Well, after a critical game that the Bears lost at USC, we are on the road again in Corvallis. The Bears are traveling to Oregon State to take on the Beavers in a stadium that Cal has won at the last two times we have played there. However, Oregon State has beaten the Bears 5 of the last 7 times we have played.
Under coach Mike Riley, the Beavers seem to get better as the year goes on. And that is borne out in our play against them over the years. We have not won a game against the Beavers, including last years game where we lost our first number 1 ranking in over 60 years, after October 2 in this decade.
What does that mean? Well, it probably has a little to do with how Oregon State competes in the Pac 10. They do get a lot of transfers, JC guys and otherwise gems in the rough that more traditional powers do not have to contend with. I think that they have a system in place which is a great learning program, and they play hard and fast and over the course of the season, their guys start to get it and play better.
At the same time, it could also be that they play better in poorer weather conditions. Who knows. It is a mark of a good coach that they get better through the year. On more established teams, if you have more established players, and they get injured, it seems like often the team can fall apart (see, Cal Bears, 2007).
But none of that matters now. Cal is a young team that I think is playing better as the season progresses. At least, I think the defense is playing tremendously better (save for that terrible Arizona game) and the offense is also getting better. I do not think I have to go into why I think the defense is playing well - they played excellent against USC, a pretty good football team. Offensively, our last two games (Oregon at home, and USC) I think our offense showed some improvement in key areas. Specifically, the offensive line subs got good playing time, and by the end of the SC game, seemed like they were getting battle tested and were doing OK. That is going to be critical this week. And our receivers look like they are starting to fight, and make some plays.
Clearly QB play for the Bears at SC was problematic. JT has said that Kevin Riley is going to start and clearly that means he is starting the rest of the season, except for catastrophe. He clearly played worse than Longshore at SC stat wise, but if he can actually get the passes to the receivers, then he was the much better QB. In other words, his mobility was such that the SC guys had to account for him, vs Nate, who could only throw for 4 yards at a time. When Riley was in there, the field for the Bears was much deeper, because the defense had to cheat up. They took away the long ball from Nate.
So it is Riley and we will see him for the next 30 games.
I think that although Oregon State is a decent team, the Bears are better, and we will win. They have won 4 in a row - against teams that have won a total of 7 games all year. They are looking at Cal, then Arizona, then Oregon. They are sitting there thinking about the Rose Bowl, and they are going to freeze up a bit. And we will take advantage of that. This is also a homecoming of sorts for Kevin Riley - lets hope he has a better game that Jeremiah Masoli did when Oregon came to California (Masoli went to school in SF).
I think that this is a breakout game for the Bears. It has been a long and difficult road since the last time these two teams met. This is the tipping point for the Bears - get over this. I predict that this is the first in a string of 17 straight victories for your Cal Bears, culminating in a sweet victory next year at the Rose Bowl and a National Championship. Well, maybe getting a bit ahead of ourselves. But I really do feel like this is turning the page on a tough year and moving forward with a new, Kevin Riley era of Cal football. This is the end of a pretty good Nate Longshore era -at least the first Nate year was pretty good.
Anyway, lets ride into the Big game week with a sweet victory.
GO BEARS!!
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2 comments:
In your comparison of the 2 teams do you think that OSU winning 5 of the last 7 can be attributed to coaching? OSU has shown that they can excel when no one really expects them to. (See last year defeating CAL, beating USC twice in the last 3 years).
I do think that CAL generally has had the better recruiting the last few years, but the fact that that JT does not seem to be able to put together a team to beat highly ranked ones is disappointing to me. Yes he has done a great job elevating CAL to the 2nd or 3rd best pac-10 team pretty consistently, but the losses the last few years, and especially last year's debacle, have not lent me to think he is a great coach, just a great recruiter.
I'm still waiting to see his offensive genius come into play when guiding this team (even though I know he is not the OC). I know he still has input and has done a great job with QB's. I'm just waiting for him to put it all together. Until then, I'll wish for the BCS, but I'll be ready to watch CAL in a smaller bowl game.
I kind of do not think that JT does not beat highly ranked teams. Last year, Cal beat tennessee, which ended up wining their SEC division. We beat SC the year they ended up third in the country. We beat Oregon last year at Oregon is a huge game, who was ranked at the time # 11, and ended up ranked in the top 5 during the year, until Dixon got hurt.
The issue with the last 12 months has been QB, and we all know about that. I think he may have done his best coaching this year in a few years, considering the really poor play behind center.
In 2004, the Bears should have been in a BCS game. In 2006, we lost to Arizona, which we should not have. That was the Rose Bowl. This year, we still have a chance at a BCS game, and frankly if we had a decent QB at SC, we probably would have won, or certainly would have been a lot closer. So we are not that far away from the BCS. Oregon State is close this year, but they have no chance of beating the Bears, Oregon and Arizona - the other three teams in the top half of the conference, when they barely beat Arizona State, UCLA and lost to stanfurd.
GO BEARS!!
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