Ends and beginnings

And on Saturday, the Cal women's basketball team seized the opportunity with a 73-61 over Miami in the Women's National Invitational Tournament championship game in front of a hastily assembled crowd of 2,523 at Haas Pavilion.

With the Bears having just over 40 hours to promote the championship game following Thursday's 61-45 win over Illinois State, the athletic department used e-mail and even voice mail messages from Athletic Director Sandy Barbour to rally support for the team, and they ended up drawing their third-largest crowd of the season.

For those who made the trip to Berkeley on Saturday morning, it was a worthwhile trip. By this, the 37th game of the season, the freshman-laden team were frosh in name only. The Bears burst out to an early lead, with stood a first half charge from the Hurricanes, fought back and battled to preserve its lead throughout the second half despite some terrific outside shooting from Miami.

For the women's basketball team, nothing's come easy during the past few years. They've had players lose large chunks of the season due to injury (Alexis Gray-Lawson, Devanei Hampton, Rama N'Diaye), they've endured transfers (Jessica Lawson, Jene Morris, Casey Morris, Kelsey Adrian), and even lost a player to a career-ending ailment before she could even suit up for them (Tierra Rogers).

If a team's going to have an extremely successful year, they're going to need a certain amount of luck and they'll need some breaks to go their way, and the Bears haven't been fortunate in that department.

While they've contended for conference titles, won NCAA tourney games, given Connecticut about as close to a scare as they've gotten for a half during the past three seasons, Saturday's win doesn't constitute a high-water mark by any means.

But for a team that's spent much of this season rebuilding and trying to find its identity, finishing the season with 24 wins, including six straight in the WNIT, the ability to get through a 64-team field, win games on the road, and close out a championship game are all positive accomplishments they can take from this year and carry into upcoming seasons.

And even if it's being number 65 versus being number one, having the taste of success, and climbing the ladder and snipping down the net is something that will only fuel them in seasons to come.

Because of Stanford's dominance over the years, it's hard to appreciate how good the Bears have been during the past few years. As well as they've played during the regular season, at the end of the season or at the end of the Pac-10 tourney was a big, talented, deep Stanford team – by that measure, until Cal overcomes the Cardinal, progress will always be hard to measure.

But for a young team to beat teams across the nation and show that they can play at a very good level over three weeks isn't something many other teams can boast about at the end of the season. After an opening game overtime nail-biter against UC Davis, the Bears won their remaining tourney games by 10, 14, 16, 16 and 12 points.

While the Bears had a highly-touted freshman class, with any group that largely depends on newcomers there will be growing pains. Cal went through this four years ago in 2005-2006 when they started Ashley Walker, Hampton,, Gray-Lawson, and Jene Morris. And even though they went through ups and downs that first year, they did qualify for the NCAA tournament that core went on to contend for Pac-10 titles for the following three seasons.

Because she lost a year due to a knee injury, Gray-Lawson was the lone holdover going into this season. With the departure of all-time leading scorer Walker and Hampton, the Bears had to rebuild their frontcourt, and as the season went on, they also had to rebuild their backcourt.

As players learned their roles and had a better grasp of what was expected of them, they played much better, winning 17 of their last 22 games, including winning streaks of six, five, and five games.

Gray-Lawson, who was named the tournament MVP, unveiled the whole bag of tricks on Saturday. The low-post pump-fake to draw a foul, a move culled through years of playing in rec league ball, the step back jumper has been slaying Pac-10 opponents for a half-decade, and finally the high-arcing three-point shot that's drained the life off opposition.

Being the team's primary established returning scorer, it easily could have been Gray-Lawson and the supporting cast – and it would have been understandable if she might have had some difficulty with the idea of being part of rebuilding process, after all, she'd gone through this before.

Yet as the team grew in confidence and built the sort of trust that can only come from playing alongside each other, Gray-Lawson found that she could choose her spots, like when she scored 47 points at Oregon, or 39 points against Washington State, but also learned that it wasn't necessary for her to score a lot for the team to play well.

But late in the first half with the Bear offense stagnating and the team having lost a nine-point early lead and now trailing Miami, Gray-Lawson put her stamp on the game, making shots and drawing fouls, reversing the game's momentum and helping push the Bears to a 35-23 halftime lead.

Yet while Gray-Lawson embodies this year's team, there were a lot of other key contributors on Saturday.

Senior Lauren Greif, who's been a starter the past three seasons but has found herself coming off the bench toward the end of the season, nailed two big three-point shots.

Freshman DeNesha Stallworth, who may have benefited from Cal's WNIT run more than any other player, scored more than 20 points in three of her final four games Against Miami, she demonstrated an ability to score with either hand, scoring a game-high 21 points, along with a hook shot that will make her an exceptionally difficult player to defend during the next three years.

Another freshman, Talia Caldwell played well in nonconference play before struggling during conference play, but showed that she could be a force on the boards as well as demonstrating good low post moves.

Forward Gennifer Brandon, who's also a freshman, has that unique combination of athletic ability and instincts where she can average double-digit rebounds while playing slightly more than half the game. In the WNIT championship game, Brandon had nine points and 12 rebounds, in just 22 minutes, and if she can improve her finishing around the basket, she'll make a bid for starters' minutes.

Although the starting backcourt of Eliza Pierre and Layshia Clarendon didn't have their best offensive games on Saturday, they've provided the Bears were more speed in the backcourt, which gives the Bears the ability to play more aggressive defensively – as they're able to throw traps at the opposition, but are quick enough to recover when the opposition breaks the initial press.

Add an incoming recruiting class featuring McDonald's All-Americans Afure Jemerigbe and Lindsay Sherbert along with Mikayla Lyles, the Bears are primed to challenge Stanford along with resurgent UCLA and USC teams for conference supremacy for the next couple of years.

But for this year's team, Saturday's game marked a beginning and an end., When head coach Joanne Boyle took over the Cal job prior to the 2005-2006 season, the Bears hadn't had a winning record since 1992-1993. Since then, the Bears have gone 18-12, 23-9, 27-7, 27-8, and now, 24-13 – with the 101 games that the Bears have won in four seasons, easily eclipsing the previous four-year high of 87 from 1981 to 1984.

With Gray-Lawson now moving on to a successful life no matter what path she chooses, she's been part of a key group of players who've laid a foundation where a culture of winning is very much in place and the lessons of the past have been passed on to next wave of players.

Often in college sports, turnover in personnel often means that success only lasts until key personnel leave. But as the team received the championship trophy and went on the cut down strands of the net to preserve this moment for prosperity, knowing that freshmen played 130 out of the 200 possible minutes, the Bears are going to be in good shape for a long time.