Portland State didn’t even play with Cal. The Vikings ran the Golden Bears out of the gym from the opening tip on Thursday, coasting to a 106-81 victory in Berkeley.
Cal is paying a lot of money to lose basketball games to small schools this season
Photo by Darryl Oumi/Getty Images
Ricky O'Donnell has covered basketball at all levels for more than a decade at SB Nation. He’s currently the Associate Director of Programming.
This is something Cal basketball has become all too accustomed to. The Bears aren’t just a disappointing 6-7 this season; they’re losing games to teams they’re paying to play. The loss to Portland State — perhaps the best team in the Big Sky — is the third buy game Cal has fallen in this season.
That’s a lot of money to pay for losses. Consider:
- Cal opened the season with a 74-66 loss to UC Riverside, a team KenPom gave only a 10 percent chance to win the game. UC Riverside is just 4-7 this season and has finished below .500 every year since joining D1 in 2001.
- On Dec. 7, Central Arkansas rolled Cal, 96-69. Central Arkansas has also never finished at or above .500 since joining D1 in 2010. It’s worth noting the Bears did take UCLA to overtime earlier this year as well and seem to be trending in the right direction even at 6-7 overall.
- This wasn’t a buy game, but it might be the most embarrassing loss of the bunch: Cal’s 96-72 blowout loss to DII Chaminade at the Maui Invitational. The win moved Chaminade to 8-92 all-time at the event since 1984.
Cal is now ranked No. 176 in the country by KenPom. That would make them the seventh-best team in the Sun Belt. It would make them the fourth-best team in the Big South. It easily makes them the worst team in their actual conference, the Pac-12.
This was always going to be a transition year for Cal. Former head coach Cuonzo Martin followed the money and the Porter family to Missouri, leaving the school to hire Wyking Jones, someone with no head coaching experience. They lost starting point guard Charlie Moore to Kansas as a transfer. It would have been unrealistic to expect Cal to have a great season.
Still, losing multiple buy games against low majors is alarming. Perhaps Jones will build up the program. He has a strong recruiting class coming in next year led by a pair of top-100 players. Darius McNeill has been impressive as a freshman guard.
It’s just going to take some time. For now, Cal basketball is in the midst of a rough, rough season.
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