The Pac-10 has released their 2007 football schedule, which you can take a look at here.  Two things jumped out at me (besides the fact that Oregon State has only 10 games scheduled):

- First, I noted yesterday that Cal and Stanford had pushed back their rivalry game to December, and it now looks as though the rest of the Pac has done the same.  Wazzu will play at UDub the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and the rest of the rivalry games will happen on December 1, meaning that everyone gets a bye, and everyone but the Washington schools gets two (I’m sure neither Washington school wanted to play a football game in Seattle in December).  This should serve to give the Pac-10 further exposure on the last week of the season (when most conferences are playing their championship games), as I’m sure the conference loved the attention that last year’s USC-UCLA game brought.  Judging by their wholesale embrace of the move, I think it’s a reasonable assumption that this sort of scheduling philosophy will be standard practice for the foreseeable future.

- Secondly, on November 15, Oregon will play at Arizona, and on November 22 (Thanksgiving), USC will play at Arizona State.  Note that these are both Thursday games, which is something I don’t recall the Pac-10 ever doing before.  Sure, Pac-10 teams have played on Thursday night before (I remember Cal playing on a Thursday at Utah a couple years ago, and at New Mexico State the next year), but never at home, and never in a conference game.  Well, it appears that the success the Big East has had with its prime-time Thursday matchups (undefeated West Virginia @ undefeated Louisville, and undefeated Louisville @ undefeated Rutgers the next week) has proven to be enough for the Pac-10 to change it’s ways.  Sure, the games can be harder to get to for some fans, and can cause the traveling team to miss even more classes, but college football has never concerned itself with how much class the student-athletes might miss.  No word as to whether these games will be on ESPN (as is standard for Thursday nights) or Fox Sports Net (who holds the contract for broadcasting Pac-10 games, and might be making a move against the Worldwide Leader).

This season hasn’t exactly gone as planned for the Cal men’s basketball team, but it hasn’t gone sour yet.  Despite the injuries, the Bears still have a fighting chance to make the postseason dance, though it won’t be easy.  While Joe Lunardi’s bracket does not currently contain the Bears, they do find themselves squarely in the bubble discussion.  They have an RPI of 42 and a strength of schedule of 15, numbers that, if they hold up, will certainly merit NCAA discussion, if not guarantee a bid.

The Pac-10 is exceptionally tough this year, with 8 of the teams having an RPI in the top 80, and UCLA and Arizona holding spots No. 1 and 2, respectively.  That toughness means that the Bear’s RPI and SOS numbers are likely to remain high, but it also means wins will come at a premium, especially on the road.  No game is a gimmie; even bottom-feeding Arizona State, winless in the Pac-10, took Cal to overtime in Tempe.  To get to the tournament, the Bears will have to get all the games that they’re supposed to win and steal a couple that they’re not.

That, of course, leads us to this week’s road trip to the Oregon schools.  It has all the makings of a classic road split.  Tonight’s game against the Beavers is definitely winnable, while Saturday’s contest against the No. 9 Ducks may very well not be.  If the Bears have serious postseason aspirations, OSU is a must-win.  Not only do they need to get every win they can, but they can’t afford a bad loss (OSU has an RPI of 176), even on the road.  It’s the sort of game that good teams get because they can play consistently, whereas mediocre teams, despite their talent, might get caught looking ahead to a top-ten team on Saturday.

Of course, if the Bears can take down the Ducks at Mac Court, it would be the sort of résumé headliner that the selection committee loves to see.  But that’s on Saturday, and we shouldn’t get caught looking ahead either.  A sweep would be golden, but a shutout would be devastating, and a split sounds just about right.

 

My slow march through the 2006 home game schedule continues! When I first announced this blog project (or blogject as nobody has ever and will never call it), Go Beers, who currently resides in Houston, expressed concern with my mental well being.  Could not I see that it was an away game and this was a series of home game recaps?  He had forgotten about the Pac10’s UNIMAGINABLY stupid TV situation. 

 

I am talking about how a ranked team could be left off of TV, not once, but twice.  I was really hoping to use "not once, not twice, but thrice" a la Mr. Burns in the softball episode, but alas that Arizona game *was* on TV.  No matter how much I try to block it from my memory.

 

At the time of this game, Cal was ranked 10th in the nation.  Yet, the only way to watch the game on TV was to go to Memorial Stadium and watch it on the big screen there.  Not that many people showed up.  I’d say maybe 2,000. 

 

 

There are some more than in that photo, but that was a huge chunk of it.  While there, I happened to remark to a friend how if this was in the South, the place would be packed.  My friend replied that if the game was in the South, IT’D BE ON TV!  This game and the OSU game not being on TV (especially considering how good OSU later turned out to be) is really terrible, just horrible.  Its a shame on anybody involved with the TV scheduling of the Pac-10.  Though, one nice thing about watching it on the big screen while they piped in the soothing sounds of Joe Starkey was that every now and then Starkey would mention us fans sitting at the stadium and we would cheer loudly.  I guess it’s fairly self-absorbed to cheer yourself and your own fandom.  Oh well. 

 

So, dutifully, we lightly packed into the stadium to watch the game on the screen.  Even with the constant promotional blitz by Slingbox, it was still fairly hard to see the game.  Especially passing.  The ball was so tiny that it was near impossible to tell if the pass had been caught or not.  I basically went on whether or not the play continued.  That was pretty much the only way.  And I have 20/16 vision, I can only imagine how bad it was for those who only have, yknow, perfect vision.   Yeah, what’s up with them?  Losers.

 

Luckily, for us, this game was mostly about running and defense.  Here are the final stats.  And here are the highlights from the Cal Sports Report.  Since it wasnt on TV, its the only video I could find.

 

Now, Longshore apparently had the flu or some illness, so he was not at peak ability.  I’m not sure if that flu also continued all the way through November.  Sure seemed like it at times.   At WSU, Longshore was only able to pass for 176 yards.  And he was picked off as we neared the goalline on our first drive.  Not a great way to start the day.  Luckily, the D was able to hold and then Cal blocked the Wazzu punt and we were back in business at the Wazzu 5.  Lynch quickly teleported himself into the endzone and we were up 7-0.  Considering that Wazzu would only score 3 points that was enough right then and there to win the game.  But Tedford didn’t know that at the time and decided to try to score more.  An interesting if in no way flawed idea that really panned out this game. 

 

So, with Longshore not at full productivity, we had to rely on our running back to score these more points.  Man, that, like, totally sucks that our stud QB is ill, I only wish our RB was, yknow, ONE OF THE BEST, IF NOT THE BEST, IN THE NATION AND PERHAPS EVEN BETTER THAN EVERY HUMAN EVER TO EXIST IN THE HISTORY OF ORGANIZED HISTORY. 

 

Luckily, he is!

 

Marshawn had a sick game rushing for over 150 yards and 2 TDs.  Averaging 6 yards a carry, Marshawn was able to carry this team to victory.  Marshawn and the D.  WSU only had 3 fewer yards than Cal, but most of it was passing yards trying to catch up.  The Cal D only gave up 88 yards of rushing offense (most of it on one play). 

 

Moreover, out of 3 red zone chances by WSU, the Cal D only let them score on 1 (the FG).  In fact, there was no scoring at all in the 2nd half.  The 21-3 halftime score stood, so yet again we were able to enjoy a fairly dull 2nd half (but this time it was on a big TV hundreds of feet away!).   The key drive of the 2nd half went down a little like this:

 

W 1-10 W25   WASHINGTON STATE drive start at 02:32 (3rd).

W 1-10 W25   Hutsona,Derrell rush for 70 yards to the CAL5, 1ST DOWN WSU,  out-of-bounds (S. Thompson).      

W 1-G  C05   Brink,Alex pass incomplete to Dillon,Charles (S. Thompson).      

W 2-G  C05   Tardy,Dwight rush for 1 yard to the CAL4 (Anthony Felder;Abu Ma’afala).

W 3-G  C04   Brink,Alex pass complete to Tardy,Dwight for 3 yards to the CAL1 (W. Williams).

W 4-G  C01   Brink,Alex rush for no gain to the CAL1 (Steve Kelly;Brandon Mebane).

In 1 long rushing play (where they got all by 18 yards of their entire days rushing total), Wazzu got down to the Cal 5.  If I remember correctly, SydQuan made an impressive tackle to save the touchdown (or at least postpone it as we assumed at the time).  With 4 chances at the goal line from the 5, only down 21-3 with an entire quarter left, this proved to be a pivotal moment in the game.  Let them score and they are only down 11 with the 4th quarter left.  Not too difficult, especially with Longshore really Ayoobing that day.  Somehow manage to keep them out of the endzone and the game is pretty much ours. 

 

Well, as you can see from the play by play there, Cal *was* able to stuff them on the goal-line.  It all culminated in an unsuccessful quarterback run thanks to Brandon Mebane (we’ll miss you, Brandon!).  This was one of the few exciting moments of the 2nd half and the game.  Not only because of its implications, but also because we could kinda see what was going on.  

 

"Oh my science!  Something happened in the game!  I think."

WSU would actually intercept Longshore later and get back down to the Cal 12, but their 4th down pass was harmlessly incomplete.  So, again, the D deserves kudos for that.  After that, we’d see a lot of Marshawn running and running and running until we got the first win up in Pullman since 1979.  A lot was made of that length of time since our last victory, but it didn’t seem too important to me.  It was an overrated stat, because this was our first time EVER playing Wazzu away in Tedford’s tenure.  We faced them at home last year and in 02 (winning last year and losing in 02).  So, I wasnt too worried about that. 

 

 With the offense taking the half off, one of the few highlights was seeing the new Chancellor.  He wasn’t the Chancellor when we were there.  But it is always nice to meet him and interact with him.  He seemed very tall and very nice.  But mostly very tall. Or maybe I’m just standing one step lower.  I sure hope so. 

 

 And, of course, any chance you have to see this winning Cal scoreboard is nice:

 

 

That photo shows how far away we were (and I think I zoomed in) and how hard it was to see the game at times.  But at least we got to see it!  Now, let us never have to deal with this again.  

Next time up, the UDub football game.  Clearly, one of the MOST AMAZING football games of Tedford’s career.  I was on a Marshawn high for about 2 weeks after that game, it was so amazing.  LOVED IT! GO BEARS!