That was fun, wasn’t it?  No one, NO ONE, can accuse the Bears of being boring the last couple days.  I can’t wait to meet Oregon tonight.

Random, scattered thoughts:

 - Ubaka is awesome.  I love watching him play.  He’s taken his lumps throughout his career, but right now, he is EXACTLY what you want from a senior leader.  Singlehandedly, he is not letting this season end without a fight.

 - I haven’t been this excited about a Bears’ win since, oh, last year’s tournament.  In fact, I’m really starting to come around on this whole Pac-10 tournament idea.  I know, I know, most of the time, the teams with losing records are dispatched easily, and the teams with their tournament berths assured come out disinterested, but when a talented team with nothing to lose makes a run, that’s what postseason tournaments are all about.  The NCAAs are built around this cinderella format, and right now, I’m loving it.

 - The skeptical Bears fan in me says we’re gonna run out of gas in the second half tonight, but the optimist in me believes otherwise.  We’ve already beaten Oregon once this year; once more gets us to the finals.

 - The last (and only other) time an 8 seed knocked off a 1 seed in the Pac-10 tournament?  2003, when UCLA upset top-ranked Arizona, thus saving Steve Lavin’s job for at least another day.  However, the Bruins lost the next night to Oregon and Lavin was fired soon after.

 - Ever try listening to basketball on the radio?  It’s tough.  So much going on so fast, it’s hard to get an idea of what’s going on.  That said, I think Roxy Bernstein does a bang-up job making sense of it all; I’m sure he was a lot more pleasant to listen to than whoever was calling the game for Fox Sports Net.  I felt like I saw the game, even though I didn’t.  If you’re ever tired of Dan Belluomini and the terrible FSN broadcasts (and I’ll bet you are), put the TV on mute and turn the radio to 1550 AM.  Good stuff.

 - Furthermore, I didn’t know how good I had it with the Cal radio team until later that night, when I tried to listen to the Stanford broadcast.  These guys were terrible.  I have no idea what the hell happened at the end of that game.  You think Starkey is frustrating when he doesn’t give names?  Sometimes, I didn’t know which team had the ball.  Also, they kept repeating things, as though the listeners didn’t speak very good English, and only by speaking louder and slower could I be made to understand.  Ugh.

- For the record, I enjoy listening to Starkey call a game.  What he lacks in specifics he makes up for with enthusiasm.