No Stopping Cal in Second Half

The Trojans weren’t entirely surprised when California scored 54 second-half points in an 89-75 loss to the Golden Bears on Saturday.

“We knew from statistics that they score more in the second half than the first half,” forward Greg Lakey said. “We knew that we had to come out intense.”

While the players focused on playing hard, the coaching staff played mind games. USC switched defenses from a 3-2 zone to a 2-3 zone, from a triangle-and-two to man-to-man.

“In this conference and in any big conference, you can’t give people a steady diet,” Coach Henry Bibby said. “People make their adjustments. We wanted to keep them off-balance.”

But no defense can compensate for an offense that misses too many shots, and in this game that gave Cal the opportunity to crank up its fastbreak.

“They started getting transition layups,” Lakey said. “That hurt us.”

The Golden Bears may have benefited from the absence of 7-foot center Francisco Elson, who missed the game because of a concussion he suffered against UCLA two nights earlier.

“We were able to put our smaller post players on the floor,” California Coach Ben Braun said. “That was good because [USC is] one of the quickest teams in the league.”