Silence Is Not Golden for Cal

There are dry towns and dry humor. Dry ice and dry toast.

But rarely has anything been as dry as the nearly 11-minute, second-half spell endured by California against Pittsburgh on Sunday in an NCAA South Region game.

The Bears made not a single field goal or free throw during the drought, a four-point lead became a 12-point deficit, and eventually a 63-50 rout.

“In a second-round NCAA tournament game, to hold a team for no points for 11 minutes, that says something good about our defense,” Pittsburgh Coach Ben Howland said. “We have really tough kids.”

So does Cal (23-9), which responded to the pro-Pittsburgh crowd of 17,015 at Mellon Arena by playing the role of roughneck villain. If every elbow, shove and kick delivered by the Bears counted as a point, they would be headed to the South Regional in Lexington, Kentucky, to face No. 10-seeded Kent State.

Instead, it will be the resurgent No. 3-seeded Panthers (29-5), who have won two NCAA tournament games for the first time since 1974. And they have their eyes even farther down the road.

“We’re going to go down to Kentucky thinking about making it to the Elite Eight and, hopefully if we play again on Saturday that victory would put us in the Final Four,” guard Brandin Knight said.

Knight had seven assists and scored 11 points, but it was guard Julius Page who made the big baskets for the Panthers, scoring 17 points on seven-of-10 shooting. Page also made key shots in Pittsburgh’s first-round victory over Central Connecticut State.

More impressive was the Panther defense, which held Cal to 31% shooting from the field. The Bears made only four of 24 three-point tries.

“Our guys love to play good defense because they love to win,” Howland said. “Defense equates to winning. We weren’t great offensively, but our defense kept us in there.”

Cal, trying to become the fourth Pacific 10 Conference team to advance to the Sweet 16, trailed by one at halftime. The Bears took a 30-28 lead on Shantay Legans’ three-point basket two minutes into the second half and extended it on a layup by Solomon Hughes.

Then the spigot went dry. The Bears missed 17 consecutive field-goal attempts and mixed in four turnovers while Pittsburgh scored 16 points in a row.

Cal would get no closer than nine points afterward.

Legans led Cal with 13 points but made only four of 12 shots. Joe Shipp, who scored 20 points in the Bears’ first-round victory over Pennsylvania, had 11 points on four-of-11 shooting.

“I thought that at one point we were down six or eight points and we tried to hurry ourselves back into the game,” Cal Coach Ben Braun said. “Pitt did a great job playing physical, that’s what they do. In the second half the crowd picked up when they went on that run. But that’s how you control games.”