one points at the 3:23 mark, but Cal’s Jorge Gutierrez hit a three-pointer to halt the Sun Devils’ surge.
You see, that’s the difference between Cal and Stanford at the moment. Cal has four guys who can score a bunch of points, and the Bears can also throw in a player like Gutierrez off the bench who can produce the biggest basket of the game. Even when one of the Bears’ top scorers, Theo Robertson, gets shutout, as he did Thursday, Cal gets 25 points from Jerome Randle, 25 from Jamal Boykin and 21 from Patrick Christopher.
Stanford has just two guys who can put up such numbers, and because the Cardinal had no one to supplement the offensive work of Landry Fields and Jeremy Green, Stanford is now 0-7 in games on its opponent’s home floor. Fields put up 31 points against Arizona on Thursday – the second straight game he’s gone over 30 points – and Green scored 25 points for the second consecutive game, but their teammates combined for a paltry 12 points in a 76-68 loss to the hot Wildcats.
One bright spot for Stanford was that Johnny Dawkins got his first technical foul since becoming the Cardinal’s head coach, demonstrating that he’s more self-assured on the sidelines than he was last season.
Cal coach Mike Montgomery got a technical on Thursday too, but that’s not news. He may get a technical foul in Saturday’s game at Arizona State, too, but if the Bears win it to take a two-game lead in the standings, Montgomery won’t mind a bit.
Oh, by the way, Tavita Pritchard, the Stanford quarterback who joined the basketball team on Tuesday and was in uniform on Thursday, did not play.
