Hey, basketball season’s almost here!  During the Holmoe years, when Ben Braun was a hot new coach, coveted by the likes of Michigan, this exclamation was cause for hope.  Now, not so much.  Still, with the football team currently mired in a three-game losing streak, I’d bet a few of you have started turning your wandering eye towards Haas Pavilion; after all, with such low expectations, how could they possibly break your heart the way Tedford’s Boys have these last few weeks?

So, yeah, basketball…haven’t talked about that much lately…what’s going on with that?  Well, which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?  Aw, heck, you’re a masochistic Cal fan; you want the bad news first.

- Coming off a year in which injuries crippled what should have been a promising season, Braun was looking forward to a healthier group this year.  But two Bears have already been operated on before the season started:  Theo Robertson is recovering from hip surgery and likely out until January, while incoming freshman Omondi Amoke had a vascular abnormality in his calf operated on and probably won’t be ready for the start of the season.  Now comes word that Jerome Randle, a candidate to be our starting point guard, has had a biopsy on his kindey for an as-yet unknown condition.  Now, I’m not doctor (although I do watch a lot of House), but that sounds like it could be really serious, although nobody knows anything definite at this point. and probably won’t be ready for the season opener in a couple weeks.  Although we all hope this is no big deal, it sounds like no matter what, Randle won’t be ready for the beginning of the season.  Get better, Jerome!

What does this mean for the team?  Well, it leaves them dangerously thin at guard.  Nikola Knezevic is the starting point guard pretty much by default now, and Patrick Christopher will man the shooting guard position.  Backing them up?  Uh, walk-ons?  None of the 4 new scholarship players for the Bears play guard (a recruiting oversight?), so most likely to see playing time include David Liss, who played sporadically last year, mostly in garbage time, and Nican Robinson, who is transferring in after spending his freshman year on UCLA’s bench and sitting out last year.  Who knew we’d miss Alex Pribble so badly?

- OK, I promised you good news.  Well, in the first Coaches’ poll of the year, our Bears placed 14th, 3rd in the Pac-10 behind Stanford and Arizona State.  Of course, as you may have guessed, I’m referring to our women’s basketball team, which, unlike the men’s team, is quite highly regarded.  The heralded freshman class from two years ago is now a seasoned core of juniors, and coming off one of the best seasons in school history, head coach Joanne Boyle believes in this team so much that she turned down an offer from Duke, her alma mater, to remain the head coach of the Golden Bears.  Big things are expected from this group; you should make an effort to check them out.  In fact, if you’re a football season ticket holder like I am, you should have gotten a voucher for some free women’s basketball tickets with your ticket package.  Don’t let ‘em go to waste!

This is harder than it looks.

Oh, it doesn’t have to be.  Putting together a Top 25 ballot CAN be easy.  You could take the ballot from last week, drop everyone who lost a bunch of slots, depending on how bad the losses were, and move everyone else up.  So easy you don’t have to think about it.  Kinda like the Coaches’ Poll.

OR, you can sit down at the end of each week and reevaluate everything you thought you knew.  Starting with a blank piece of paper, list the best 25 teams in college football.  Come up with good reasons why one team is better than the ones below it.  This is not straightforward, especially if you’re looking for a solidly defensible position.  After all, HydroTech and I can’t even agree on who’s #1 this week (Yellow Fever took my side, which is how we ended up with LSU over Ohio State).  Given all the uncertainty, how can we hope to say whether Hawai’i is better than Tennessee or not?  (I say Tennessee would win easily — HydroTech disagrees.)

Before we started doing this BlogPoll thing, I thought filling out a top 25 ballot would be easy — after all, it’s easy to look at the latest AP poll and say "Michigan lost to App State!  There’s no way they’re better than Florida!"  But when I was putting together a ballot this week, I filled in the top 8 and then went "I have no freaking idea!"  I ended up putting a bunch of teams in a list, smushing them about until I didn’t absolutely hate myself, and then emailing it to Yellow Fever.  I’ve been doing that a lot lately.

Don’t believe me?  Try it yourself.  We here at the California Golden Blogs value your opinion, so if you think you know what order these teams should be in, we’d like to compare notes.  Watch some football this weekend, come up with a top 25 ballot, and send it to us at goldenblogs@gmail.com by Monday night.  We’ll average any ballot that seems well thought-out and reasonable with our own and call it our BlogPoll ballot for next week.

(Examples of non-reasonable ballots include those with nothing but SEC and Pac-10 teams, those with teams listed in alphabetical order, those with Washington State listed ‘because my brother goes there’, and any ballot with Hawai’i in the top 5.  Just because they’re undefeated doesn’t mean they’re any good.)

Anyway, here’s our ballot for the week:

The California Golden Blogs Top-25

1	LSU	—
2	Ohio State	—
3	Oregon	—
4	Boston College	1
5	Oklahoma	1
6	West Virginia	1
7	Kansas	5
8	Arizona State	—
9	Georgia	10
10	Missouri	3
11	Texas	7
12	Michigan	8
13	Virginia Tech	3
14	Florida	8
15	Alabama	8
16	Auburn	6
17	Tennessee	9
18	Connecticut	8
19	Hawaii	2
20	Kentucky	5
21	South Carolina	7
22	South Florida	11
23	Southern Cal	14
24	California	8
25	Boise State	1

- Is Boston College terrible for getting shut out at Virginia Tech for 57 minutes, or fantastic for making a dramatic comeback in the last 3?  I’m unsure, but I’m guessing it’s more of the latter.  As mediocre as they looked for most of that game, Blacksburg, VA on Thursday nights is still a place that title dreams go to die, and coming out of there with any sort of victory is impressive.  The top 3 teams still kick their butt in BCS game, however.

- OK, I’m not saying Texas A&M is good or anything, but Kansas still put on an impressive 2nd half performance at Kyle Field on Saturday night.  Will they win the Big XII?  I say Oklahoma beats them good in the title game.  Still, I feel a lot more comfortable about having them in the top 10 than I did last week.

- Sooo…Georgia got blown out at Tennessee, who got blown out at Florida, who got beat on a ‘neutral’ field in Jacksonville by…Georgia.  You figure it out.

- Hey, Connecticut, you’re in the top 25!  Now you’ve just got to get past Rutgers this weekend to stay there.  Is it weird to anyone else that Rutgers at UConn is actually an important game with BCS implications?

- Yeah, despite the disastrous month of October, I still think Cal is one of the top 25 teams in the country.  This may say more about the number of quality teams out there than it does about Cal.

- Welcome back to the top 25, Boise State.  I know we’d all forgotten about you after the UW loss, but 7-1 will get you some attention (including an impressive beatdown of Fresno State).  No BCS for you this year (losing to Washington is an automatic disqualifier), but some attention nonetheless.

I’ll be honest with you - I am severely lacking in motivation this week.  Up until five minutes ago, I even forgot who our Bears are scheduled to play this Saturday.  Washington State?  I know like…one guy on that team.

• Pretty good scouting report from Scout.com on the Cougars.
• Doba shows our Bears some love, and addresses the fact that they have zero commitments for next year.  Seriously.  Zero?  How is that possible?  I wonder if Doba knows you’re allowed to start recruiting yet.
• Some information on the more notable players on the Washington State Cougars.  Because I know you haven’t heard of them before now either.
• This just in - UCLA players are whiners.  Especially with regards to travel into the middle of nowhere.
• Washington State’s Wikipedia - "The first mascot was a terrier named "Squirt". Campus folklore has it that the terrier was selected because someone brought a pet dog to campus."  That sounds only slightly less threatening than Oski.