Dec 23 2008
Cal hoops ‘hopes’ fall on smallest player’s shoulders
Cal Bears fans know Jerome Randle well. They may not have known much about him prior to this season, but the 5′10″ point guard has left a huge impression thus far on the season. College basketball insiders also may have known who Randle was before the season started, but with the Bears holding an RPI ranking of 10 this season and a record of 9-2, those insiders are definitely getting a revised lesson.
Randle, this week’s Pac-10 Player of the Week , has been nothing short of dominant in Mike Montgomery ’s first 11 games as the Cal Bears coach. For the season, Randle has averaged 20.2 ppg, 3 rpg, 4.5 apg, and he’s shooting .560% from the field to go along with a three-point-percentage of .571%. If there was one thing that Montgomery would like to see Randle improve upon, it would be his turnover ratio which sits at a paltry 1.6/1. For a point guard, he’s going to have to do better.
Earlier this season, after a victory over USF, Montgomery was asked about Randle’s play. “I think he wants very badly to be a real good point guard,” said Montgomery, “and he certainly can score the ball. He’s really, really valuable to us. He had a 7:2 assist-to-turnover ratio, and the two he had, he could have prevented and he knows that. That’s what I want. I told him after the game that he’s capable of so much, and we need him to stay mentally focused the whole time so he can do some thinking for others.“
How the rest of the season pans out for the Bears will be dictated by how well Randle is able to play the point when he needs to and take over the ‘two’ when he has to. In other words, he’s not only going to have to be the floor general, he’s going to have to be the long-range assassin when the going gets tough.
Against Nevada, Randle may have had his best performance of the season in the last five minutes of the game. After a back-and-forth contest with the Nevada Wolf Pack, he sparked his team with an assist to Patrick Christopher for a three, then shot his own three-pointer, assisted a third three, then capped the run off with a perfect pass for the alley-oop dunk, turning a three-point game into a 14 point lead.
With big hopes and high aspirations for the Bears this season, it’s ironic that their fate lies in the hands of their smallest player. For Cal, the hope is that good things have come in a small package.
Rob Calonge writes about the Bears at the Cal Bears Examiner and here at Cal Bears Today.
