Cal-Arizona Thoughts
- Dodged a bullet with the weather today. I love football, but standing in the rain for 3 1/2 hours is hardly my idea of fun.
- Forsett turns in another fabulous game. Hardly worth mentioning anymore.
- Hawkins continues to come up huge. What I like is how he continues to find space over the middle for some big first downs, taking shots but popping right back up. On a day when DeSean was pretty quiet, he came up with some big third down conversions.
- People have been jumping all over Longshore lately, including myself, but I thought Longshore looked good today. Surprised to find that he only went 16 for 30. One ill-advised interception, but a lot of those other incompletions were either dropped passes or balls thrown away on purpose. Craig Stevens had a noticeable pair of drops in the second half.
- Antoine Cason was as advertised, mostly shutting down DeSean Jackson and picking Longshore off once. He’ll be in the league next year, thank god.
- Our defense did a good job keeping Arizona’s passing attack in front of them. With virtually no running game, Willie Tuitama set school records for passes attempted and completed, but Cal avoided giving up the big play. You may not like "bend but don’t break", but so far, we’re undefeated.
- This team really needs to work on its kickoff coverage. We keep giving teams great field position to start drives, and it’s really not fair to our defense (especially the sort of "bend and don’t break" defense that we have).
- My other concern from this game : penalties. I’m always skeptical of Pac-10 officiating, but 14 penalties for 121 yards is entirely unacceptable, and I’m sure Tedford will let his team know that. Too many personal fouls and offsides and other boneheaded penalties kept Arizona in the game for far too long. Make them earn it, guys!
- Despite all the complaining we’ve been doing, we’re 4-0! Go Bears! Bring on the Ducks!
The penalties were ridiculous. Obviously my first thought is to blame it on the Pac-10 officiating, but from whatever I could make out of Versus’ horrible broadcast, they were all legit. And even Tedford only half-heartedly tried to give the refs a hard time. Hmm, I wonder what it sounds like when Tedford puts the verbal beatdown on the whole team for something.
Comment by BombayBear — September 22, 2007 @ 11:32 pm
How about DeCoud? He was a monster–everywhere, every time.
Comment by Calfan — September 23, 2007 @ 1:45 am
I’m more disappointed by the multiple offsides penalties. Most of the personal fouls, at least from what I could see via TV, were bad calls of the same variety that upset Tedford so much a year ago. The refs refuse to blow the whistle as the D is wrestling the ball carrier down, so more guys come in to support–as they should. And then they’re blown for a late hit?! It was a rookie ref leading the crew yesterday, and it showed. Several bad calls went against the Bears, but the worst call of the day unjustly took an Arizona touchdown off the board at the beginning of the second half. How different the game might have been.
If the GameDay crew doesn’t matriculate out to Eugene on Saturday morning–far and away THE game of the day nationally, with WVU-USF being played on Friday night–then I think we can once again start complaining about “East Coast bias”.
Big question: can the Bears continue to play well when it’s the OTHER team who’s got the “revenge” card to play. Cal pretty much ruined/stiff-armed UO’s season last year on prime-time TV. Hard to believe that game which unveiled the golden jerseys for the first time was just one year ago. Go Bears!
Comment by California Pete — September 23, 2007 @ 9:03 am
Yeah, how about DeCoud! Major props to this guy. When was the last time the student section chanted a defensive player’s name? Deltha O’Neal?
Comment by ragnarok — September 23, 2007 @ 10:03 am
Two things that pissed me off about the refs:
#1 - Not the number of calls they made, but the amount of time it took them to make the calls. They were totally bush league, bumbling around and never getting organized, messing up rules and generally taking multiple minutes with every penalty, which is why I looked down at my watch and saw that the game had already taken three hours when we were still in the 3rd quarter!
#2 The horrible missed facemask call on one of Hawkin’s kickoff returns that every single person in the gold zone saw and was outraged by. Plus, of course, Cal was called for a personal foul on the same play, heightening the anger.
Other than that, good job Bears. I’m never going to complain about a game that starts with a 28-3 lead after experiencing the darkness of Holmoe
Comment by Nick — September 23, 2007 @ 10:21 am
The Bears Are Roaring (Blog Reactions to Arizona)
Jason Snell, Excuse Me For My Voice: “I also didn’t like Mike Stoops very much. He lost it a few times on the sidelines, which didn’t impress me. I really appreciated his playcalling in last year’s Cal-Arizona game, where he boldly w…
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