Arizona Widcats claw past Cal Bears 78-74
By Adrain Henderon
1/27/12 Piedmont, Calif. -- Arizona Wildcats came into Hass Pavilion ready to rumble. They used their physical prowess and force and subdued the Golden Bears and ended their 17 game home win streak with a 78-74 victory.
“They were more physical tonight," said Cal Coach Mike Montgomery. "Physically, Arizona threw us off our game."
The Wildcats were blazing hot from three shooting a blistering 63.6% on 7-11 from beyond the arc. Conversly the Bears finished 1-of-8 (12.5%) from three. Arizona shot 54.9 from the field to Cal's 44.6%.
Cal is used to holding their opponents under 33% field goal percentage for the year. But on this night, where CAL senior Harper Kemp scored a season high 22 points, it wasn’t meant to be for the Bears.
The first half was an epic battle for both teams. CAL was in for another dog fight. Last year, Arizona came to Berkeley and pulled out a thrilling triple overtime win. This time, Arizona threw its weight around and CAL felt every bit of it.
Cal opened up with a 16-3 run which was capped off by Jorge Guiterrez who helped forge a 22-9 advantage with 10:43 in the first half. With 6:04 left in the first half, the Cats went wild. The leaders of this assault were guards Kyle Fogg (23 pts.) and his two wing men Jesse Perry (18 pts.) and Nick Johnson (11 pts.) Together they simply destroyed CAL’s guards and outscored the Bears 36-12 to close out the half and take a 45-34 lead at break.
Arizona’s senior forward Perry was a brute force that caused major problems on the post for Cal, who never recovered from this, and subsequently didn’t have enough gas left in the tank to finish the job.
With 3:41 left in the game, Cal was down 72-70 until Justin Cobbs got a steal and raced in for an uncontested dunk to tie the game at 72-72. This is the closest CAL would come. A clutch three pointer from Kyle Fogg, proved to be the final knockout punch that sent Cal to the mat for good.
Arizona did an excellent job in keeping CAL off of the three point line for the night. There tough defense posed problems for CAL all night which caused an uncanny number of turnovers for the Golden Bears. Harper Kemp said it best, “We knew we had the ability to make a run on them. We did a great job but we didn’t execute in the end.”
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