Mark Madsen didn’t need much time after Cal’s loss to No. 21 USC to identify what went wrong. The Bears had the kind of first half that can tilt a ranked matchup, then watched it slip away after halftime in a 77-65 defeat at Haas Pavilion on Wednesday night.
Cal looked sharp early and had Eric Musselman’s Trojans off balance, limiting USC to 39 points in the first half - the lowest total of the season for the nationally ranked visitors. But the Bears couldn’t carry that edge through the final 20 minutes, and the game turned into another frustrating night for a team that has now dropped two straight against ranked opponents.
“(I’m) disappointed in the outcome. Our inconsistency can’t happen,” Madsen said in the postgame press conference. “It can’t look like that.”
The Bears’ issues were easy to spot in the numbers. Cal shot under 35% from the field and finished just 4-23 from 3-point range, a 17% clip that left too many possessions empty.
Still, the Bears weren’t pointing first to the shooting. They were looking at the glass.
USC owned the rebounding battle 53-36, and that gap loomed large in a top-25 game that got away from Cal.
“We lost because we got absolutely punked on the glass,” Madsen said.
Nojus Indrusaitis was one of the bright spots for Cal, scoring 13 points, while Sammie Yeanay added 14. Indrusaitis, the junior guard, said the Bears aren’t dwelling on the cold shooting.
“I’m not really concerned about (shooting woes),” said junior guard Nojus Indrusaitis. “Shots are going to fall. We’ve just got to be confident and just keep shooting.”
Cal’s second-half slide also came with Lee Dort still unavailable. The 6-foot-10 center has not played this season while rehabbing a sprained ankle, and Madsen made clear that the Bears can’t lean on that absence as an excuse.
“Lee Dort is a big, strong (and) physical presence. He’s a tremendous leader,” Madsen said, addressing Dort’s absence.
“But even with Lee being out, we can be much better than we were tonight. We can’t use Lee as a crutch.
We have to have some other guys step up and rebound the ball.”
Madsen said the answer starts with film study before Cal’s next game, and he pointed to USC as the standard the Bears are trying to reach. He credited Musselman’s team for the way it has come together around a roster with a lot of new pieces, then said Cal still has work to do to get there.
“(Musselman) - down there at USC - he’s got that group playing well, and he’s melded a lot of different new players this year,” Madsen said. “We will get to that point here at Cal.
We were not there tonight. We’ll take the film.
We’ll learn from it.”
Cal, now 2-2 after Sunday’s loss to then-No. 10 Houston in the Caesars Lake Tahoe Classic, returns home Saturday, Nov. 14, against Utah Tech. The Trailblazers come in at 1-2 after a loss to Utah State.
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Just as notable for the ACC and its newest West Coast members, the format change also wipes out the conference championship games that have long helped shape the postseason picture. The league has already confirmed that its 2023 title game in Charlotte will be the last under the current setup, leaving Cal and everyone else in the conference to navigate a very different path when the next era arrives. [Read more 🡒]