Jaylen Brown Breaking Slump is Vital to Cal Bears' Tournament Hopes

Pac-12 Freshman of the Year Jaylen Brown is suffering through the worst stretch of his first college season, and Cal needs him to turn it around if they want to make a long run in the NCAA Tournament.

It’s been a long, trying week for the California Golden Bears, and they’ve yet to even play their first game in the NCAA Tournament. After assistant coach Yann Hufnagel was fired on Monday, news broke late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning that senior point guard Tyrone Wallace, Cal’s leading scorer and assist man and third-leading rebounder, suffered a possibly fractured bone in his hand, and his status for the tournament is in doubt. In what was already a tough matchup against the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors in their Round of 64 game, things are not looking golden for the Bears. They’ll need a player who has been slumping hard in recent weeks to really pick up his game, and some slack.

The Bears boast a pretty remarkable trait as a team. They have two incredibly talented true freshman players, both of whom are quite capable of taking over a game and leading a team to victory. Ivan Rabb and Jaylen Brown have been essential parts to the Bears’ season, during which they finished third in a very deep Pac-12 with a 22-9 record. Both young man were named to the Conference’s All-Freshman Team, while Brown, a consensus top-five recruit from the last class, was given the honor of being the Pac-12’s Freshman of the Year.

In recent weeks, Rabb has taken his game to a new level, leading the Bears to some big wins. Over the past seven games, the 6’11 Oakland native has averaged 14.7 points and eight rebounds per contest, all while shooting an outstanding 63.9 percent from the floor. In the Pac-12 Conference Tournament quarterfinals against the Oregon State Beavers, Rabb set career-highs with 21 points and 15 rebounds (six on the offensive glass) while hitting nine of his 11 field goal attempts, sparking a 76-68 win for the Bears.

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Rabb’s fellow frosh Brown, on the other hand, has fallen into a rut, looking nothing like the polished, ultra-talented, almost NBA-ready athlete that mowed through the conference for two months. In Cal’s first 16 games of conference play, Brown averaged 16.9 points while shooting 48.1 percent, and surpassed 20 points five times.

When the calendar turned to March, Brown’s production began to drop steeply. It started on the 3rd against the Arizona Wildcats, when he scored a season-low five points on 2-of-9 shooting, and didn’t go to the free throw line a single time, incredible for a player who shot 10-plus free throws six times over the course of the year. Despite Brown’s struggles that game, Cal held a lead all game long, until Arizona’s sharpshooter Gabe York hit a three-pointer in the final minute to put the Wildcats ahead and give them a win. With maybe just a couple more baskets from Brown throughout the course of the game, Cal comes away with their first win on Arizona’s homecourt in three years.

That one bad game stretched into two bad games, as Brown scored 10 points on 3-of-10 shooting against the Arizona State Sun Devils just two days later. It then stretch into three bad games, when Brown scored eight points on 1-of-6 shooting (for a season-low 16.7 percent) during the same Oregon State game where Rabb exploded. The next game, the Conference Tournament Semi-Finals against the Utah Utes, was more of the same. Brown scored 12 points, but made just three of his 17 shot attempts (17.6 percent) as Cal again couldn’t hold on to a late lead against a very good team. That stretch of four games include Brown’s three worst games of the year, shooting percentage-wise, and four of his worst eight. The stretch was also his worst scoring average over four games by two points, and worst shooting stretch by nearly nine percent.

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Early in the season, during the first games of his college career, Brown looked like a true freshman trying to figure out the game. The talent was obviously always there, but the confidence in his play-making ability had to be brought up to speed with the talent. As the season went along, Brown started to open up his game and began to look like the kid that was one of the most prized recruits the year prior. He began to attack the rim at will, finishing strong and with emphatic dunks. When he took jumpers, they were good looks and he rarely had to force anything.

In this most recent stretch, Brown has reverted to that early-season version of himself, seemingly lacking the confidence to take it to the hole and finish with high percentage shots. He’s forcing more jumpers, and is trying to finish at the rim around a crowd of defenders rather than looking for an open man. While defenses have keyed in on Brown, Brown has not been able to adjust yet.

With all the distractions surrounding the Golden Bears right now, Brown taking over early in the tournament, like he did for a good portion of 2016, could act as a calming influence. The team certainly can’t survive another sub-20 percent shooting night from arguably their best player, not when they are facing the top teams in the country.

Next: Jared Goff's Small Hands Not That Big of a Problem

Brown was a huge part, maybe the biggest, to the Bears’ best season in years. If they want to continue that run deep into March, Cal needs that unstoppable Brown back.

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Jaylen Brown Breaking Slump is Vital to Cal Bears’ Tournament Hopes

By Sean Bialaszek | Mar 17, 2016

Pac-12 Freshman of the Year Jaylen Brown is suffering through the worst stretch of his first college season, and Cal needs him to turn it around if they want to make a long run in the NCAA Tournament.

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