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1 month ago | 
writeforcalifornia.com | Nick Kranz
photo via calbears.comI have a love/hate relationship with the NCAA tournament. I love the NCAA tournament because the basic format ramps the excitement, tension, and potential for chaos up to 11. I hate the NCAA tournament because everything that happen for three weeks in spring (and really, in one weekend in mid-March) completely subsumes the rest of the season.
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1 month ago | 
writeforcalifornia.com | Nick Kranz
At Saturday, 2:30 PT on ESPN2, Cal will finally return to the NCAA tournament when they take on the 9 seed Mississippi State Bulldogs in the Galen Center in Los Angeles. While it’s tempting to think about certain possible match-ups further down the line in the tournament (and while certain teams complain about how cruel and unfair life is for the elite), it’s time to focus on the task at hand.
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1 month ago | 
writeforcalifornia.com | Nick Kranz
The Selection Committee has spoken, and they have handed Cal the path that basically all of the experts predicted. Here’s where Cal has been placed within their regional:USC is the 4th overall seed, which would imply that Cal is the best of the 8 seeds. Cal will face 9 seed Mississippi State on Saturday (time currently TBA, we’ll update once specifics are announced). MSU went 21-11 (7-9) in SEC play.
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1 month ago | 
writeforcalifornia.com | Nick Kranz
photo via @calmbball twitterIf you invest your time to closely follow the 30-odd games a team plays in a college basketball season, there is no guarantee that your investment will be repaid. But in my experience, even in the darkest days of Cal basketball, you will get some kind of reward back from the experience. This year provided a few rewards. An early season win at USC. The intriguing scoring potential of Andrej Stojakovic and Jeremiah Wilkinson. But the season was a tough one.
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1 month ago | 
writeforcalifornia.com | Nick Kranz
photo via @calwbball twitterWe’re less than a week away from Selection Sunday (5:00 p.m. PT, ESPN), but with all power conference tournaments complete, the vast majority of at-large tournament candidates have wrapped up their pre-NCAA-tournament schedule. We’ve reached the point when we can start talking about what Cal might face in their first NCAA tournament appearance since 2019. Here is everything (and probably more) that you might want to know before dance cards are assigned.
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1 month ago | 
writeforcalifornia.com | Nick Kranz
photo via @calmbball twitterIf this game had had any real stakes, it would rank as perhaps the best Cal basketball game I’ve ever watched. For 60 minutes, Cal and Notre Dame threw haymaker after haymaker at each other. Every time one team made a play that seemed to give them the advantage, the other responded. The universe seemed to conspire to prevent the game from ending. When one team seemed down and out, the refs would call a phantom touch foul.
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1 month ago | 
writeforcalifornia.com | Nick Kranz
photo via @calwbball instagramIt’s rare to have a game where so many things go so right, and so many things go so wrong. In many ways, Cal was brilliant against Notre Dame on Friday afternoon in the ACC tournament. The Bears played probably their best defensive game of the season and held the Irish to their 2nd worst offensive performance in ACC play. Notre Dame didn’t shoot the ball particularly well, Cal controlled the defensive glass, and mostly avoided shooting fouls.
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1 month ago | 
writeforcalifornia.com | Nick Kranz
photo via Rob HwangOne of the under the radar sad details of the last six years of Cal basketball struggles has been the near extinction of the single school full career college journey at Cal. It used to be that I looked forward to Senior Day each year with a combination of excitement and nostalgia. It was the chance to reflect upon 4+ years in blue and gold for a handful of players, and to celebrate their development as basketball players and human beings.
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1 month ago | 
writeforcalifornia.com | Nick Kranz
photo via @calmbball twitterMady Sissoko has very quietly had an excellent all-around season in his one year in Berkeley, and on senior day he had probably his best game of the season in Cal’s 82-71 win. Sissoko has had to fill a very challenging role on this team. On offense, he’s a secondary option who mostly scores on dump-offs and put-backs, and Cal expects him to fight hard for offensive rebounds on a team that relies on second chances to create offense.
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1 month ago | 
writeforcalifornia.com | Nick Kranz
photo via @calfootball on twitterPreviously on 2024 Cal Football in Review: The Offense; The DefenseAfter reviewing the two major units over the last couple weeks, we’re going to combine special teams with a review of Cal’s full team performance from a win/loss perspective. There are some seasons where that would be a little bit of an odd pairing.
