Cal and Charmin Smith make a statement in win over Stanford

“You know it! You tell the story!” Smith shouted into the microphone, leading the crowd in the Golden Bears’ traditional chant. “You tell the whole damn world this is Bear Territory!”

About 15 minutes later, her sweater and shirt still damp from the celebratory water bath she got in the locker room, she continued her celebration.

“We beat Stanford. I’m not wasting this moment,” she said in her postgame press conference. “When you beat Stanford, you are supposed to do that chant.”

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For the first time in Smith’s tenure as head coach, her Bears knocked off Stanford, her alma mater. It was a significant win in many ways.

The 83-63 win, in which the Bears never trailed, was the biggest margin of victory for Cal in this rivalry since 1982. The 18 3-pointers that the Bears hit were a school record.

It was the first ACC matchup between the two Pac-12 stalwarts who moved east together after the Pac-12 blew up last year.

And it gave the Bears, picked to finish 14th out of 18 teams in their new conference, a 1-0 start — not to mention a 10-1 overall record that should get them serious consideration in the national rankings. Cal has beaten five teams that went to last year’s NCAA Tournament: Gonzaga, Auburn, Arizona, Alabama and now the Cardinal.

“I’m just really happy for these players that they get to experience this,” Smith said. “We talked about how we’re not playing against the Stanford teams of the past, and we’re not Cal teams of the past. This is about these two teams here in this moment, and I’m just really proud of how we showed up.”

And make no mistake, Smith will relish this personally as well. New Stanford coach Kate Paye was one of Smith’s teammates in college and is a close friend.

“It means a lot to me. I’d be lying if I tried to downplay it,” Smith said. “I told them, ‘People say, “Oh, act like you’ve been there.”‘ I don’t care right now. I’m happy to beat Stanford and I’m gonna act like it, because that’s a really good team, and we had to be good to beat a good team. It’s the Battle of the Bay, and it’s a rivalry, and it’s important, and it matters.”

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This is the best Cal team that Smith has coached in Berkeley. The Bears are experienced and strong on both ends of the floor. And they are motivated to change the fortunes of a program that has been through things over the past few years.

“The past has nothing to do with what we’re doing right now,” Smith said.

But if Smith had had trouble seeing this light at the end of the tunnel, no one would’ve blamed her.

Smith spent three years on Tara VanDerveer’s coaching staff at Stanford before heading to Cal to coach under Joanne Boyle in 2007. She stayed when Lindsay Gottlieb took over the program in 2011.

Smith then took over as head coach when Gottlieb left for the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2019. In Gottlieb’s final season, the Bears won 20 games and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Cal is no longer a rival for Smith; it is her home. But her tenure has largely been a struggle. In her first three seasons at the helm, Cal finished last in the Pac-12. In the coronavirus-marred season of 2020-21, the Bears were 1-16, with five conference games canceled due to COVID-19 and a shortage of available players. The following season, Cal had six Pac-12 games canceled.

In five Pac-12 seasons under Smith, the Bears won a total of 17 games. The program’s top recruits during that period, Dalayah Daniels (the nation’s No. 13 recruit in 2020) and Jayda Curry (the Pac-12’s leading scorer in her freshman season), would transfer out.

“When we were in it, those years, it was really challenging,” Smith admitted. “I didn’t necessarily see where we would be today, but I knew that I wasn’t going to give up. We had to figure out what it was supposed to be.”

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Smith, who got a three-year extension in April, said she has been intentional about the work of building the program and intentional about learning from the hard lessons, both from the losses and the high-profile transfers.

“I figured out that I have to be me and not worry about the things I can’t control,” Smith said. “How I was coaching wasn’t really me.

“After last season, I made a shift in my mindset and my talk. It’s less, ‘We’re trying’ and ‘I hope,’ and more, ‘We’re going to.’”

That shift has built not only Smith’s confidence, but also her team’s.

“It’s a new feeling and it’s really exciting,” Smith said. “And we are attracting the right people for us.”

Gottlieb said it was difficult to watch Smith face so many challenges.

“To see someone you care about go through hard times, and much of it was out of her control,” Gottlieb told The Next on Saturday. “She had so many injuries and people out during COVID, and she’s starting walk-ons and everything was thrown at her. To see someone struggle through that and come out the other side, it’s been unbelievable to see. Cal now has a veteran team with a coach they believe in, and it’s been great to see it come together.”

Smith has built this roster largely through the transfer portal, with five transfers in her main rotation. Ioanna Krimili, who leads the team in scoring at 16.3 points per game, came to Cal via San Francisco. Marta Suarez came from Tennessee, Jayda Noble from Washington, Kayla Williams from USC and Gisella Maul from Texas.

Smith has also gone international with sophomore Lulu Twidale from Australia. And Michelle Onyiah, a senior in her fourth season at Cal, is averaging 10.4 points, 7.8 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game.

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This team is a mix in every way, and it’s paying dividends, particularly offensively. Averaging nearly 80 points per game, the Bears rank 11th nationally with 10.2 3-pointers made per game, and they’re shooting 38.0% from deep.

On Friday against the Cardinal, Suarez led the way with 21 points, with Krimili and Twidale adding 20 each and Twidale hitting six threes.

“This team is just fun. We are loose,” Suarez told reporters postgame. “But we put in the work. This didn’t just happen.”

Whether Cal begins the bulk of the ACC schedule as a ranked team — the Bears haven’t been ranked since January 2019 — doesn’t matter to Smith. She wants to get this program to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019. And she wants it on a good footing to succeed into the future.

“Honestly, I don’t care. I don’t care. I want to play good basketball,” Smith said. “And if we play good basketball, it’ll work out. … I’m not worried about it because we’re going to keep showing them and we’ll get what we deserve. We’ll earn it.”