Beating Up the Cal 'Gummy' Bears

The way this game played out was entirely unexpected....as evidenced by the score!



I was sure that Cal would be looking to bounce back from their game against Oregon. SC was in town and looking vulnerable. The loser of this game would more than likely be out of the Rose Bowl/Pac-10 Championship race. At best, the loser of this game would be looking at a second tier bowl game. Surely, Cal would be ready to play and would take it to the Trojans.

This appeared to be the case as Cal took the opening drive of the game and drove down the field to the SC 5 yard line. Then suddenly, the game changed when Taylor Mays intercepted a Cal pass in the end zone to deny Cal from scoring first. SC then turned that turnover into 7 points and Cal was never the same. The Cal Golden Bears suddenly turned into the 'Gummy' Bears as Cal's next 3 possessions in the SC red zone only netted a single field goal.

My take on the game:

• The SC defense continues to play solid football. We stacked the box to stop Jahvid Best and dared Kevin Riley to beat us. We were able to stop Best and Riley wasn't able to play his best to beat us. (Interesting that this is the same game plan that the Huskies used to beat us!) The defense is clearly the strength of this SC team.
• This is the best the SC offense has looked this year. There was a nice balance (35 pass attempts and 42 rushes) that helped keep the Cal defense off balance. Matt Barkley is looking more comfortable as the starting QB and I'm hoping he gets the coaches' confidence whereby the playbook gets opened up more each week. Joe McKnight gained 119 yards on 20 carries and most importantly, he didn't fumble.
  
• The SC special teams actually looked competent this week...maybe we're finally starting to see some ROI from having a special teams coach! 3 for 3 on field goals, a punt return for a TD and decent coverage on our 3 punts.
• SC only had 5 penalties. It's still a few too much for me...particularly that personal foul penalty on Taylor Mays; however, it's much better than the week before.
  
• With all the positives above, we still left a ton of points on the table when we couldn't punch it in for TDs on multiple trips into the Cal red zone. Our 3rd down efficiency is still low and we still have issues on short yardage situations (we were turned away twice on 4th and short situations).

But a win is a win and this certainly helps as SC has 2 weeks to prepare for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Hopefully, the team can get a few players back from injury (such as Ronald Johnson) and the offense can gel a little bit more. We're going to need to score as many points as possible as ND has a potent offense.

Fight On!