Cal Basketball: Grant Newell Shows Progress But Bears Lose to Butler, Fall to 0-11

Freshman Grant Newell scored a collegiate-best 17 points but there wasn’t much else to celebrate in Cal’s 82-58 loss to visiting Butler on Saturday.

A crowd of 2,040 at Haas Pavilion watched the Bears fall to 0-11 on the season.

They remain one of two winless Division I teams in the country, along with Louisville, which is 0-9 after a loss at Florida State.

It was more of the same for the Bears, who didn’t have the offensive firepower to hang with the Bulldogs (8-3) of the Big East Conference. Butler has won four in a row.

Cal entered the game ranked 349th nationally in scoring and almost exactly matched its season average of 57.6 points. The Bears were 331st in field-goal percentage (39.4) and 344th in 3-point accuracy (26.8), and fell short of both of those low standards, finishing at 35 percent from the field and 14 percent (3-for-21) from the arc.

The Bears never led but were down just 26-22 with 7:25 left in the first half, when Butler shifted gears and sped away. The Bulldogs outscored Cal 15-2 over the next 6 minutes on the way to a 41-26 halftime lead.

When Simas Lukosius bounced a pass backward through his own legs to feed a dunk by Manny Bates, Butler’s lead was 51-31 with 15:15 to play. The margin reached 30 points and the game was never close again.

Coach Mark Fox, acknowledging the Bears’ issues on offense, said their failure to defend better was a key.

“Really was a frustrating game for us,” he says in the video at the top. “This is the first time I think that we weren’t able to saddle back up and play a style of defense that gave us a chance. We just could never get a stop.

“Our team, as offensively challenged as we are, has to be very good defensively and tonight we were not.”

Newell, a 6-foot-8 forward from Chicago, made his first four shots and finished 7-for-13 from the field. He took one or two ill-advised shots but Fox liked his aggressiveness, especially considering he has been asked to add power forward to his usual small forward role with fellow freshman ND Okafor shelved by COVID.

“We’re asking probably more than what is fair of a freshman,” Fox says in the video above. “He’s become productive and you know what, when you need guys to score you’re going to have to live with some shots maybe that when they’re juniors they’ll understand to turn down.

“That young man’s really playing as hard as he can for us.”

Newell, whose previous high was 12 points against UC San Diego, said he’d swap it all for a win.

“It wasn’t enough to get the win. I’d rather get wins that have a bunch of points,” Newell says. “I want to be able to do all that and win.”

Junior guard Devin Askew, the Bears’ top scorer this season, returned to action after missing Wednesday’s game against Eastern Washington while in COVID protocols.

Askew, who hadn’t been on a basketball court since last Sunday at Arizona, scored 17 points on 7-for-20 shooting in 33 minutes. He said he's hanging in there.

Askew talks in the video below about his experience with COVID.

Senior center Lars Thiemann, who entered the game averaging 13.2 points, was scoreless in the first half and finished with four points to go with 10 rebounds. Fox cut Thiemann some slack, suggesting he’s exhausted from playing heavy minutes.

Five players scored in double digits for Butler, which shot 55 percent from the field, including nearly 70 percent inside the 3-point arc.

Cal has eight days off for final exams before visiting Santa Clara (8-3), which had won five games in a row before losing at home to San Jose State on Saturday.

Cover photo of Cal freshman forward Grant Newell by Darren Yamashita, USA Today

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo

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