The Bears host CSU Bakersfield to start the season

CK Hicks/Cal Athletics

The Cal men's basketball team begins its 2024-25 season Monday night against CSU Bakersfield in Berkeley.

MBBNov 1, 2024 12:54 p.m. | From: Cal Athletics

Year 2 of the Madsen era begins in the Haas Pavilion

BERKELEY – The California men's basketball team opens the 2024-25 season on Monday night at home against CSU Bakersfield. Tipoff is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. PT – or approximately 40 minutes after the conclusion of the Cal women's basketball season opener against Saint Mary's at 6 p.m. – on ACC Network Extra (ACCNX). Fans with men's basketball tickets can secure a free ticket to the women's game.

GAME INFORMATION

• Date and time: Monday, November 4th | 8:30 p.m. PT
• Location: Berkeley, California | Haas Pavilion
• Watch: ACCNX | Greg Mescall (PxP) and Ben Braun (Analyst)
• Listen: 810 AM & The Varsity Network App | Justin Allegri (PxP)
• Live statistics: Statbroadcast

IN THE GAME – CAL VS. CSU BAKERSFIELD

• Series record: Cal leads 3-2
• Cal earned an 83-63 home win against the Roadrunners last season on November 11, 2023.
• The Bears had lost two straight to CSU Bakersfield before last season's 20-point win, including a 73-66 loss in the first round of the 2017 NIT at Berkeley.
• Mark Madsen owns a 2-1 head-to-head record against CSU Bakersfield head coach Rod Barnes. They split two meetings in the 2019-20 season as Madsen completed his first year at Utah Valley and the Roadrunners completed their final year as a member of the Western Athletic Conference.

START FIVE
1. New conference, new bears

Cal enters its first ACC season with a revamped roster, including 11 scholarship players and a total of 15 student-athletes wearing the blue and gold for the first time. Ten of the eleven scholarship players came to Berkeley via the transfer portal and were collectively ranked as the 12th best transfer class in the country (On3).

2. Madsen era, year 2

This is the head coach's second year in Berkeley Mark Madsenwho revitalized the Cal program and its fan base with a 10-win improvement in 2023-24. The Bears finished sixth in the Pac-12 last season, marking their best conference finish since 2016-17. They earned big wins at UCLA and against NCAA tournament teams Washington State, Oregon and Colorado. Mad Dog – who received a two-year contract extension in March 2024 that keeps him at Cal through 2030 – is now leading the Bears into a new era in the ACC.

3. Been there before

Two of Cal's transfers – Graduate Center Mady Sissoko and Alumni Guardian Jovan Blacksher Jr. — both reached the Round of 32 of the NCAA Tournament last March with Michigan State and Grand Canyon.

Sissoko played in 121 career games on four NCAA Tournament squads at Michigan State and averaged 5.5 rebounds per game while shooting nearly 60% from the floor over the last two seasons. Blacksher, a former All-WAC first-teamer and 2022-23 WAC Preseason Player of the Year, was a member of three NCAA Tournament teams with the Antelopes and has fully recovered from a knee injury that sidelined him for 11 months in early January 2023 . The Oakland native averaged 11.0 points, 3.5 assists, 3.2 rebounds and 1.4 steals in 123 career games.

4. Switch sides

Sophomore guard Andrej Stojakovic will play for the Golden Bears this season after starting his college career in the South Bay with rival Stanford. Stojakovic, a former McDonald's All-American and five-star recruit from Jesuit High School in Carmichael, averaged 7.8 points and 3.4 rebounds per game in 32 contests for the Cardinal last year. The agile, 1.90 meter tall guard is the son of 13-year NBA veteran Peja Stojakovic.

5. Experienced group

Although Cal's 2024-25 roster is an almost brand-new cast from last season, the locker room is filled with experienced college players. Cal ranks sixth among ACC teams in Division I minutes played (14,876) entering the season. Including Sissoko and Blacksher — who have played a combined 244 games — the Bears added seven transfers who have at least two seasons of experience, including Joshua Ola Joseph (Junior, Minnesota), DeJuan (DJ) Campbell (Junior, Western Carolina), BJ Omot (Junior, North Dakota), Christian Tucker (Senior, UTSA) and Rytis Petraitis (Junior, Air Force).

HOW TO WATCH

Access to ACC Network and ACC Network Extra (ACCNX) is determined by your pay TV provider (cable, satellite, telecommunications or streaming service). Viewers can still access games through an ESPN+ subscription, even without access to the ACC Network. Viewers with access to ACCNX can watch the streaming channel on the same device (smart TVs, smartphones, tablets, connected streaming devices or espn.com/watch) on which they watch ACC Network. ESPN+ is a subscription-based streaming channel that can also be viewed on any streaming device.

SUPPORT THE BEARS

Tickets for the 2024-25 campaign can be purchased at CalBears.com/Tickets, by calling 800-GO-BEARS (462-3277) or emailing [email protected]. Fans can support the Golden Bears through the Cal Men's Basketball Excellence Initiative or the California Legends Collective.

Stay up to date

For more coverage of Cal men's basketball, follow the Bears on X (@CalMBBall), Instagram (@CalMBBball) and Facebook (/CalMBBall/).