Today was Day 1 of a four-day college basketball tournament. Today Arkansas, California, Minnesota, Syracuse, Chaminade, Baylor, Dayton, and Gonzaga all hit the court at the Lahaina Civic Center in Lahaina on the island of Maui. This year's Maui Invitational featured Arkansas vs Cal early in the morning at 10am Hawaii time, Syracuse vs. Minnesota at 12:30, Chaminade took on Baylor at 4:30, and Dayton vs. Gonzaga at 7.
Arkansas vs Cal
Coming into this game, the Cal Bears looked to get to play Syracuse in a revenge game from this past year's NCAA tournament. Much like I expected, there was going to be a fast paced offense. To no avail, Cal came out of the gate scoring the first bucket of the game. To me, scoring the first bucket of the game early is something you want to do because you can immediately impose yourself on the other team. Shortly after the start of the game, the crowd was greeted with a Sports Center Top 10 Nominee in my opinion: Justin Cobbs of Cal drives into the lane for a reverse layup, but misses and teammate Jabari Bird grabs the board and jams it in for a powerful dunk. Arkansas had little to say in the first half, allowing Cal to guide the game. One reason to the lack of intensity was on defense. #22 Jacorey Williams goes hard down the court, but fails to stick tight to his man. He tends to shade away into the paint and give his guy a little more room to shoot. Halftime ends and the 2nd half of the game starts. Obviously Coach Mike Anderson had something to say to the Razorbacks about their energy (or lack thereof) as there was a lot of pressure and quickness added to the game. One instance occurred where there were two players (one from each team) and a timeout was needed to be called. Justin Cobbs made the decision to call the timeout on the court. I spoke to him after the game about that play and he said, "It's just a basketball play. They had the ball, and I wasn't sure what the possession was there so I called a timeout to make sure we had the possesion. But the possession arrow was our way.
So in that case, you just let it go. But you see a guy dive on the floor and another guy dive on the floor, call a timeout just to secure the ball."
So with Arkansas' added energy, it forced The Golden Bears to make quick, on their feet decisions. I have to give credit where credit is due here, Cal did do a good job at that today. Head coach Mike Montgomery for Cal used a different style of offense than one I have ever seen before to counter the swiftness of Arkansas. On offense, Cal players were constantly rotating around to different areas of the court and setting off ball and on ball screens. It was guerilla warfare for basketball. A key player in this style of play was Richard Soloman. #35 was everywhere grabbing rebounds and dunking. Soloman unfortunately got into foul trouble and had to be taken out of the game, but he was a key contributor in Cal's 85-77 win over Arkansas to open the 2013 Maui Invitational basketball tournament.
