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Cal Men's Basketball Set For A First-Round Pac-12 Clash With Stanford

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Basketball

California will face rival Stanford in the first round of the Pac-12 Men's Basketball Tournament for the third time in four seasons at 7 p.m. PT Wednesday, March 10.

The game will be televised on the Pac-12 Network from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas with Ted Robinson and Bill Walton on the call.
 
The Golden Bears (8-19, 3-17 Pac-12) enter the tournament as the No. 11 seed, while Stanford (14-12, 10-10 Pac-12) is the No. 6 seed. Both squads are riding current four-game losing streaks.
 
The rivals are 2-2 against one another at the conference tournament with Cal winning the most recent meeting, a 63-51 victory in the first round of the 2020 tournament last March. The other three head-to-head clashes resulted in a 76-58 first-round loss in 2018, a 77-71 win in the 2012 quarterfinals and a 77-61 loss in the 1990 quarterfinals.

QUICK HITS

  • Cal has won at least one game at the Pac-12 Tournament in four of the past six seasons.
  • Cal is 17-22 all-time at the Pac-12 Tournament, including two trips to the championship game in 2006 and 2010.
  • Cal's 63-51 win over Stanford in the first round of the 2020 Pac-12 Tournament was the second-to-last game played before the remainder of the tournament was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Bears were slated to play UCLA on March 12, 2020, in the tournament's quarterfinal round.
  • The Bears lost both regular-season matchups with Stanford this year. Both games were played in a four-day span from Feb. 4-7.
  • Matt Bradley was named to the All-Pac-12 Second Team for the second consecutive year on Tuesday. He's averaged 18.4 points per game this season and is second among Pac-12 players with 11 20-point performances, despite missing seven games due to injury.
  • In two career Pac-12 Tournament games, Bradley has averaged 17.5 points per game. He scored 18 in Cal's win against Stanford in the first round of the 2020 tournament.
  • Andre Kelly finished the regular season ranked second among Pac-12 players in overall field goal percentage (58.3) and conference-only field goal percentage (60.8). He's scored in double figures in each of the past four games.
  • Cal has out-rebounded or tied its opponents in five of the past six games, including a 27-25 advantage vs. Oregon State (Feb. 25) and a 40-38 advantage at Washington (Feb. 20). Most recently, Cal was tied with Oregon, 29-29, in the Bears' regular season finale (Feb. 27).
  • The Bears did not have a single Pac-12 game postponed or canceled due to COVID-19 during the regular season.
  • Grant Anticevich and Makale Foreman announced their decisions to return to Cal as fifth-year seniors in the 2021-22 season on Feb. 24.