{"id":188268,"date":"2026-03-12T05:24:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T05:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/188268\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T05:24:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T05:24:13","slug":"cal-drops-out-of-acc-tournament-with-95-89-loss-to-florida-state-now-awaits-its-ncaa-tournament-fate-santa-cruz-sentinel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/188268\/","title":{"rendered":"Cal drops out of ACC Tournament with 95-89 loss to Florida State, now awaits its NCAA Tournament fate \u2013 Santa Cruz Sentinel"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2014 Cal<\/a> didn\u2019t help its chances of making the NCAA Tournament<\/a> when it got bounced out of the ACC Tournament after Wednesday\u2019s 95-89 second-round loss to Florida State.<\/p>\n

The Golden Bears (21-11) will enter the conversation for an at-large berth<\/a> having lost three of their last four games when the NCAA Division I committee meets to decide the 68-team field on Sunday.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because Robert McCray V scored 30 points and eighth-seeded Florida State (18-14) continued its winning ways by frustrating ninth-seeded Cal, and its coach, Mark Madsen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI apologized to the team because when it\u2019s all said and done, I did not get this done \u2013 in terms of the game tonight,\u201d Madsen said.<\/p>\n

Cal darted to a 9-2 lead before the Seminoles\u2019 defense took over and Florida State took control. The Seminoles went on a on a 13-4 run and took the lead for good on a Kobe MaGee 3-pointer with 12:13 before halftime.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we got back on our heels too much,\u201d Madsen said. \u201cThey did three different things, stayed in zone, went zone to man, played straight man. It broke our rhythm a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Florida State shot 53% (18 of 34) including 7 of 14 \u2014 after missing its first five \u2014 from 3-point range in the first half. Cal shot 41% (11 of 27) including a paltry 27% (3 of 11) from past the arc in the first half.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re long and athletic, when they collapsed they were in the gaps, quick hands and causing us a lot of turnovers and missed shots,\u201d said Cal\u2019s Justin Pippen, who had 15 points and a team-high six assists.<\/p>\n

The Seminoles led 46-32 at halftime and stretched their lead to 56-39 with 16:31 left.<\/p>\n

Florida State, which has won 11 of its last 14 against conference foes since dropping their first five to start ACC play, advances to play top-seeded Duke on Thursday in the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n

McCray finished shooting 10 of 17 \u2014 including a thunderous windmill dunk off a steal. Lajae Jones scored 15 points, Chauncey Wiggins 14 and reserve Kobe MaGee scored all of his 13 in the first half.<\/p>\n

Dai Dai Ames scored 27 points, Chris Bell 17, John Camden 11 and Lee Dort grabbed a career-high 18 rebounds for the Golden Bears, who were considered one of the bubble teams when the conference tournament began.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2014 Cal didn\u2019t help its chances of making the NCAA Tournament when it got bounced out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4535,111,28,30,29,110],"class_list":["post-188268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-california","tag-college-sports","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}