BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) – Austin Peay coach Dave Loos isn’t worried that his team is off to a poor start shooting the ball. It’s the way the Governors are running the offense that has Loos more concerned.
Playing without its most experienced player and top rebounder, Austin Peay fell behind by 15 points to No. 23 California in the first six minutes and couldn’t recover, losing to the Golden Bears 72-55 on Tuesday night.
“We were just overwhelmed early and then started playing too fast,” Loos said. “We threw up anything, just happy to get a shot. Give them a lot of credit but we played way too fast early and it resulted in poor quality shots, therefore a poor shooting percentage.”
Josh Terry scored 16 points to lead the Governors (0-2), who scored just 13 in the first half, shot 37.1 percent and missed their initial 13 3-point tries before Herdie Lawrence connected with 12:56 remaining.
Austin Peay, which plays its first six games away from home and eight of the first 10 on the road, also got outrebounded 36-32 and reached the free throw line only eight times as Cal went 15 for 21 from the line to overcome a 1-for-12 showing from long range.
That alone made it an uphill battle against Cal, which beat its first two opponents by 48 points combined.
When Austin Peay’s players quit running the offense Loos was calling, it just made matters worse.
“We thought we had to bring their bigs out on the floor and then it’s called throw back,” Loos said. “But we had some guys who had some other ideas. They didn’t want to throw it back. They wanted to do it their way.”
Jorge Gutierrez had 14 points, six rebounds and three assists, and Harper Kamp added 12 points and nine boards for the Golden Bears (3-0), who just missed a chance to begin the season with three straight 20-point victories for the first time since the 1952-53 team started with four.
Gutierrez and Kamp each scored six of their points in the opening six minutes as Cal (3-0) built a 17-2 lead and wasn’t challenged the rest of the way in the CBE Classic game by the overmatched Governors. That allowed coach Mike Montgomery to regularly substitute and try out different lineup combinations on a night a half-dozen professional scouts turned out at Haas Pavilion.
It also kept the Governors from getting blown out. Austin Peay outscored the Bears 42-32 in the second half.
“It’s probably human nature, you’re up 27 and don’t have that same intensity,” Montgomery said. “We’ve been a little bit lax.”
Cal freshman David Kravish came off the bench to make 6 of 7 field-goal attempts for 12 points in his first double-digit scoring performance, while Brandon Smith scored 11 points.
Allen Crabbe, last season’s Pac-10 Freshman of the Year coming off a pair of 20-point games, was limited to five points on 2-for-12 shooting. It hardly mattered.
Cal shot 52.8 percent, its second straight game going over 50 percent, and received contributions from most of the roster.
Austin Peay, situated in Clarksville, Tenn., played its first game in the state of California during the 22-year tenure of Loos, the winningest coach in the Ohio Valley Conference. Loos is the lone Division I basketball coach also serving as athletic director.
While he has four of five starters from last season on a team favored to win the OVC, senior center John Fraley didn’t make the trip after sustaining a concussion in the season-opening 80-71 loss Friday at Middle Tennessee. That hurt the Governors’ chances to match up and battle for boards in the paint with Kamp and 6-foot-10 Richard Solomon.
“He’s doing better,” Loos said of Fraley. “They have a list of things, a checklist, and he made really significant improvement over the last 24 hours. It always hurts our rebounding. He gets us a few points down low but it’s his rebounding.”
Austin Peay began the game 1 for 7, while Cal hit six of its first seven shots. The Governors were 2 for 15 at the 7:32 mark of the first half and went 0 for 9 from long range to trail 40-13 at halftime.
They shot only 39 percent in their season opener.
This was the first meeting between the schools and only the third matchup Austin Peay has had with current members of the Pac-12. Loos’ first game as Governors head coach was a 122-80 loss to Arizona in 1990.
Add A Comment