Bruin in Ruins

The Bears defense did a great job of stopping a pretty poor Bruin offense, allowing only one offensive touchdown all game, and holding them to 256 yards for the day, including 4 interceptions.

The killer part of the game was once again the poor play of the offense, including the QB, Kevin Riley. Tedford chose to go with Riley after a week of practice where it was said he was coming on strong, similar to the end of fall camp. So JT made the same decision this week that he did then - he started him. And with the same result - poor offensive performance for the first three quarters (one offensive touchdown, one yard total in the third quarter, after an anemic 109 yards in the first half).

But we erupted in the 4th quarter, ad scored 24 points. Just like Maryland. The only difference is, we played a really crappy team, and they could not score at all.

This is not the way to win football games. Oregon is not going to wait around for us to erupt in the 4th quarter. This is not solely on Kevin Riley - the offensive line was porous. The receivers continued to drop balls. The running backs were not getting it done early (10 runs for 20 yards in the first quarter).

But it sure is nice to beat those guys big. The defense played great, including Chris Conte, who I was beginning to be concerned with, as well as Mike Mohammed.

I am optimistic about our defense. It did appear that we were vulnerable to some big plays in the secondary, but we made some big plays. The biggest idiocy of the game was when UCLA went for the fake punt with 24 yards to go. What was he thinking. They made a great play, and gained 23 yards. Oh well. But all that being said, it was a good game for the Bears, and one that we really needed.

XXXXX

I was wrong about the game last week. I said the Bears dropped 10 passes in the Arizona Desert. It was 12.

That was a game that an experienced team would have won, and we gave away in all sorts of ways. And how does that back to bite us in the ass? Well, the Bears would be ranked in the top 12 this week if we had beaten Arizona, and in place to make a BCS bowl game even if we had lost to USC. That clearly is not the case anymore. It is the case that Cal has the conference in our hands. If we win out, we do go to the Rose Bowl. Cal and SC are the only teams in conference that can make that claim. Everyone else needs help from someone else. So we still are playing for something.

And, yes, once again, we are ranked #25 in the Harris Poll, which is the poll that took the AP polls place in the BCS standing.

The last few times we were ranked, we tanked. Let's get over that hump this weekend with the Ducks.

GO BEARS!!