Cal Sports Report

Despite Being Without Three Starters, Cal Beats Air Force

Cal freshman Jeremiah Wilkinson scores a season-high 23 points and his aggressiveness helps the Bears improve to 4-1. The Bears' Rytis Petraitis helps beat his former team

Jake Curtis

Jeremiah Wilkinson
Jeremiah Wilkinson / Photo by Justin Willard, KLC fotos
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Cal freshman Jeremiah Wilkinson had a break-out performance, which helped the Bears overcome the absence of three starters Thursday night.

Thanks in large part to Wilkinson's season-high 23 points and his ability to aggressively penetrate to the basket, Cal beat Air Force 78-69 at Haas Pavilion to improve the Bears' record to 4-1.

"What a coming-out party for him to showcase what he can do at the lead guard position. He was phenomenal," said Cal assistant coach Adam Mazarei, who substituted for Mark Madsen in the postgame interview because Madsen had to leave right after the game to help with his newborn son.

Wilkinson was not the least bit awed by the situation, and was bolder with the ball than anybody else opn the floor. Plus he was able to finish at the rim amid a crowd.

"I know we got guys going down, [so] it was going to be my chance to step up and have a bigger role," Wilkinson said. "My thought process is to use my athleticism and get downhill. That's kind of like my strength. That's really the goal, get downhill and put presure on the defense."

Maden said before the season began, that the difference between this year's Cal team and last year's Bears squad was the improved depth this season.

"Last year, we don't know if we win this game," Mazarei said.

The four wins in the Bears' first five games is an improvement over last season when Cal was 2-3 after five games and 3-7 after 10 games. And the Bears won their fourth game this season with a makeshift lineup.

Cal starting point guard Jovan Blacksher, Bears starting shooting guard DJ Campbell and forward BJ Omot, who was a starter in Cal's win at USC on Sunday, all sat out Thursday’s game with injuries. Whether any or all will be ready to play against Sacramento State on Sunday is uncertain, according to Mazarei, but it does not seem that any of the injuries is a long-term issue.

Christian Tucker got his first start at the point guard spot, and forward Petraitis also got his first start on Thursday. Petraitis played at Air Force last season and averaged a team-leading 15.7 points for the Falcons before transferring to Cal after the 2023-24 season.

Petraitis finished with 12 points and he was the driving force in the first half when he had 11 of his points. Andrej Stojakovic helped Cal offensively with 21 points with several of his buckets coming in the closing minutes.

But in the second half the difference was Wilkinson, who came up with big plays when they were needed most. He had scored no more than six points in any of Cal's previous four games, but easily exceeded that on Thursday.

"He's really hard to guard," Petraitis said of Wilkinson, "because he's a great shooter and can get downhill really well and pass really well."

Wilkinson not only was the Bears' high scorer but he set the tone with his penetrating drives into the paint thoughout the game. He was 8-for-12 from the floor, including 2-for-3 on three-point shots.

"He's knifing to the paint," Mazarei said. "His speed, his athleticism, him finishing at the rim was huge, man."

Air Force (1-4) was picked to finish last in the Mountain West Conference in the preseason medial poll, and the Falcons have losses this season to Long Island University, Belmont and North Alabama, and their only win was against Jacksonville State.

So even with the Bears' personnel problems this would have been a bad loss if Cal had fallen to the Falcons.

But Air Force's patient style makes them difficult to play against, as Petraitis well knows.

"It was an ugly win, but most games against Air Force are ugly," Petratis said.

Cal shot 53.8% from the field, but committed 15 turnovers. Air Force shot 51% from the floor and shot 11-for-24 from beyond the three-point line, yet scored just 69 points because of the Falcons' style of bleeding the shot clock on many of their possessions.

Cal led by 15 points with five minutes left in the first half, but Air Force slowly worked its way back into the game, and when Air Force's Ethan Taylor hit three-pointers on consecutive possessions, the Falcons were within two points at 49-47 with 11:43 remaining in the second half.

Lee Dort got the lead back to five points with a three-point play, and Wilkinson produced a four-point play with a three-pointer and an accompanying free throw to push the lead to nine points. Cal pushed its lead to 14 points with six minutes remaining and held off the Falcons the rest of the way..

Cal held a 35-27 lead at halftime, thanks in large part to Petraitis' 11 first-half points.

The Bears used a 14-0 run to take a 30-15 lead with 5:26 remaining in the first half.  The aggressiveness of freshman Jeremiah Wilkinson aided that spurt with his penetration off the dribble.  He had nine first-half points.

The Falcons controlled the final five minutes of the half, though, reducing the margin to eight points at halftime.

Cal hosts Sacramento State at 1 p.m. on Sunday and Mercyhurst at 7 p.m. on Wednesday in the Bears’ final two games in the Cal Classic.  The Bears’ schedule gets serious after that when they play Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, on December 3 in the ACC/SEC Challenge. Missouri’s head coach is former Cal standout Dennis Gates.

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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