The Cal Golden Bears and the Arizona Wildcats meet in Pac-12 conference college basketball action from the McKale Center on Sunday afternoon.
The Cal Golden Bears will be looking for their first win after falling to 0-8 with a 66-51 loss to USC last time out. Devin Askew leads the Golden Bears in scoring and assists with 17.5 PPG and 3.1 APG while Lars Thiemann has 12.3 PPG with a team-high 6.6 RPG to lead the Golden Bears on the glass as the only other double-digit scorer for Cal up to this point in the season. As a team, Cal is averaging 57.5 PPG on 38.7% shooting from the field, 28.8% from three and 76% from the foul line this season.
The Arizona Wildcats will try to bounce back from their first loss after an 81-66 loss to Utah last time out. Azuolas Tubelis leads the Wildcats in scoring with 19.4 PPG along with 7.7 RPG while Oumar Ballo has 19.4 PPG and a team-high 9.6 RPG to lead the Wildcats on the glass this season. Courtney Ramey has 14.8 PPG and 3.8 RPG and Kerr Kriisa has 13.7 PPG with 3.7 RPG and a team-high 7.7 APG to lead Arizona in assists this season. As a team, Arizona is averaging 93 PPG on 56.1% shooting from the field, 38.8% from three and 72.7% from the foul line this season.
Cal is 7-2 ATS in their last 9 games following a double-digit loss at home and 2-6 ATS in their last 8 games overall while the under is 4-1-1 in their last 6 games following an ATS loss. Arizona is 1-5 ATS in their last 6 games overall and 1-5 ATS in their last 6 games following an ATS loss while the over is 4-1 in their last 5 Sunday games.
I get the case to be made for a huge underdog like the Golden Bears here, but the problem is that Cal has been so bad this season and now they have to face a motivated Arizona team that will be looking to get the bad taste out of their mouths from the loss to Utah and I think this is simply a case of Cal being the team in the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time. Arizona won both meetings by 25+ last year, so I’ll side with the Wildcats here.