via a0.twimg.com

Cal showed how to act like the #1 program in the nation last night, defeating #2 Stanfurd three sets to one at Haas Pavilion.  Calbears.com has a nice recap here, more detailed and nuanced than this amateur volleyball appreciator can provide.  Cal dropped the first set 23-25, after winning the previous thirty sets en route to a 10-0 record.  The second set was all Cal, and the teams went into the break tied 1-1.

Cal trailed the third set 10-5 before getting down to business.  Our bears went on a 20-6 run to close out the third and take command of the match.  A 20-6 run is something you might expect against, say, Presbyterian.  It is not something you expect against the number two team in the country.

Stanfurd led for most of the fourth set, but only by one or two.  After Cal's massive comeback in the third, you could sense that the Cardinal were more clinging to their lead than playing with confidence.  Sure enough, Cal took control with a 7-3 run to gain a 23-21 lead and closed out the match.  Stanfurd took their final timeout in the midst of Cal's late run in an effort to stem the tide.  When that didn't work, the Furd coach, out of timeouts, engaged in what appeared to be a bit of gamesmanship with the referee.  They spoke for approximately 60 seconds before the match resumed, but Tarah Murrey was undaunted and Cal earned yet another point.  Silly Furds, cheaters never prosper unless they're U$C.

To my eyes, this seemed like a total team effort from the bears.  No one player dominated; Murrey, Adrienne Gehan, Shannon Hawari, Kat Brown, and Correy Johnson all contributed at the net both offensively and defensively, and Robin Rostratter was a maestro on defense, setting a career high with 29 digs.  The bears had a few impressively powerful kills, but the team's greatest attribute seemed to be an uncanny ability to keep the volley alive and eventually force Stanfurd to crack.  It was what you expect from the #1 team in the country - not a dominating performance, but a confident and convincing victory over a good but inferior opponent.  If this Cal team is a python, the furd were definitely a rat last night, slowly but surely asphyxiated by Cal's relentless and smothering play.

After the jump, more domination of the furd in an area I know something about: the bands.

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Welcome to the new #1 destination in the Pac-12, at least for Cal fans.  Boulder can’t compete with the Bay Area, but it takes over the #2 spot from Seattle on the basis of weather, beer, potential for skiing, and the lack of obnoxious husky fans.  Nothing else is remotely close (yeah, I understand that some LA natives like LA, but, on the other hand, LA sucks).

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So every year I fill out a bracket, and every year RemorsefulBruinBabe makes picks based on colors and mascots and ends up crushing my bracket.  This year, I'm going to try something different; I'll still fill out a half assed bracket Thursday at 8:45AM,  ("I wish Jorge played hockey" on our yahoo pickem), but I'm also going to put some money down.  Specifically, I'm going to bet $5 on all 36 first round games.  My problem is that I've only watched about a dozen games this year, 95% of them featuring Jorge.  This is where you come in: I need to know which teams to bet on.  So if you know more about this year's NCAA field than I do, I would love your input on the games listed below.  Bonus points if you have strong feelings for a particular over/under, moneyline, or even a PARLAY.  I'll do a post detailing how much money I lost after the dust settles.  Thanks for the help!

• Preview
• Matchup

• Preview
• Matchup

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Lauren Greif finished her four year career at Cal last spring.  Her last game was the NIT championship final against Miami at Haas Pavilion, which Cal won 73-61  Greif scored 6 points on 2 field goals attempts, 0 free throws: 2-2 from behind the arc.  3.0 pts per field goal attempt: extremely good.

Greif was a 3 year captain and two time selection to the Pac-10 All-Academic First Team.  As a sophomore, Greif was a second team Pac-10 All-Academic selection, and a Pac-10 All-Freshman honorable mention after starting all 32 games her first year.  In Cal's record books, Greif is third in games played (136, including 109 consecutive stars), third in three-pointers made (137) and ninth in three-point percentage (.337).  She is (unofficially) first all time in sock fashion, though I think the black socks are more intimidating to opposing players.

via leftcoasthoops.com

While her NCAA eligibility has expired, Greif continues her involvement with college basketball as a intern coach.  Ironically, she fills this role approximately 45 miles south of Berkeley, at Leland Stanford Junior University.  Lauren graciously took some time out of her busy schedule to answer some questions about Berkeley, Stanford, and Justin Bieber before tomorrow's Cal/Stanford game at Maples.

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Let's face reality Cal fans: there's a pretty decent chance we're going to lose on Saturday.  I'm not saying it's a certainty, but we're approximately three touchdown underdogs for a reason.  Instead of sticking our heads in the sand loose fill on which Memorial Stadium rests, we need to be prepared for a potentially negative outcome.

The fact that this possible loss would be to the ducks merits special attention.  They are the only fans I've encountered at Memorial that were aggressively talking trash after a loss.  That was four years ago, 2006, and what a game it was.  Cal dominated from start to finish, and yet, for some reason, large packs of duck fans started jive talking.  I was more amazed at their tenuous grasp on reality than anything else, as they were so clearly willing to look past the events of the last few hours as if they had never happened.

To use an Obamaism, let's be frank.  Oregon is not a good school.  Most of their alums and fans are quite possibly illiterate.  Due to their lack of intellect, they have reasoning skills of hamster and the vocal aggression of coked up badger.  They are going to heckle us, win or lose, and they are probably going to win.  We need to be ready.

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For all you die-hard Giants Fans (Zoonews) and you band-wagoners (the rest of you), this should be a day of celebration.  The City's first world series, and the team's first championship since 1954: enjoy it.  I am a hockey/Cal fan first and foremost, and a Mariners/Twins fan when it comes to baseball, so I was not invested very much in this world series.  Still, it was highly enjoyable to look around the bar last night, first at the stress and anxiety and finally at the glee and genuine happiness.  That so many of my friends are so happy, and that W. and father lost is just icing on the cake.

The happy faces I saw reminded me of myself 18 months ago, when the Pens bucked all kinds of history to win sport's most difficult prize, the Stanley Cup.  That mixture of euphoria and relief is intoxicating.  And that there's no guarantee it will happen again next  year (or in the next 50 years) only makes the celebration more urgent and important.

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I conceived of and started writing Reveling in Victory a few years ago as a celebratory post game recap.  Since we now publish approximately 17 in game and recap threads, it has become redundant, and thus I no longer write it.  Still, something about beating ucla brings out the best ranter in me, so deal with it - I'm writing this irrelevant, nonsensical post.

How to sum up a bruin fan?  There are so many subtle, insipid, naive, vapid character traits, it is hard to sketch a full portrait in limited words.  I shall resort to anecdotes from my walk down from the stadium:

CBKWit: "Dude, Arian Foster is the man!  He killed the Raiders last week."

ucla fan wearing #26 DeShaun Foster jersey: "Yeah, we could have used him today."

CBKWit (To myself): "I can't even make fun of him because he doesn't know enough to get the joke."

...

CBKWit: "It's ok man, don't feel too bad...you didn't honestly think you were going to win, did you?

ucla fan, hanging his head: "Yeah, I did, we beat Texas."

CBKWit: "You know the last time you won a game here?"

ucla fan: "No"

CBKWit: "1998."

via cdn2.sbnation.com

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Mike Tepper is many things - tackle, guard, Dallas Cowboy, Golden Bear, good samaritan.  He is not a vampire, but there aren't any Tom Cruise movies titled "Interview with the 1st team all pac-10 left tackle," so this graphic will have to do. 

Mike Tepper entered Cal in 2004.  My first memory of Tepper was at the LA coliseum during the 2004 Cal/sc game (yeah, that one).  Mike was redshirting for the year and I was a starter at second trumpet.  I ran into Tepper as he was leaving the field and I was entering it for halfitme.  He said something like "We're dominating these guys, we just have to stop shooting ourselves in the foot."  Sadly, we all remember GMac dropping a td and Makonnen slipping at the goal-line; Tepper's remark was painfully astute.

In the summer of 2005, Tepper was protecting a fellow Cal athlete when a group of men ran him over with their car, breaking his leg in several places.  Mike will always have a place in Cal lore for his heroic actions. 

Mike returned to the field in 2006, playing in every game and starting two of them.  He started all 13 games at right tackle in 2007.  A pectoral injury and subsequent surgery kept him out for 2008, so Mike returned for a 6th year in 2009, starting every game at left tackle.  He was selected to the 1st team all-pac 10 team and was an honorable mention All American.

Tepper graciously took some time out of his busy schedule with the Dallas Cowboys to answer some questions with the California Golden Blogs.

 

via imgs.sfgate.com

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So my girlfriend and I are going out for dinner and a few beers when she gets a text message from her dad, a finance manager for BMW in greater Los Angeles: "I just sold Andrew Sutton a car."  My first thought was, "Why does Andrew Sutton sound familiar?"  A split second later I busted up laughing and grabbed her phone.  "Ask him if he is an expert," I texted her dad.  A few minutes later I got the reply: "He cracked up and said to tell you, yes, he is an expert."  I finished it off the exchange with a simple text, "Go Pens."

[We are ranking the best non Big Games of the 2000s.  So far, we have #10 - Baylor, 2002, #9 - Washington, 2006, #8 - Michigan St. 2002, #7 - Texas A&M 2006, #6 - Virginia Tech 2003]

In my eyes, the 2006 game between Cal and Oregon at Memorial Stadium is second only, in ranking games of the Tedford era, to 2003 usc.  2003 usc is "probably" still to come on this list, and for good reason - it's the only time Tedford has beaten usc, it went to triple overtime, it was the first time Cal had beaten a top 3 opponent in 25 years (and we haven't since), and any time Pete Carroll lost at usc was a great time, because we finally got to see his true colors.  It's all fun and games when you're winning 80% of the time; the 20% of the time Carroll lost, however, that arrogant grin vanished, he somehow forgot to shake the opposing coach's hand, and he generally failed to give the opposing team any credit.  His team emulated him - witness Matt Leinart saying usc was a better team after losing to Texas in the 2006 National Title game.  Real class acts all around, but I digress.

Cal/Oregon 2006 did not feature usc losing.  It did not go to triple overtime.  The game wasn't even competitive, as Cal dominated from literally the opening kickoff.  Instead, it was the most electric atmosphere I have ever witnessed/participated in at Memorial Stadium.  It was the loudest I've ever heard Memorial.  I would contend that the game represents the high water mark of Tedford's tenure, to this point.  Most of all, this game demonstrated what an awesome force our University can be.

Everything about this game was phenomenal - the athletic department's marketing team even turned in their best piece of the decade.  Watch it with the sound on.

Thanks to my old roommate at the Danger Stairs for uploading this.

I still get crazy goosebumps watching this video.

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Note: this exercise is completely ludicrous, because there was a 0% chance of it happening in reality.  But what if...

Although he signed a $100 million contract, Kovalchuk's cap hit is only $6 million per season.  That's only $1 million more per season than our new friend, recently signed Paul Martin.  What if, instead of shelling out $5 million for Martin, Shero had inked Kovalchuk at $6 million per season?  Suddenly, we are not looking for a top line winger, or any forward.  We can roll out:

The Koon-Crosby-Dupuis

Kovalchuk-Malkin-Staal

Cooke-Letestu-Kennedy

Adams-Talbot-Rupp.

(Feel free to drop Staal down to 3C, Letestu/WBS player down to 4C, and Talbot up to Malkin's wing)

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I am kind of a rare breed, being a Pens fan and a Cal fan.  It's a pretty easy explanation (my dad is from Pittsburgh and I grew up cheering for the Pens, and I went to Berkeley for college), but still, not exactly common.  As we sang at my elementary school "I'm the unique and exceptional me, I'm one of a kind, you can see."

Anyways, I am one of the Managers at the Cal SBN site, californiagoldenblogs.com, though truth be told, I spend more time here during the playoffs.  I wrote up our daily link dump for today (link here) and added a poll about the top plays from last year's cup run.  The first comments are links to videos of these plays.  So go over there, vote in the poll, watch these very uplifting videos, and say hi to my Cal friends.  Watching these videos will make you feel a lot better, trust me.

Go Pens/Bears

Twist and I don't often see eye to eye.  It's not that we're mortal enemies, exactly; there's no Lex Luthor in this relationship.  More accurately, I'm the Brain, and he's Pinky.  I'm Modern Family, and Twist is everything else on ABC, including Cougar Town.  I'm a beautiful, accurate Kyle Boller spiral (rare, I know), and Twist is LaShaun Ward's hands.

I think Twist is illogical, obnoxious, and vain.  Twist thinks I'm lazy, mean, and lack follow-through.  To quote Maude Lebowski, he doesn't approve of my lifestyle and, needless to say, I don't approve of his.  We're both right, but that's beside the point.  Which is, we don't agree on a lot, but we both know jazz is awesome.  And on May 13th, a legend played Zellerbach Hall. 

It was the second time I've seen Sonny Rollins at Zellerbach.  He'll turn 80 in September, and he can barely walk at this point; he lumbers around the stage like an arthritic elephant, swinging his tenor like a trunk.  But despite his lack of mobility, the man is still an incredible musician.  He's aggressive, loud, and quirky.  Rollins is up there with Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Wayne Shorter as the best tenor players ever, and is one of the last of his generation still alive, much less playing at an incredibly high level.  As a bonus, he had a phenomenal drummer playing for him, Kobie Watkins.  The second piece of the evening featured a lengthy solo by Watkins, and aside from Sonny's opening and closing numbers, it was the highlight of the night.

All this is to say, go see him the next time he's in Berkeley.  He said he'll be back again, and it's not often you get a chance to see a living legend.  Better yet, go see him May 19th, this Wednesday, at UC Davis.

Thank you, Sonny, for helping me relax after the Pens were eliminated from the playoffs.  You are a hero.

Hey DBD circle-jerkers!  Guess What?  Cal has a game tonight!  6:55 against Louisville.  Of course, this will come as a surprise to many of you (Carp, Rishi, Twist, for starters) because you apparently are not Cal fans.  If you were Cal fans, you would have picked Cal to beat Louisville in your California Golden Blogs NCAA tournament bracket challenge extravaganza.

Why pick Louisville?  Well, you get virtually no benefit, as picking a winner in a first round game gets you a whopping 1 point, out of something like 25,000 possible.  If you really think Louisville is going to the final four and you have to pick them over Cal to do so, fine.  But guess what?  Rishi, Carp, Twist, and probably everyone else who picked Louisville has them losing to Duke in the second round!  So you're picking Cal to lose for only one possible bracket point, which will make absolutely no difference in the final standings.

Are these guys even Cal fans?  Sure, they hang out 50 hours a week on this site...but 99% of it is right here in the dbd.  Twist would skip a Cal game to hold his wife's hand while she got a pedicure.  Rishi would skip a Cal game for a Lemon Drop.  I'm pretty sure Carp doesn't even know we have a basketball team (we do have a women's basketball team, who beat those farmers from uc davis on Wednesday.  Yeah, our women's bball team is better than your women's bball team.  Eat it, Aggies).

Of course, maybe you guys are just cold-hearted, dispassionate thinkers who don't allow sentimentality (like four senior starters leading us to our first pac-10 championship in 50 years) to get in the way of your expert analysis.  Oh wait, you know who knows virtually nothing about college basketball?  Rishi, Carp, and Twist, that's who!  What's the over/under on the number of games the three of them, combined, have seen all year?  8?  So maybe they're going with the betting public?  Nope, the game is a pick 'em.  No favorite, no underdog.  What we have here are 3 people (and I'm sure there are more of you - out yourselves!) who know nothing about college basketball, have no favorite to go on...and pick against Cal, when there is no benefit to do so.

So why?  Why such a stupid, dick move?  Attention.  They're all attention whores, which is painfully, annoyingly clear after reading approximately 3 comments in any dbd.  And now I'm giving them the attention they want.  I'm no better than they are, except I am because at least I picked Cal to win.

Real Cal fans, it's time to stand up.  As Mike Silver said, get your goddamn game face on.  Enough cutesy bullshit picking against Cal in a toss-up game.  Have some fucking faith in your team.  Go bears, prove the fair-weather asshats wrong.

Friday January 8, 2010 11:27 Comment From Knox Harrington: Can you please roll ucla at Pauley? I hate them.

Jerome Randle: UCLA made me mad. I know we should have won that game. I'm more upset that I wasn't 100 percent and I couldn't be myself. From this point on, the entire Pac-10 is just going to get my best.

via image57.webshots.com

TOUGHNESS

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The womens' games weren't televised, and instead of watching Cal blow out Oregon by 30 on Thursday, RemorsefulBruinBabe and I learned how to make lamb steaks, seafood linguine, and bananas flambe.  It was in the Twist vein of skipping Cal athletics for domesticated irrelevance, but A) doesn't learning how to cook (and eating!) those delicious dishes sound better than sitting through a Tween comedy? and B) unlike Mr. Hook, I go to more than one game a year.  And although I hate to miss a Cal victory. I think the Oregon game can be summarized by one sentence: At halftime, Patrick Christopher had the same amount of points (21) as the entire Oregon team.

All this is to say, the only Cal game I saw last week was Cal's near disaster neé blowout against Oregon State on Saturday.  OSU's furious comeback (they went on a 13-1 run over 5:11) started after I sent this text message: "We're playing now.  This game is over."  Whoops.  One would think that I would have learned my lesson last year, when Cal did not hit a field goal over the last 9 minutes in their home loss to OSU, but I'm a moron.

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Email Cal BBall photoshops/ms paints to goldenblogs@gmail.com

As discussed in this space last week (I quote myself) "Simply put, without Randle playing at an all conference level, and without Harper Kamp and Jorge Gutierrez, Cal is not a very good team".  We saw it two weeks ago - Randle was barfing and missing threes in the ucla game, so we lost.  Randle went for 21 against  usc and held the opposing point guard, Mike Gerrity, to four points and zero assists, and we won.  Against WSU last Thursday, Randle scored 39 (6th most in school history), and Cal won in a game that was sadly not televised.  We will have to rely on first hand accounts from the guys at CougCenter to relive one of the great individual performances in Cal basketball history.  Saturday's game against UW was tragically televised, allowing us to watch one of Randle's worst individual performances less than 48 hours after his best.  Randle had zero points and seven turnovers in the first half; UW crushed Cal.

Since I didn't witness any of Thursday's game, all I can offer are text messages I received from Mike Montgomery, who kept me informed with Roxy's radio call while I was at the women's game.  They were exciting at the time, but if you want to know what the score was at each media timeout, it's probably easier to just check out the play by play at espn.  I can offer plenty of insights about the UW game, but that game was terrible.  So we'll discuss it only briefly before moving on to good games that I actually watched - the women beating up UW and outlasting WSU.

First though, RemorsefulBruinBabe and I, while checking out the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, discovered the origins of Bob Gregory's defensive philosophy:

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Email Cal Basketball Photoshops / MS Paints to goldenblogs@gmail.com

It's tough to call last week's slate a success, since A) ucla sucks & B) they beat us.  Cal rebounded nicely from the absolutely brutal loss to the bruins by beating a more formidable opponent, usc, on Saturday, but you only get so many home games against the bottom of the conference.  On paper, the home game against ucla was the easiest on our conference schedule, so Wednesday's loss hurts beyond the visceral, I can't believe we lost to these ass-clowns again! reaction.  It's Cal's first real blemish of the season, and when you don't have a marquee win (sadly, beating Iowa State at home does not qualify), you need to avoid bad losses.  One loss probably won't keep Cal out of the tournament, but this one will hurt our seeding.

If you are a masochist and want to relive that loss, here's Avinash's recap, and here's Avinash's breakdown with a ranty podcast from yours truly.  I really recommend not clicking on either of these links, though Avinash gets points for the perfect caption for this photo: "Oh, kill me now."

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As good as last year's Jorge Game was (and it was great), I could get used to this.  Cal won 92-66 in a game that was rout from the beginning.  The last time Cal beat Stanfurd by as many as 26 points was February 1986.  Put another way, this was the largest Cal victory over the Furd in the last 50+ games between the two schools.  It may have lacked the drama of Big Game, but who cares?  It was a decadent, luxurious, relaxing victory, against a program that is used to doing the same to us.  On Saturday, and for the foreseeable future, this is a lopsided rivarly in our favor.

Why was it such a rout?  I could talk about Jerome Randle's scoring acumen or Max Zhang's continued development, but that's not the real story.  No, Cal is plenty good, but this game was more about how impressively bad the Cardinal is.  They have two good players, forward Landry Fields and guard Jeremy Green.  That's it.  The rest of their roster does not belong in a major conference.  I'd like to see Andrew Zimmermann, Matei Daian, or Da'Veed Dildy compete against Lil' Romeo in a "worst scholarship player in the Pac-10" competition.  The fact that I can nominate three furd players for my contest and not mention my favorite whipping boy Drew Shiller is pretty telling.  I will grudgingly admit that Drew has improved since his 9 minute, 4 foul performance against Randle two years ago; he still doesn't have D1 athleticism, but he's learned how to stay in front of his man on defense and there's a scrappiness to his game that the rest of his team could use.  Then again...

via grfx.cstv.com

...if this is your 3rd-5th best player, there's a good chance your team is terrible.  Which Stanfurd is.  It's one thing to "know" that Stanfurd is bad by examining their statistics, and to know that Cal should beat them about as easily as they beat UCSB last Tuesday.  It's another to watch them play, to see their utter dearth of talent and say "they really are much worse than Murray St."

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I'm a bad witness this week - I only saw one half of one game, the second half against UCSB.  Fortunately, we have a great community here at the California Golden Blogs, so I'll just lift some comments from the Utah Valley open thread.  Coupled with the above photoshop (thanks again CaliforniaCMB; everyone else, if you want to submit a Cal BBall photoshop to be featured in this column, send an email to goldenblogs@gmail.com), I have basically turned this column into a compilation of other people's work.  My work here is done.

First, let's hear from Ragnarok after the jump:

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Nice work CaliforniaCMB.  Email Cal BBall photoshops to: goldenblogs@gmail.com

Saturday found a scene familiar to long suffering Blues - Cal basketball providing a glimmer of hope as Cal football fizzles out.  I went to both the men's and women's basketball games on Saturday, two blowout victories surrounding our predictably unpredictable no show at UW.  RemorsefulBruinBabe called it a "losing sandwich on winning bread."

The women's freshmen and the men's backups performing so well would be the lead story here, but RemorsefulBruinBabe just found this, via BearBallCarrier.  You may not like basketball, or a capella, but the combination is scintillating.  That furd Tiger Woods makes you question humanity, and then Max Zhang and Maestro Randle save the day.  Max swaying in the background puts it over the top.

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First thing's first: BIG, big props to CaliforniaCMB for his great work above.  If you want to submit a (mens or womens) Cal bball photoshop/MS Paint to be featured in this space, email us at goldenblogs@gmail.com.  A couple of football notes before we get to bball:

TwistNHook had the line of the night about the Neuheisel/Carroll D-bag competition: "dude, I bet Neuheezy is happy, because you know that dude bet the fucking over."  Well put, Twist

I turned on the Stanford/Notre Dame game just in time to see Condi Rice administer the coin flip as this week's Stanfurd honorary captain.  I'm hoping they drag out Donny Rumsfeld for the Emerald Bowl

And to basketball:  About 40 minutes into one of our podcasts (so nobody heard it), Ragnarok predicted that Jamal Boykin would have a 20 point game sometime this season.  I was skeptical, because I didn't think there'd be enough points to go around with Randle, Christopher, and Robertson.  On Sunday, Roberston was not in the lineup due to his mysterious foot injury and Christopher continued his uneven play, chipping in only 5 points.  It was the perfect opportunity for Boykin to contribute, and he matched his career high with 22 points.  Ragnarok 1, CBKWit 0.

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Maybe debuting this picture last week was a mistake.  Maybe P-Chris saw it and it went to his head.  Maybe he just felt its presence in the atmosphere.  In any case, he had a pretty terrible showing in New York: 11-34 shooting, 2-12 on threes, only 7 boards, 6 assists/5 turnovers in two games.  Yeah, he struggled.  But you know what?  I stand by this graphic, mostly because it took me 2 hours to make.  I also think Christopher is going to be a lot better than 12 points, 3 boards, and 33% shooting per game this year.  So let's stick with this picture for now in the hope that P-Chris lights up Jacksonville and Princeton this week.  And if you don't like it...email me a different one: goldenblogs@gmail.com.

Christopher also struggled last year in the NCAA tournament loss to Maryland, shooting 4-14 and 0-7 on threes.  Does he get rattled by the big stage?  Maybe.  If so, I'm glad that we scheduled this early season tournament, and the game at Kansas.  Hopefully Christopher will got the jitters out early and redeem himself in March.

It's also possible that he struggles against long, athletic defenders.  We all know that Christoper is not great at creating his own shot, which may be exacerbated when he goes up against a very athletic team like Syracuse.  I can't remember if Maryland's stud Grevis Vasquez guarded him in last year's tournament game, but I wouldn't be surprised.

It's probably a little unfair to single out Christopher, as virtually the entire team struggled in New York.  If you were lucky enough to miss these games, Cal lost by 22 to Syracuse and was down 24 to Ohio State before losing by 6.  The Syracuse game was a complete beat down, made slightly better by the Cuse dominating defending champ North Carolina in the second half the following night.  Cal was actually in worse shape the next night versus Ohio State when Monty got T'd up for yapping about Jorge.  Cal responded with a 17-2 run and it was moderately close (6-10 points) the rest of the way, but not nearly close enough that you actually felt the Bears had a chance.

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The Wall Street Journal poses the question: Stanford's Jim Harbaugh: The Perfect Football Coach?

4th and 8 at STAN 23 Andrew Luck pass incomplete to Jim Dray

Guess not.

This picture proves what I've felt all along: Syd is divine.  I thought only I could see the beam of light which follows him everywhere, but now I have photographic proof.  And yes, standing this close to Syd, on Standfurd's field, after this game, was INCREDIBLE!

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With only 3 more chances to Revel in Victory and with Avinash completing basketball recaps before I can even exit Haas, I am running out of my extremely limited usefulness around here.  If I don't start contributing, I'll probably miss out on that internet money which is coming to us any day now.  So for the 5 basketball fans around here (including 3 mods), I give you CBKWitness, a weekly compilation of what I witnessed from Cal Basketball. 

Most important observation so far?  Go to the games, people!  Haas was about half full for the two men's games, which is embarrassing for a team this good, this entertaining, and this easy to root for.  Show up and support our team!

The men won their two preliminary Coaches Vs Cancer games last week, 75-70 over Murray St and 95-61 over Detroit.  From the Murray State game:

 - The referees respect Montgomery much more than Braun.  The lead official called an absolutely horrendous charge on Boykin midway through the first half, and Monty completely dressed him down at the time out as 4,000 Cal fans looked on.  Not surprisingly, the refs didn't call much on Cal for the rest of the half and all of the close calls went the Bears' way.

 - From my friend Mike Montgomery: "Murray St is playing some good d".  They were, for almost the entire game.  Murray State is a good team and they challenged Cal for the first half before mounting a serious comeback to close the game.  It was a little tense in the final minutes as Randle nearly turned it over a couple times and Murray State hit some improbable threes.  Don't be surprised to see the Racers in the NCAA tournament.

 - Randle put on 10 or 15 pounds in the off-season to improve his defense (sick of Jorge hounding him in practice, perhaps?) and it looks to have paid off.  He was strong on the ball and did not let Murray State's point guard break him down on the dribble.

 - The downside to Randle's new bulk?  He did not look as explosive offensively and struggled to shake his man.  I hope the extra pounds haven't slowed him down, because his speed is one of his chief assets, and at his height he needs defenders to respect his quickness in order to get enough space to get his shot off.

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Short Answer. Yes. I think we will make the Rose Bowl.

 - AZ Desert Swarm, Friday, November 13, 2009

Ah Arizona Desert Swarm.  So young, so naive.  So unused to heartbreaking losses with so much on the line.  Welcome to our world.  I say this with a whole lot of empathy and a touch of sympathy, but just a touch.  Cal has owed Arizona some serious payback for the 2006 game (find the recap on ESPN if you want - it's too depressing for a link in Reveling in Victory), and it looks like we have it.  Arizona has to run the table against Oregon and Usc, (and ASU, but they don't really count) to make it to Pasadena now.  I hope they win at least one against Oregon or sc, so they can look back at our loss as the one that kept them out of the Rose Bowl.  "If only we had beaten Cal," they will say, just as we said "If only DeSean was wearing a smaller shoe, or if only a ghost hadn't tackled the Hawk at the 1 yard line, or if only the refs hadn't called that ATROCIOUS pass interference on Hughes."  The blood blister I got on my hand from slamming a pizza prong after that PI healed long ago; maybe now they blood blister on my heart can heal as well.

Luke Walton, may you haunt my dreams no more.

via onthebuzzer.files.wordpress.com

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I'm still shaking from this one, or perhaps from Cephalexin.  Cal football - same side effects as 2000 mgs of antibiotics!  A novice Cal fan may have seen the first two touchdowns and concluded that we win in a walk.  David Norrie and Terry Gannon sure wanted us to believe that the rout was on, but we knew better.  Hell, even if you've only been a Cal fan for the last 2 months, you've seen Cal jump way, way up on Minnesota, ucla, and WSU only to let all of them back into the game in various degrees.  The 14 point lead was great, but just like at Minnesota, we blew the chance to go up by three scores and before you knew it, the game was tied.  Cal deserves a ton of credit for coming out and carrying the play early in basically every game this year (Oregon for the opening kickoff, USC up until the interception in the endzone), but it seems that we need this early cushion to maintain the lead during the opposition's inevitable comeback.  If we don't build this lead (Oregon and USC, obviously), we are in deep, deep trouble.  Of course, most teams are not going to simply roll over and fail to score for the entire game, but Cal lets opponents back into games with startling efficiency and predictability.

More so than any game this year, this one reminded me of Cal's trip to Tempe in 2007.  Cal led 13-0 early, but our penchant for field goal attempts instead of touchdowns put us up by only 6 at half.  Cal's offense stalled and the defense was unable to stop ASU in the second half.  With a few minor modifications, that was the story yesterday, at least until the final drive.  Cal's inability to control the line of scrimmage throughout the game but especially in the second half was particularly troubling.  And yet, unlike in 2007, Cal came up with a big stop on defense to get the ball back after Little Italy's second shank and a big drive to win the game.  After a largely frustrating game, Cal displayed the poise and execution they often lacked to escape with the win.

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This one was over early.  Just before kickoff, I called a TD on the return.  Jeremy Ross only returned it to the WSU 29.  Stupid me.  Two plays later, with less than a minute gone from the game, Best ran a basic "Go" route and Riley hit him with a nice throw on the outside shoulder for Cal's first touchdown. 

Best beat former Cal corner Brandon Jones on the play.  Here's what Jones had to say earlier this week: "Jahvid is good and he’s fast," Jones said. "I do want to see him one-on-one. Somebody’s got to win. If I lose, then I’ll come on top the next time."  Whoops.  No word on whether Jones came on top next time, but Best finished with 186 yards and three touchdowns on only 14 touches, so we'll put a couple tallies in Jahvid's column.


Cal would score three more touchdowns in the quarter and another early in the second to take a 35-3 lead.  Riley finished the first quarter with some pretty solid numbers: 3-3, 85 yards, 3 touchdowns.  Yes, that is one touchdown per pass attempt.

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