(Written by kencraw)

Last weekend was another “meet expectations” weekend for the Cal Basketball team. They went up to Oregon and went 1-1, losing to Oregon on Thursday and beating Oregon State on Sunday. The game against Oregon was both frustrating and encouraging as the Bears dug themselves a hole that they almost climbed themselves out of and pulled off the upset before running out of gas at the end. The game against OSU was, after a worrisome start, a sluggish performance on both sides with the big difference being OSU’s inability to land their shots from the floor, particularly their 3’s. OSU moved pretty well, but they were a very poor shooting team, at least last weekend.

Next up this week is the Arizona schools at home. This is a key weekend for the Bears as the need to win both games to keep on track to make the tournament under the assumption that at best they’ll be able to go 1-1 against those teams when they face them on the road in mid-February.

ASU is the big question mark in the conference as they’re 3-0 in confernece play, having beat the Oregon schools and Arizona, all at home, and 13-2 overall against a fairly mediocre non-conference schedule (not that Cal’s non-conference schedule is any better). Here’s hoping that the early stretch of home games makes them look deceptively good and they’ll struggle in their first conference road game in Berkeley on Thursday (no TV coverage).

Arizona was supposed to be better this year but has struggled so far. Their only conference win is over lowly OSU although their non-conference schedule was a tough that they did acceptably in. Nevertheless, this is a potent team that Cal will have to play their best against to win, although it is definitely reasonable to expect a win out of the Bears on Saturday. Check it out on Comcast SportsNet at 5:00 PM.