Cal women inspire 3,000 children with blowout of Washington State

One of Cal head women’s basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb keys for Friday’s game was neither a statistic nor a schematic.

Instead, she wrote a quote on the pregame board: “Be who you would have wanted to see when you were a little kid.”

The Bears played like a bunch of All-Stars in front of about 3,000 elementary and middle school students at Haas Pavilion and darted away from Washington State for a much-needed 77-63 victory.

Consider this rung No. 1 of climbing out of the conference’s bottom quarter for Cal (11-5, 2-3 Pac-12), which had lost five of its past six games.

In four of those losses, the Bears had a lead or were tied in the final minute.