Colorado @ California preview
Haas Pavilion
Last Meeting ( Jan 14, 2021 ) California 60, Colorado 89
A close loss can be at the same time painful and encouraging, and the California Golden Bears experienced both Thursday in a one-point home loss to Utah. But after a month without a victory, at least they feel like they're getting closer.
Saturday night they'll get another chance at victory, carrying a seven-game losing streak into a game against the Colorado Buffaloes at Haas Pavilion in Berkeley.
Cal (7-15, 2-13 Pac-12) hasn't won since Jan. 16 at Utah, and after rallying late to make it close Thursday, coach Mark Fox was still left trying to take the positives out of another loss, this one 76-75.
"We played together, and we finished plays pretty well," Fox said. "I thought we competed hard, and we finished plays at a pretty good rate. We had a number of guys in double figures, we rebounded it better tonight, but we just got outscored there at the line, and we need to get more stops.
"At the end of the day, you've got to play through whatever happens on the floor and overcome it."
Colorado (16-5, 10-4) is coming off an 18-point win at Stanford on Thursday night and is still in the hunt for the Pac-12 title. The Buffaloes are behind league-leading USC and UCLA with five conference games remaining, including those two Los Angeles schools scheduled to visit Boulder (and Utah) at the end of the month.
The Buffaloes are 9-2 in the past five weeks, including an 89-60 beatdown of Cal in Boulder on Jan. 14. Since then, they have only lost at Washington and at home against Utah, when they led by 19 but were outscored 31-9 in the last nine minutes to fall 77-74.
That Jan. 30 loss to Utah served as a wake-up call for a team that has been on the verge of the Top 25 several times, and as motivation to not lose focus. That was the case against the Cardinal on Thursday night, and the Buffaloes' attention quickly turned to Cal.
"This is something we wanted to do, sweep this road trip, and we knew we couldn't do it without winning the first one," McKinley Wright IV said. "I just wanted to do whatever I could to make sure we won this game."
Wright, who earlier this season became the all-time assist leader in program history, just missed a triple-double against Stanford with 14 points, nine assists and nine rebounds. Colorado's success has started with him, but he said defense is the key.
"As long as we can get stops and get out and run, we're a really good team," he said. "We're hard to beat."
--Field Level Media