USC Game

Attending the game last night at Haas was pretty interesting. Although the Trojans were ranked 22, and the Bears played strong for the most part throughout the game, it did not seem like the crowd was that electric.

I think there were two reasons for that: First, a lot of the students were gone, and the game was not sold out (which is embarassing). The Bench looked like about half of it was non-students.

Second, the Bears were never really behind, and seemed like they had the game in had the entire time. It has been a long time since I have felt like that for a game that really counts.

In my book, the recipe for success this season on the hoops court is this:

Win all preseason games. All were winnable, but we lost two.

Win half of the Pac 10 games.

That combination would get us into the dance at a respectable level, probably in a 6 -8 seed. In other words, we need a total of 20 wins. We could probably get in with an 18 win season, but that would give us a very low seed (10-11), and make our advancement more difficult.

So losing the two pre-season games that we did puts us in a bit of a bind. Then, when looking at the Pac 10 schedule, it shakes out like this:

Almost impossible to win - UCLA and Washington State - 4 total loses.

May be able to win at home, but very difficult on the road - USC, Arizona, Stanford, Oregon, Washington, Arizona State - 6 total loses, 6 wins.

Have to win both at home and on the road - Oregon State - 2 wins.

If I was one of the other teams in the middle category, I would put Cal in the same category. Meaning, Cal should be a tough road trip.

Based on this initial swipe at Pac 10 strength, the Bears need to actually win 8 of the 12 games in the middle category to advance to a decent seed level.

So lets assume that I am correct. How could that break down?

Washington, USC and Oregon are currently all 9-4. They are the weakest of this group. The Bears need to win 5 of the 6 of these games. I see us splitting with Oregon, and beating Washington and USC at home and away.

Arizona State, Stanford, and Arizona - the Bears need to win 3 of the 6 of these. We need to win all out home games against these guys.

According to the RP!, Cal is 5th in the Pac 10, with a RPI at 48. That indicates that we should probably lose 8 games (all the RPI teams higher than us) and win 10 ( all the RPI lower than us). That is what we need to get to. But that assumes no screw ups. This is the toughest Pac 10 that I ever remember.

Back to the game last night. A buddy of mine sent this note which I think pretty much summed it up:

"Patrick Christopher and Jerome Randle have improved greatly from their freshmen years. Last year Christopher had no shot, only athleticism. Last night he was a complete player. On Saturday it will be about Hardin and Anderson keeping up with UCLA's big men. There were a number of times last night Eric Verneisel had to literally shove Hardin to the right spot on defense. SC has no good big men so it was okay. UCLA will eat this type of thing up."

In other words, Devon Hardin is, after 4 years, still the raw talent that he was, and has not advanced mentally enough to play at the top level of the NCAA. I am not going to say that this is Braun's fault. A big part of coaching is having players that are coachable. Devon clearly knows what he needs to do - he says it after each game - "yes, I need to avoid the cheap fouls, etc". So this is a situation where the player knows what to do, it is clearly drilled into him, yet he continually plays our of position and gets taken out of the game.

Devon playing well this season is the key to the Bears. We need him. We have all the other pieces, but we need Devon to play tough in the middle without getting nailed with cheap fouls. He can be a rebounding machine, but we need better defensive and offensive play without getting into foul trouble.

Anyway, it looked good last night overall. The teams seems to like to run, plays tough defense for the most part and really has a capability to score. I think Devon still needs to play better. Hopefully Saturday will be the day when he does. Frankly, beating UCLA in Hoops would be the biggest thing since, well, beating them last year in the Pac 10 tournament. That was a fun game (I think I was one of the 200 Cal fans there last year).

GO BEARS!!