It’s officially basketball season.
Cal will open its 2025-26 campaign and second year as members of the ACC against Cal State Bakersfield on Monday at Haas Pavilion.
The 7 p.m. tip-off will offer a first look at third-year head coach Mark Madsen’s most intriguing roster yet, which features 13 new faces and just four returners — forwards Rytis Petraitis and Lee Dort and guards BJ Fisher and DJ Campbell.
“I hope to see our guys fully bought in on both sides of the ball and really executing everything we’ve been working on since training camp started in late September,” Madsen told The Daily Californian of his opening night expectations.
There are two areas where Madsen expects his team to improve drastically and believes that fans should pay attention to on Monday: 3-point shooting and passing.
Cal made just 31.5% of triples in 2024-25, which was third-worst in the ACC.
Madsen believes his new Bears “got shooters everywhere,” mentioning four new faces — forwards John Camden and Chris Bell and guards Dai Dai Ames, TT Carr and Justin Pippen — as players to watch out for from deep.
Camden, in particular, enters as this year’s expected leading scorer and long-range option after averaging 16.8 points on 41.6% 3-point shooting at Delaware a season ago.
Passing-wise, the Bears finished last in the ACC in 2024-25 with 10.45 assists per game — Duke led all 18 teams with 16.97 — and had five games with just three assists and 12 games of nine assists or less. Cal even went assist-less in the first half of its first meeting with Stanford last season.
Madsen doesn’t have an exact number of dimes he wants to see in the opener. However, he does want to see his Bears swinging the rock at all costs.
“It’s hard to put an exact number on that … but I want to see the ball moving,” Madsen said. “That ball needs to be moving, guys need to be making each other better and guys need to be finishing shots at the rim and catch-and-shoot shots.”
Pippen and Ames are primed to be Cal’s primary distributors on Monday and for the season. There’s a good chance we’ll get to see Carr, a freshman, contribute as well.
Ames is expected to generate consistent paint-touches and kick-outs, while Pippen should be the team’s primary ball-handler, presumably initiating half-court sets.
Contrarily, the two biggest question marks surrounding Madsen and the Bears are the team’s overall defense and shot creation.
Cal finished with the ACC’s third-worst defense in 2024-25 after allowing 78.1 points per game and the Pac-12’s second-worst defense in 2023-24 after allowing 77.0. The Bears could set the tone for the season by making life hectic for the visiting Roadrunners’ offense.
And it’s unclear who will carry the torch in isolation scoring after forward Andrej Stojaković and guard Jeremiah Wilkinson transferred east. It could be Camden, Ames or any of the new faces. The Cal faithful will potentially find out on Monday, and for sure throughout the season.
For now, Cal is focused on beating CSU Bakersfield — especially as the visitors, quite literally, are undergoing the utmost turmoil.
Kevin Mays, an assistant Roadrunners coach for the last six years, was arrested in September and is currently facing several charges, including human trafficking, pimping and pandering and child pornography. CSU Bakersfield has since cut ties with Mays.
And roughly over a month ago, head coach Rod Barnesstepped down after 14 seasons at the helm in the Central Valley, as the Mays situation escalated into a national headline.
Put bluntly, the Roadrunners, now led by interim head coach Mike Scott, are a work in progress.
Madsen is just looking forward to a good test on Pete Newell Court to start the season.
“Bakersfield is a fantastic team,” Madsen said. “They went through a bit of turmoil … but they’ve just moved past that, and they have some great players … we have our work absolutely cut out for us. This is going to be a huge test.”
The Bears beat the Roadrunners 86-73 to start last season, and Cal leads the all-time series 3-2 since 2012.
Madsen has yet to share a starting lineup.