The road controversy continues…
(Written by kencraw)
(Update at Noon: misspoke in the first bullet of the “not about the road” list… correcting to match intent.)
OK, so the Bears finally win on the road, the 20-13 win over otherwise hapless WSU isn’t inspiring a lot of confidence in the Bears on the road. So, what’s the truth?
Arguments for stinking on the road:
- At home 4-0, road 1-4… it doesn’t get any more simple than that
- The OSU team that crushed us in Corvallis, lost to the UCLA team we destroyed at home
- The ASU team we crushed at home, lost a nailbiter to USC in the same stadium we got destroyed by USC
- That close loss to Arizona in Tucson looks less impressive after they got killed by Stanford
Arguments that it’s not all about the road:
- Every team we lost to is in front of us in the Pac-10 standings and every team we beat is
in front ofBEHIND us (something only Oregon at the top and bottom feeders WSU and ASU, and then us, can say) - Every team we beat is behind us in the Pac-10 standings
- Nevada was not a blowout.. it was close and Nevada extended in the end. Plus, their offense is very tough to defend…
- The OSU loss can be ignored because of the Riley injury
- Based on the above two bullets, the only “true” egg-lay is USC
The point of this being, it’s not as simple and one sided as it would appear. I still think there’s something about the road that is tough for this team, but it’s not as clear cut as it seems on the surface.
November 7th, 2010 at 10:53 am
Is this written correctly:
“Every team we lost to is in front of us in the Pac-10 standings and every team we beat is in front of us (something only Oregon at the top and bottom feeders WSU and ASU, and then us, can say)”
I see where Arizona, Oregon State and $C are ranked higher than us in the Pac-10 standings. Okay. But, “every team WE BEAT is IN FRONT OF US”? I don’t see ASU, UCLA, or Wazzu ahead of us in the conference standings.
Am I misreading this?
*****
Yesterday’s win in Pullman wasn’t necessarily pretty, but given how badly we’ve played on the road (dating back to last season), and the fact that our QB was making his first college start, I’ll happily take a seven-point victory.
I can only hope that we see the usual, kick-butt Cal-at-home team next weekend. I don’t yet feel confident that we’ll pull off an upset against the Ducks (I may as the week progresses), but if we can play like we did in Tucson and can continue to play the way we have at Memorial all season, I think we can hang tough and keep the game close.
I just hope our conditioning is up to Oregon’s standard. It’s a little too late to address this, so hopefully, someone on Cal’s training staff has been paying attention to how fresh and aggressive the Ducks are right up to the end of each game, and has amped up the level of workouts all along.
It’s going to be an interesting two weeks.
Go Bears!!
November 7th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
I like the playing-better-or-worse teams theory, but for the sake of the next two games I sure hope it’s more about home-away. The win at WSU can be attributed as Cal plays full strength at home, half-strength away. Half-strength was enough to keep it close with Arizona, and enough to barely beat WSU. The concern is if we factor in the injuries. Sure, we didn’t have Allen and Mohamed had his thumb issue, but the WSU squad was completely decimated by their own problems…
November 7th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Truman, I misspoke. See the updated text says what I mean to say. Basically, we’ve beat every team we were supposed to beat and lost to every team we were supposed to lose to, based on our standings.
Sorry for the mistake.
November 8th, 2010 at 6:53 am
i blame kevin riley for ken’s typo.