Cal Bounces Back From Monday’s Struggles, Rolls Over Detroit

After narrowly defeating Murray State, 75-70, on Monday night, No. 13 Cal did on Wednesday night what we’d expect them to do: steamroll a much lesser opponent, which is what they did, beating Detroit, 95-61.

Despite the outcome, SB Nation’s Cal Golden Blogs still isn’t thrilled with how the team has performed in its first two games:

The Bears played out of sync for a lot of the first half. Cal was taking tough shots, and like the Murray State game was living off of free throws and hustle. Good stuff to see the Bears playing tough on the boards, but you’d kind of prefer to see that type of effort in conference play rather than against a fairly mediocre squad like Detroit.

After Randle carried the offense in the first half though, Christopher and Robertson took them home, scoring 26 of the first 30 second half points, including the last 22 points in that stretch. Bears got solid hustle and rebounding from Boykin, Amoke, Zhang (yes, Max looked really good tonight!) and Sanders-Frison, and Cal blew the door open in a game that probably looks closer than the final.

However, at least the slow start can be partially explained to a lot of strange lineups and rotations, with Montgomery liberally subbing in 10 players in. So it can help explain why the Bears offense looked discordant. Once Monty said “screw this, we’re going with our five best guys”, Cal busted it open and never looked back.