Clarendon Leads No. 6 Cal Women Past Oregon 72-45
EUGENE, Ore. (AP) -- On a day when most people from the Bay Area had their thoughts on another game, No. 6 California was plenty focused.
The Golden Bears jumped all over Oregon early and led by double digits for the final 36 minutes in a 72-45 victory on Sunday.
Layshia Clarendon scored 15, and Gennifer Brandon and Talia Caldwell each had double-doubles for Cal (19-2, 9-1 Pac-12), which remained tied with No. 4 Stanford atop the league standings.
"I think this game looks the way it looks on the scoreboard because of the intensity and focus our players played with," said Cal coach Lindsay Gottlieb, who earned her 100th career win against the Ducks one game after Stanford coach Tara Vanderveer recorded her 400th career Pac-12 victory with an 86-62 win against Oregon on Friday.
"Only 40 more years until 900," joked Gottlieb, who is in her second season at Cal after three years at UC Santa Barbara.
Caldwell finished with 14 points and 14 rebounds, and Brandon had 14 points and 12 rebounds for the Golden Bears. Brittany Boyd also had 13 points and eight assists for Cal.
"We were just playing hard," said Cardwell, who announced "Ray Lewis is going to win the Super Bowl today," as she exited the Golden Bears' locker room, an unsolicited pick of the Baltimore Ravens and its star linebacker over the San Francisco 49ers. "The good thing about this team is every game is important to us. Every game we want to play really well for each other."
Devyn Galland scored 11 to lead the Ducks (3-19, 1-9), who were without starting guard Ariel Thomas, out with an undisclosed injury. Amanda Delgado started in her place and finished with five points.
Thomas is the second point guard to go down for Oregon, which lost starter Laura Stanulis after five games to a season-ending knee injury.
"We're down to our third quarterback," Oregon coach Paul Westhead said, "so it's not easy. . The timing of things was off-center a little bit. But part of that was due to Cal's defense."
The Golden Bears dominated inside, getting 44 points in the paint and outrebounding the Ducks 51-40.
"These kids take so much pride in being tough and athletic and dominating the boards and you saw all of that on display today," Gottlieb said.
California put this one away early, taking advantage of the Ducks' poor shooting and turnover prone offense to lead 38-19 at halftime.
After Oregon's Jordan Loera scored the opening basket of the game, the Golden Bears outscored the Ducks 30-4 over the next 13 minutes to take a commanding 30-6 lead.
Clarendon scored 11 of her 13 first-half points during that stretch.
"I loved the way we started this game and I think it started with our defense," Gottlieb said. "We made it really tough for them to score. We focused on shutting down their transition game and I think we did that really well."
Other than a layup and two free throws by Danielle Love on back-to-back possession that made it 11-6 with 15:44 to play, the Ducks went scoreless during the Golden Bears' long run.
Oregon was 1 for 15 from the field during that stretch with 11 turnovers that California turned into 12 points.
By halftime, the Ducks had made just 6 of 28 from the field (21.4 percent) -- including 1 for 10 on 3-pointers -- with 16 turnovers. They finished the game with 24 turnovers.
Cal wasn't significantly better, shooting just 35.9 percent from the field in the first half -- and 40 percent overall -- but it didn't have to be, en route to its season-high seventh straight win.
The Golden Bears' lead was trimmed to a low of 12 points, 48-36 with under 12 minutes to play in the game, but they quickly answered with a 19-0 run over the next seven minutes to take a 67-36 lead before the Ducks finally scored with 4:50 to play.
(Copyright 2013 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
