Jordan Mathews, California knock off No. 12 Arizona 74-73

With Sam Singer starting at point guard, Brown, the 6-foot-7 freshman, acted as a backup point guard and dolled out seven assists.

Bill Walton Alert: Please be advised that Bill Walton will be providing the color commentary for this broadcast.

It was Mathews’ outside shooting and an Arizona scoring drought that enabled the Bears (14-6, 4-3) to take that nine-point lead.

Arizona made life relatively tough on projected top-10 National Basketball Association draft pick Jaylen Brown, who finished with 15 points, but the overall context again showed signs that Arizona’s downfall this year will be its sketchy perimeter defense.

Cal answered with an 8-2 burst featuring back-to-back 3-pointers by Mathews, and led 51-42 with 14:08 left. Cal played its second game without G Tyrone Wallace, who is averaging a team-high 15.4 points and broke his hand earlier this week in practice.

Despite the fact that both Kam Rooks and Kingsley Okoroh each went to the locker room at halftime with three fouls, Cal was able to play big for most of the second half. Thomas Welch had 16 points and eight rebounds. He also committed three turnovers. Arizona just played at Stanford on Thursday night and didn’t even have a 48-hour turnaround for this game.

Arizona, already chasing OR and league-leader Washington heading into Saturday night, still finds itself in the middle of the conference race. The California Golden Bears are shooting 35.5 percent from beyond the arc and 66.3 percent from the free throw line.

The Cats went 7-0 to pull within two points, but Cal did not surrender the lead.

And, California played its best game of the season (Arizona brings that out in most teams) to knock off Arizona 74-73 in the final seconds. Cal has yet to prove itself outside of Haas Pavilion, but nonetheless getting a victory against Arizona was vital.

Cal’s Jaylen Brown hit the winning free throw; he made one out of two, but that was all she wrote as the ensuing possession ended with a missed layup by York. “You always hope that a foul happens”. The Cougars have lost five consecutive games.

The California Golden Bears need a win after losing three of their last four games. One great stat to be proud of is the Cats collective free-throw percentage, 88 percent!

Instead of running down all the stats, we will just leave this here for you.

“We had a couple shots at the rim that we didn’t get back.anytime they had that open look, and he made it”.

“Both teams played hard, and Cal played harder”.

“We had 11 turnovers which was acceptable, but six were in the second half”. And that’s the last thing you want a team at home to get. The Golden Bears are 4-1 ATS in their last 5 home games and 3-8 ATS in their last 11 Saturday games.

“The first four minutes were about as bad as we can play, and Cal had a lot to do with it”, Miller said.