CAL PRESENTS A CONVINCING CASE BEARS PROVE POINTS IN BEATING CINCINNATI By JOHN AKERS Mercury News Staff Writer ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Cal Bears flew across the country to answer the questions that were posed to them. Yes, the No. 19 Bears can stand up to the more physical game played east of the Mississippi, as evidenced Sunday by their 89-80 victory over No. 23 Cincinnati in the 7-Up Shootout before a national TV audience and 13,212 fans at Orlando Arena. Yes, point guard Jason Kidd can still break the best of presses without allowing the Bears' depleted nine-man squad to be worn down in the process. And, yes, center Ryan Jamison can be a factor when he puts his mind to it. Jamison, who had averaged 5.8 points in his previous six games, scored a career-high 18 points in a game that normally would have passed him by. The 6-foot-11 junior not only kept up but also was a dominating player in the second half, scoring 14 points. Jamison even dunked at the end of a 9-0 run that put the Bears out front 62-53 and helped them pull away with a 53-point second half. With some coaxing, he conceded it was his first dunk since high school. The Bearcats often defended Jamison with smaller players directly behind him. He took it is as an insult, but Cincinnati Coach Bob Huggins thought it was just plain dumb. ''When you're 6-4 and let a 6-11 guy catch the ball two feet from the basket, it puts you at a disadvantage,'' Huggins said. ''And we did that.'' That the points came against a team as athletic as the Bearcats (17-8) didn't surprise Jamison as much as that they came at all. ''It surprised me because my mindset was so low,'' Jamison said. ''I've been beating myself up because of the past few games.'' Jamison understands that the Bears (18-5) need a contribution from him to go far in the NCAA tournament. ''We can't just have Lamond (Murray) and Jason and Monty (Buckley) scoring from the perimeter,'' Jamison said. ''We have to get some points inside. This is just one game. I have to do it consistently.'' Michael Stewart, a 6-foot-10 freshman, added 10 points, his second double-figure game and the first time Stewart and Jamison had made such a contribution in the same game. ''There have been times we isolated the big guys, but they didn't finish,'' Cal Coach Todd Bozeman said. ''They finished today.'' Huggins was displeased by his team's defensive effort, to put it mildly. ''(The Bears) shot 71 percent in the second half, and it's something we have to take credit for,'' Huggins said. ''The nice thing is, it was a team effort. If you're going to stink defensively, it might as well be everybody.'' Huggins' teams have a reputation for creating relentless pressure full-court or from half-court traps; Kidd handled both by locating open players and hitting them with overhead lob passes. At halftime, Huggins called off the press for the first time this season. ''We tried,'' Huggins said. ''It got to the point where I got tired of watching them shoot layups, so I decided to try it in a half court. Then I watched them shoot layups in the half court.'' Kidd had eight assists to go with his 22 points, breaking the Cal single-season assists record of 222 he set last season. He now has 224. If the Bearcats couldn't force Cal turnovers off the press, it's doubtful anyone else will try -- killing the notion that teams would try to wear down the Bears' seven scholarship players by pressing them for 40 minutes. And they did it under NCAA tournament conditions, having traveled across three time zones to face a team they never had seen before. ''There's always the myth of West Coast basketball being softer than the East Coast,'' Kidd said. ''There's that feeling that we have California on our chests, so we can't be that tough, that we must be lying out in the sun all day.'' The Bears will make a shorter but even more important trip Thursday to UCLA to play for a share of the lead in the Pacific 10 Conference.