Late first half surge dooms Runnin' Utes at Cal

BERKELEY, Calif. — For the first 14 minutes of Utah's Thursday night match-up with Cal, the Runnin' Utes played pretty well, jumping out to an eight-point lead with six minutes left in the first half.

The subsequent 26 minutes were another story, however, as the Utes yielded a 26-2 Golden Bear run over the next 12 minutes of play to fall way behind, eventually losing 64-46.

"Everything went so well for the first 16 minutes and then after that, things started to snowball," said Utah head coach Larry Krystkowiak. "That just goes to show how fragile playing with any type of lead is. Then when we fell behind, I thought we tried for too many home runs. We needed to make passes that led to passes that led to scores, and we were trying to come right down the floor and get points."

Allen Crabbe, the leading scorer in the Pac-12, scored 15 points with 11 rebounds for Cal (19-9, 11-5), which has won six games in a row. Fellow junior guard Justin Cobbs scored 12 points to go with seven assists, while freshman guard Tyrone Wallace pitched in with 11 points and five boards.

Not a single Ute managed to score in double figures, with freshman forward Jordan Loveridge leading the way with nine points and 11 rebounds. Senior guard Jarred DuBois and freshman wing Dakarai Tucker each added seven points.

Senior center Jason Washburn, who is chasing the 1,000-point mark for his college career, scored just four points on 2-of-9 shooting. Washburn remains 12 points short of the milestone, but still has at least four games remaining to surpass it.

The Utes rode a 19-7 run early in the game to get out to a 22-14 lead, but only managed one field goal over the final 6:35 of the half, as the Bears took a 20-2 run into the break.

The Cal rally continued in the second half, scoring the first six points before Utah finally got on the board at the 13:59 mark, then trailing 40-26. The Utes were unable to make up ground from then on, resulting in a third-straight Utah loss.

For the second game in a row, the Utes recorded a new season low in total points scored, scoring 50 last Thursday at Colorado and now just 46 at Cal.

It was also Utah's worst game of the season in terms of shooting percentage, connecting on just 29 percent of its shots and merely 17 percent from beyond the arc.

#box

Turnovers were a primary concern leading to the Cal rally. The Utes turned the ball over eight times in the first half, four of them in the final three minutes, resulting in 15 points off turnovers for the Golden Bears. Utah coughed the ball up just twice in the second half, but at that point the damage had already been done.

"It was a frustrating combination of things offensively," Krystkowiak said. "The turnovers tend to suck the life out of you and they scored 15 points directly off of them in the first half. In the second half, we had open looks at the basket and just could not convert. At the end of the game, we were taking bad shots and throwing the ball all over the court."

Despite the disappointing performance, Krystkowiak is still thinking positive about his team going forward.

"We aren’t far away from where we need to be," he said. "We are not trying to re-invent the wheel. We just have to eliminate mistakes. I can’t keep pounding away at them because we need to be mentally and physically fresh coming down the stretch. I think we have learned all the lessons we are going to learn."

His team will need to put those lessons into practice as it heads down the final stretch of the 2012-13 season.

Utah (11-16, 3-12) now heads south to Palo Alto to face Stanford (16-13, 7-9) on Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m. MST before returning to Salt Lake City for the final two regular season contests next week.

Tyson Maddy has covered the University of Utah football and men's basketball teams as a contributing writer for KSL.com Sports since 2011. Follow his Utes coverage on twitter @Tyson_Maddy

Related topics