California Breaks Arizona's Zone and Cruises to 14-Point Victory

The California Golden Bears are now 1-0 in Pac-10 Conference play after beating the Arizona Wildcats, bringing the Bears current record to 12-2.

The game was relatively tight in the first half, with Cal leading 36-30 at half time. During the second half, the Bears came to play. Although, the Wildcats did stick around for a while, coming within four points, but nothing closer.

Arizona wasn't even able to gain any kind of momentum when the Bears best player Jerome Randle had to be taken out with a little over 10 minutes to go with three fouls. At the time, the Bears were up seven and when Randle returned, the Bears only lost two points from that lead.

The Bears then went on a run to finish the game off. Part of the reason for the run was because of Cal's defense and the fact that Arizona didn't even get their first free throw attempt until a few minutes had gone by in the second half.

The second part though is what helped Cal defeat Arizona—ball movement. Harper Kamp would setup near the free throw line and just find cutting Cal players almost every possession. It lead to layups by Omondi Amoke and dunks by Patrick Christopher.

When Cal was not making layups, their outside shooters were getting wide open looks at the basket. The Bears connected on seven three pointers.

The key to the victory for the Bears is that the team did not turn the ball over very much. The Bears turned it over only seven times in the game.

It also helped that Chase Budinger didn't have his shooting stroke either, going only 4-for-17 from the field and finishing with nine points. Lastly, Arizona only had five players who scored in the game, compared to the Bears who had eight players on the scoring column.

Arizona was lead by Jordan Hill, who had 20 points. Nice Wise had 16 points, and both Jamelle Horn and Budinger had nine points, and the only other player for the Wildcats was Garland Judkins, who had one point.

Cal's leading scorer for the game was Patrick Christopher, who scored 23 points (15 of those came in the second half). Jerome Randle had 14 points and Theo Robertson added 13 points.