Cal Sports Report

Cal Shows Improvement, but Bottom Line Is Another Close Loss

Defeat against Washington makes the Bears 1-8 in games decided by seven points or fewer since the start of last season
Jake Curtis|
Cal Shows Improvement, but Bottom Line Is Another Close Loss
Cal Shows Improvement, but Bottom Line Is Another Close Loss

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California Golden Bears

We’ve reached the point where we’re discussing encouraging aspects of losses. It’s not a comfortable place to be, but that’s where Cal sits following its 28-21 loss to Washington Saturday night.

Washington (6-2, 3-2 Pac-12) came into the Cal game averaging 42.1 points, tops in the Pac-12 and eighth-best in the country, and the Bears limited the Huskies to a season-low six points in the first half and a season-low total for the game.

The Cal offense that has been poor the past two games and was just as bad in the first half Saturday suddenly came to life in the second half and gave the Bears a chance to win. After gaining 83 yards and scoring no points in the first half, Cal managed 223 yards and 21 points in the second half, scoring nearly as many points in those 30 minutes as the 22 points it scored over the previous two and half games.

Cal held a lead in the third quarter and was tied entering the fourth, which where the Bears wanted to be.

The Bears’ offense flourished in the second half even though wide receiver Jeremiah Hunter, the team’s leading receiver coming into this weekend, and offensive lineman Matthew Cindric did not play because of undisclosed injuries. In fact, Cindric is done for the season, forcing Cal to shuffle its offensive line again to the point where all five starting offensive line positions on Saturday were occupied by different players than they were in the season opener.

The Bears had the ball with a chance to tie or go ahead in the closing minute of the game, getting to the Washington 42-yard line, but a Jack Plummer pass on a fourth-and-2 play with 28 seconds to go fell incomplete, ending Cal’s hopes and ending the mystery of whether the Bears would have gone for two points if they had scored a touchdown.

“It’s a bottom-line business,” Cal coach Justin Wilcox said.

And the bottom line is that Cal (3-4, 1-3 Pac-12) has lost three games in a row and dropped under .500 for the first time this season. The bottom line is the Bears are 1-8 since the start of last season in games decided by seven points or fewer. The bottom line is that with games against Oregon, USC and UCLA among the Bears’ final five opponents, the Bears are a long shot to finish with a winning record or get the six wins needed to get a bowl berth. The bottom line is that a 13th straight season with a losing conference record now seems likely for the Bears.

Wilcox was not the angry, embarrassed coach following this defeat that he was after the 20-13 overtime loss to Colorado last week. This time he was just somber, well aware of where Cal’s 2022 season is now and where it could be headed.

“In order to get the outcome we want, we have to perform better and there’s some plays in there where we could perform better and that’s on everybody, starting with me,” Wilcox said.

Cal displayed solid bend-but-don’t-break defense in the first half, and promising offense in the second half, even without Hunter and even though freshman running back Jaydn Ott was limited to 38 yards on 14 carries, an average of 2.7 yards per carry. Mason Starling, who started in Hunter’s place, had four catches for 49 yards before limping off the field in the second half, and redshirt freshman J.Michael Sturdivant had eight catches for 104 yards and two touchdowns.

Studivant’s first touchdown catch put Cal ahead 7-6 in the third quarter, and his second TD reception (below) tied the game 14-14.

Plummer threw three touchdown passes with no interceptions, which was encouraging, but was sacked five times, which was not. And the injured leg he sustained in the loss to Washington State seemed to limit him in the closing minutes of the game.

“We played some good football in stretches in the game,” said Cal linebacker Jackson Sirmon, who recorded 11 tackles against the team he played for last season, “but we lost so that sucks obviously.”

There were several things that indicated improvement, but the bottom line is that Cal lost another close game and had its six-game home winning streak halted. 

And Oregon comes to Berkeley next week.

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Cover photo of Washington Devin Culp is by Darren Yamashita, USA TODAY Sports

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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