I was at a wedding today, so I Tivo’ed the game. I managed to make it home without blowing the game result. As much as it was painful to watch the end of the game, I ‘m glad I did because I’m sure the wrapup articles will do a horrible job explaining what happened (as always).

This game came down to one thing: the lack of a QB on Cal. How is it we’ve got the 8 game veteran playing at QB and the never played a down before today QB for Oregon is the one who looks like the experienced one? Ayoob messed up so many ways:

-Threw 2 inexcuable interceptions, both as the Bears were driving and likely to get points. (the third wasn’t his fault)
-Fumbled the ball deep in our own territory giving the Ducks a free touchdown.
-Missed 4 long throws to open recievers who could have walked into the endzone if he had hit them.
-Missed a WIDE open (and I mean WWW… III… DDD… EEE…) reciever on 4th down in overtime.

Just about everyone else on the team did their job fairly well, but Ayoob sunk the team.

The reality is that this guy doesn’t have what it takes. His accuracy sucks, particularly deep down the field and when he’s running. He doesn’t have the mental poise to know when to throw and when to hold on to the ball. Although the interceptions are the more obvious case (where he should have held on to the ball), the reality is that he more often is too hesitant and doesn’t throw the ball at times when he has an open receiver.

The reality is that with a good QB, Cal is undefeated right now and next week’s USC game would be HUGE. As it stands, the question is whether Cal has a hope for the upset.

Finally, a big congradulations to Arizona for beating UCLA. Somebody FINALLY showed the world just how much of a poser UCLA. They should have lost to Cal and Stanford but because both teams joked, UCLA was considered a “great comeback team”. BS, they’ve just been lucky to play lots of teams that choke.
ARG!?!

It’s that time of the week again: time to prognosticate!

Cal 28, Oregon 24: I think I might be allowing too much scoring in my prediction. I have a feeling that this game is going to come down to good defense. Oregon is going to go through a lot of growing pains with their green QB and Cal is not going to be able to run as well as it would like. The difference in this game will be redzone effectiveness and I put Cal on top of that list.

ASU 449, WaZoo 438: OK, so I exagerated by 400 points each. That’s only because this game is going to be a shootout if there ever was one. ASU will have just the defensive toughness necessary to win this game of deep passing games.

UCLA 42, Arizona 31: Arizona is finally starting to get some offense rolling but their defense continues to be weaker than advertised. UCLA won’t need a big comeback this week.

OSU 28, Washington 20: OSU continued their trend of scoring between 23 and 28 points last week agianst Arizona. Sadly for them, they let Arizona put up 29, in what appears to be a new school record for them. I don’t see the trend of OSU opponents breaking school records continuing into a second week and Washington will score less that 24 for the 8th time in 9 tries this year.

Stanford 13, USC 31: Stanford will have a lot to be proud of at the end of this game: they will have held USC to its lowest score all season. Sadly, the Stanford offense still SUCKS and will not be able to compete.

OK, that’s it campers! Tune in Monday for updated metrics. In the mean time, remember that the Cal vs. Oregon game will be on ABC at 12:30 PM pacific time here on the west coast.

Well, overall it was a good weekend for this prognosticator. 3-1 with mostly accurate scores. The one surprise was Arizona, who with their new QB seem to be getting more points than in the past. Otherwise, I called everything right minus the UCLA vs. Stanford game being FAR tighter than expected. I think UCLA waits until the absolute last minute to show up, just for style points.

So here are the updated metrics:
Winning percentage: 73.0% (Up from 72.7 last week)
MVD: 14.5 (down (which is good) from 14.8 with additions of 13, 9, 7, 17)
TPD: 15.6 (down (which is good) from 16.7 with additions of 11, 3, 9, 5)

So tune in late this week for predictions for this weeks games:
-Cal at Oregon
-Stanford at USC
-ASU at WaZoo
-UCLA at Arizona
-OSU at Washington

OK sports fans, it’s that time of the week again. Time for the Pac-10 predictions:

WaZoo 24, USC49: The biggest question of this game is how fast are USC’s corners. If they can consistently keep up with WaZoo’s wide recievers, then I’ve given WaZoo too much credit on their score. Otherwise, USC runs over this weak defense.

Arizona 17, OSU 28: This game would be closer if Arizona actually knew that they had to field an offense. OSU has been pretty consistent on the offensive side of the board scoring between 23 and 28 points in 4 of their last 5 games (the other game being 44 points against WaZoo). Arizona hasn’t scored more than 24 except for the 2nd game of the season… against northern Arizona. Expect this one to go the way of the Beavers (OSU) especially at home.

Washington 23, ASU 38: ASU was shocked by Stanford last week. I expect them to rebound this week and lay the wood to a weak Washington team, particularly at home.

UCLA 38, Stanford 28: Stanford is riding high from their win over ASU last week. Their high will turn into a hangover this week. Stnaford has only put up the kind of numbers they did last week once before, otherwise failing to put more than 24 on the board. UCLA has only scored less than 40 once, during their hangover game against Washington. Although I expect the tougher than expected Stanford defense to make this game respectible, the reality is that UCLA has too much offensive fire power to lose to a team that won’t be able to put up 30 against any team with a reasonable defense.

Both Cal and Oregon have bye’s this week and are preparing to play each other in two weeks in a game that is turning out to be a very important game for both.

Of note this week is that the 3 0-4 teams in Pac-10 play all will STILL be looking for their first victory of the season after this weekend according to my predictions. Sucks to be them! Outside of WaZoo vs. ASU in two weeks, I don’t see any games that WaZoo, Washington or Arizona are likely to win in the next couple weeks, in fact for the rest of the season when not playing each other (with the possible exception of Arizona over ASU in 4 weeks). In fact, since WaZoo’s bye is against Arizona, there is a real chance that we’ll have two 0-8 teams in the Pac-10 this year with Washington being 2-6 only because they beat both of the 0-8 teams. Or the other scenario, which is nearly as ugly, is two 1-7 teams and one 0-8 team. Ouch again!

Tune in on Monday for updated metrics.

Well, not my best week but not my worst. 3-2 isn’t bad and I called the Cal game just about right: A shootout! I also called USC vs. Washington about right and would have called Oregon vs. Arizona about right if their QB hadn’t broken his ankle mid way through the game. At least I still got the win. As for the other two, I was being too optimistic about OSU. I wanted to believe that they were good so that our stinkfest against them last week wouldn’t look so bad. Now with another game under OSU’s belt, it’s clear that Cal STUNK last week against them and should have won that game. Finally, Stanford is definitely doing everything in their power to make sure that UC Davis looks like an aberation. But before we get too hung up on how good Stanford is, let’s remember that it is late October and it is time for ASU’s annual slide into abscurity. As usual, their November is going to stink to high heavens and everyone is going to wonder what happened to the team that put a scare into both LSU and USC in September.

Here are the updated metrics (I only improved in TPD (although still rounded to the same)):
Winning percentage: 72% (3-2 this weekend)
Margin of Victory Delta (MVD) average: 14.8 (Adding 4, 1, 32, 34, 15)
Total Points Scored Delta (TPD) average: 16.7 (Adding 4, 13, 32, 20, 13)

Tune in on Friday for next weekend’s picks:
-WaZoo at USC
-UW at ASU
-OSU at UA
-UCLA at Stanford
(Oregon and Cal have byes)

Well that was one exciting game. It was by far the most exciting game of the season and I can’t think of a home game last season that was as exciting (wait, the Oregon game last year was pretty darned exciting). I mean I enjoy Cal blowing out an opponent as much as just about anyone, but that doesn’t change the fact that there is absolutely nothing as exciting as a come from behind win.

Going into this game the question on my mind was who had a worse case of 4th quarter choke-itis. We learned yesterday that it was WaZoo. And after watching that game it was clear to me why. You see, as much as coaches and media pundits will claim ignorance as to why seemingly good teams choke at the end of the game, the reason is usually pretty obvious and doesn’t have as much to do with confidence or experience as everyone says. Cal’s reason is that they can be forced to become one dimensional and the opposition can shut that down. That makes for a slow 4th quarter. Additionally, if they get behind, on average, they don’t have the QB to make a comeback.

WaZoo’s problem is a different one, but one that should be obvious to those who understand the game: The only play they have is the big play. You might have two objections to this: 1. why is that a problem and 2. not believing that is the case, particularly with a running back who got 160+ yards last night. I’ll start with #2 and work my way back to #1. I was amazed to hear that WaZoo’s RB got 160 yards last night because he was continually stuffed at the line by the bears. He really wasn’t a factor in the game. Don’t believe me? What if I told you that although his per-carry average was 6.2 yards, fully 11 of his 26 runs were 2 yards or less. He had one big 42 yard run and 4 between 10 and 15 yards that made up the vast majority of his yards. Otherwise he was completely ineffective. So, there running game is built on the big play, what about the pass? Even easier. 4 of their 5 TD’s came off of pass plays longer than 35 yards and their fieldgoal was the result of a 80 yard pass play stopped inside the 10 (followed by a goal-line stop by the Bears). Outside of those 5 pass plays, WaZoo’s QB was 13 for 34 for a whopping 139 yards. Sounds a lot different than 18 for 39 for 423 yards, doesn’t it?

OK, so they make their living on the long plays, big deal. Why is that a hinderance in the 4th quarter? If anything that makes them more deadly, right? They’re able to strike at any time, right? No, that’s not how it works. See, as the game wears on, defenses more and more figure out how to stop the big play. They see the strength of the team and focus on stopping that. Said differently, as the game wears on the less likely it is that you’re going to be able to break a big play, particularly in the air. In WaZoo’s case, they have 2 REALLY fast wide receivers. You can’t play them tight and hope to keep up. So, after getting burned a handful of times (and a few times too many for the Bears if you ask me), defenses adjust and play softer to make sure they keep behind those two guys.

So there you have it. WaZoo doesn’t have a power running game, just a deep pass game and as the game wears on the defense learns how to shut down the deep pass. The result is a lot of short drives in the 4th quarter that gives the opposing team the ball too often. Add in a defense that isn’t stellar and you’ve got a great recipe for 4th quarter collapses.

Now that I think about it, this hasn’t been a very good “Bear’s game wrap up” in the usual sense. I’ve been spending more time talking about how pathetic WaZoo is. And they are. The reality is that if Cal had understood WaZoo’s strengths better the score would have been far more lopsided as the only time Cal’s defense didn’t look like it was completely in control was when WaZoo launched the deep ball. If you play the way WaZoo plays, you’re going to put up a lot of yards and a fair amount of points just based on pure luck, but you’re not playing good fundamentals and you’ll lose a lot of games and not understand why. Final statistic to make my case: Cal had a 13 minute time of possession advantage over WaZoo. That’s a lot of extra minutes to wear down the defense and put points on the board.

So what does this all mean for the Bears? Well, the best thing I saw was that Ayoob is starting to throw with more authority and was a lot more sharp than the previous two games. I’m hoping that he’s finally turned the corner to being an acceptably OK QB, but after seeing him shine in a couple games only to follow it up with a couple goose eggs, call me pessimistic. The best thing the bears have going is that they seem to be getting their injuries under control. With the bye week coming up, one can expect a lot of stronger players in two weeks. Also, injury fortune may be shining on the Bears as Oregon’s QB, the backbone of their offense, broke his ankle yesterday and won’t be able to play until a bowl game. That means Oregon is looking far more vulnerable and that game is starting to look winnable if Cal can get healthy themselves and keep Ayoob on this improvement plan. USC will still be a miracle upset if it happens, but we’ve still got a good chance at 8-3 if we can take advantage of a reeling Oregon and make sure we come to play in the Big Game two weeks later. All things considered, that’s a season to be proud of for a pretty young team that isn’t losing a lot of talent next year.

Well it’s that time of the week again. Time to pick who’s going to win their games in the Pac-10:

USC 45, Washington 17: There is not much to say about this game. USC is just the better team playing at a stadium once know for it’s huge home field advantage that is no more.

ASU 35, Stanford 13: This game hinges around one thing, that Stanford can’t score to save their lives. ASU won’t be as much of a stronger team as people think, but their ability to hold on to the ball coupled with Stanford’s amazing ability to punt after 3 bad plays, will wear “the cardinal” down and ASU wins this one going away.

OSU 35, UCLA 24: UCLA is the worst #8 team in the nation in a long time (remember that Cal only made it to #9). OSU is the most under-appreciated team in the Pac-10. They’ve showed a lot of heart in Berkeley last week and have VERY strong offensive and defensive lines. I see UCLA looking past OSU and getting behind in this game only to find that Maurice Drew can’t run the ball all over the field like he has in previous weeks. OSU wins in this shocker.

Oregon 42, Arizona 20: Oregon’s offense is pretty potent this year, much more potent than people give them credit for. Arizona is stronger than most people give them credit for, but they’re not going to be able to slow Oregon down.

Cal 42, WaZoo 34: This game has shootout written all over it. These two teams can both score. The difference is that Cal scores on the ground and WaZoo scores through the air (primarily). WaZoo also employs a spread offense which has given the Bears trouble for years. The key to this game for Cal is their ability to control the line of scrimage and to win the time of possession game. Looking at how WaZoo was man-handled on the line by UCLA, OSU and Stanford, I think Cal will be able to do it. Nevertheless, this game will be tighter than it should.

Tune in Monday for the results and the updated metrics!

My brother was given one of the best gifts you could give a Cal fan. No, not a trip for the team to the Rose Bowl, although that would be really nice. No, he was given a ticket stub for the UC Davis vs. Stanford game. You know, that upset from earlier this year that made Stanford the laughing stock of just about all of college football? Yeah, that game.

He’s going to get the ticket framed (as he should) so that the memory of that game will never fade from Crawford memory.

I’m jealous.

1. You’ll get to see your boyfriend, Brian, in his “native” environment.
2. You’ll get a personal two-instructor course in the intricacies of college football.
3. You’ll get to meet a couple of Ken’s friends, one unmarried (er… wait, Brian… er… nevermind that unmarried part).
4. You’ll see a great marching band.
5. You’ll see why going to a football game can be REALLY exciting.
6. You’ll see all the “ceremony”/activities that go along with college football.
7. You might start to like the taste of hotdogs.
8. In a worst case scenario, you’ll get to witness “Crawford Cal-loss syndrome” (and what psychology student wouldn’t appreciate what a great opportunity that is?).
9. In such an event, Brian and I won’t have much to throw unlike TV games.
10. We’ve got an extra ticket.

Whadya say?

Well, this is the 2nd week I’ve been off my game, although not as bad as previous weeks going 3-2. Overall I improved my margin of victory metric substantially and my total points metric a little bit while losing a little ground in the winning percentage. Here are the updated metrics:

Winning percentage: 75.0%
Margin of Victory Delta (MVD) average: 14.2 (adding 21,7,8,4,10)
Total Points Scored Delta (TPD) average: 16.7 (adding 9, 15. 8, 44 (UCLA vs. WaZoo), 4)

Tune in later this week for predictions for next weeks games:
-WaZoo at Cal
-USC at Washington
-OSU at UCLA
-Oregon at Arizona
-ASU at Stanford