(Written by kencraw)

(Side note: Sorry that my nice plan for a post-a-day of the 4-part series didn’t quite go as planned. My plan was Monday-Thursday on that and Friday would be for previews and the such. Unfortunately, both of the first two posts took a LONG time to put together, researching all the facts that I wanted to make sure were accurate and finding all the links I wanted.)

There’s two very different ways to look at the Nevada game:

The Old Blues are quaking in their boots right now. We got “destroyed” by the Pistol in 2010 and it was a blowout. Nevada has a QB who lit up the 2nd half of last year and if UCLA’s game last year showed anything, we haven’t figured out how to prepare for the pistol yet.

The less pessimistic know just how special the 2010 Nevada team was. Colin Kaepernick is currently the #2 QB at the 49ers and was the core of that team. Yeah, the new guy looks more than capable, but he’s no Kaepernick. That 2010 team went 11-1, beating unbeaten Boise State and upsetting their national title/BCS hopes in the process. All around, it was a special year for Nevada. 2011, was a return to what is normally considered good for Nevada, 7-5, with wins over Fresno State (much tighter than Cal’s win over them) and Hawaii and losses at the end of the season to Louisiana Tech and Utah State.

What’s also worth remembering was that the 2010 game was a lot closer than people remember it. Cal had pulled to within 3 points midway through the 3rd quarter and had all the momentum when Riley threw a really stupid interception for a touchdown. Cal still managed to kick a field goal later in the 3rd quarter to make it a 7 point game, but as the altitude wore on the defense Nevada put the game away midway through the 4th quarter and added a late TD to make the score worse than it was.

I feel confident that if that game was played at sea level, the Bears had better than a 50/50 shot at winning, even with a home Nevada crowd. Much better than that in Berkeley. Heck, even just moving the game to Saturday to give the Bears an extra night to acclimate might have made the difference.

Thus, I predict 3 things for this afternoon’s game:

1. Cal’s defense will stifle Nevada. Any thoughts that Cal hasn’t figured out the Pistol will permanently be put to rest as Pendergast has had all off-season to clean up any remnants of problems.
2. Cal’s offense will move the ball with easy. Heck, even in 2010 they put up 31 points, and that was with Nevada holding on to the ball a lot.
3. The magnitude of the potential blowout will be covered up by a heavy dose of Isi and CJ. They’re going to wear down Nevada much like they did against WSU and OSU last season.

Final score: Cal 38, Nevada 16