LAS VEGAS – California earned a 63-51 victory over rival Stanford in the First Round of the Pac-12 Men's Basketball Tournament behind a game-high 18 points from sophomore
Matt Bradley and senior
Paris Austin at T-Mobile Arena on Wednesday night.Â
The victory marked the 300th career-win for head coach
Mark Fox as the Bears move on to Thursday's quarterfinals and a matchup with UCLA.
Bradley knocked down two 3-pointers to move into the Cal single-season record books with 66 made, passing
Jabari Bird's 65 in 2017. Cal improves to 2-2 all-time in the Pac-12 Tournament against Stanford.Â
Junior
Grant Anticevich added a game-high eight rebounds, while Austin and Bradley added six boards apiece for the Bears.
California led the entire game, shooting 48 percent from the field compared to just 32 percent for Stanford. The Bears out-rebounded the Cardinal 36-25 and had 30 points in the paint, while Stanford had 22.
How It Happened: Stanford got to within nine points at the 3:41 mark, but Cal closed it out from there, building a biggest lead of 16 points to run out the clock in the final minutes.Â
Daejon Davis finished a layup to cut the Cal lead to six at 43-37, but The Bears answered by scoring the next five points to rebuild the lead to 11 with 8:15 to go, forcing a Stanford timeout. Â Cal took its then-biggest advantage of the night at 39-26 with 15:25 remaining in the game on a putback basket from Anticevich.Â
Cal matched its biggest lead of the first half at the break when
Joel Brown made a layup as time expired, giving the Bears a 30-20 advantage as the two teams went to the locker room.
Stanford was able to use an 8-2 run to tie the game at 17, before another run of seven-straight for Cal made it 24-17 with 3:35 left in the first. The Bears opened the night by scoring the first seven points of the game, capped by a 3-pointer from South.
Up Next: California advances to the quarterfinals of the Pac-12 Tournament on Thursday night with a 6 p.m. tipoff against UCLA. The game will be televised live on the Pac-12 Network.
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