Cal’s reboot gets off to a slow start with loss to UC Riverside

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About an hour before Friday’s game, the Cal men’s basketball program announced that it will start the 2018-19 season against Yale in China.

By the five-minute mark of the first half, the Bears probably wished they could have already been on a flight out of town.

The overhauled Cal squad struggled to score from the get-go of a 74-66 loss to UC Riverside, spoiling the debut of head coach Wyking Jones at Haas Pavilion.

The Bears, who returned only two letter winners and have six freshmen on scholarship, shot 30.6 percent from the floor and had seven assists to 11 turnovers.

UC Riverside, which won seven games last season and finished eighth in the nine-team Big West, got 15 points and 13 rebounds from Alex Larsson, 13 points from Brandon Rosser and 12 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists from Dikymbe Martin.

The Bears got a career-high 32 points from Don Coleman, but it took him 28 shots to get there. Justice Sueing had 13 points, and Kingsley Okoroh added 18 rebounds and tied Yogi Stewart’s school record with seven blocked shots.

Cal got off to an awful start, failing to score for the first six minutes and falling into a 17-3 hole. The Bears went into the locker room at halftime trailing 40-21, with more turnovers (seven) than field goals (six, on 30 shots).

UC Riverside led by 23 points in the first half, using a 20-10 advantage in paint points. Coleman, who started the game 1-of-10 from the floor, scored 11 of the Bears’ first 13 points in the second half, including a three-pointer that trimmed their deficit to 47-34 with 13 minutes remaining.

Sueing’s three-point play cut UC Riverside’s lead to 62-53 with 4:36 remaining, fouled out Rosser and injected some life into a sparse crowd. But the energy was short-lived as Coleman missed two free throws, and Martin snapped the Highlanders’ 4½-minute scoring drought with a layup to restore a double-digit lead.

Rusty Simmons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rsimmons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Rusty_SFChron