CAL REINS IN, REIGNS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA - Photo Essay

Who says it never rains in Southern California? There were a lot of tears, both of joy and of despair, raining down at the Galen Center and Sports Arena this weekend! What a weekend for Cal Basketball in Southern California!!! Let's go straight to the money shots

Thursday at the Galen Center

Saturday at the LA Sports Arena

As has been widely reported, Cal just completed its first season sweep of the LA schools since '58-'59 and we know what happened that year in Cal basketball!! Cal is once again in first place heading home for what should be RAUCOUS #PACKTHEHAAS crowds at Haas for our final two home games and our final chances to see Jorge and Harper in person. If you're in the Bay Area, and you're a Cal fan and you're not in Haas this week, you and I are going to have some words! After the jump the rest of the photos.

A group of CGBers got together for drinks and dinner before Thursday's game at a great place right next to the Galen Center, The Lab. As always it was great meeting new folks! We walked over to Galen and thanks to EchoOfSilence, USC is $80 richer than it needs to be! Joining in the fun was cldpc and CruizinBear!

Entrance of Galen... fancy schmancy lights

Then there was this weird photo montage of past great teams, including these guys... They almost look humanlike, like they're being preserved behind glass... stuck for eternity in the Galen Center, a sort of eternal damnation for the sins committed which resulted in SC's latest NCAA violations.

A word about basketball at USC. Even in the best of times, no one really cares about basketball at USC. But when they're this bad - and they are really bad - well then it takes a certain sort of SC fanatic to show up. And to be honest you have to give those hearty souls (soles) their credit. Here is the SC student section... this is not before tip off, this is well into the 1st half...

At one point in the second half we did a C A L cheer that was louder than any cheer SC did that night... I actually felt a little sorry for those kids... No I didn't. In the eerie silence I did have fun periodically and randomly shouting out my name just to see if it would get picked up on the radio broadcast... "FIATLUX!!!!" "THIS IS FIATLUX!!!!" "FIATLUX IS IN GALEN!!!"

I sort of looked over this coed's shoulder and think her text was "please... help me... get me out of here..."

SC does have a great big video screen... in the background, if you count, I think you'll get about 427 fans.

The North wall of the Galen Center is glass exposing a nice view of downtown LA (insert joke there). Here is my weird pic where you can sort of see downtown LA, but you also get the reflection of the scoreboard and stuff in the background... I call this artsy.

Some of the SC fans caught in the frenzy that is USC BASKETBALL!!!

And once he was done reading the obits it seemed like the perfect time to fill out his lottery ticket... Problem is he keeps using USC jersey #s and as we all know, there is no combination of those #s that will result in a winner (THANK YOU!!!)

And that friends if your USC basketball game night experience. It was a joyous night, just completely throttling the Trojans. Next up, UCLA.

As you can see, the LA Sports Arena spared absolutely no expense to welcome UCLA and create a wonderful college environment. They had TWO of those banners!

I love love LOVE IT!!! this jacket!

I love love LOVE these kids!

So as most of you know, while UCLA is renovating Pauley Pavilion, they are playing their games at the historic, aforementioned, LA Sports Arena. And by historic I mean old and run down... but oddly it has a surprising charm about it and actually pretty good sight-lines.

I have to give a little credit to the UCLA students... despite an awful year, playing off campus in South Central next to your rival's campus, and knowing they were going to get beat yet again by Cal, they showed up.

At half time they honored this guy... he gave some speech thanking Wooden and some other people and then he snubbed, I mean he TOTALLY SNUBBED the man with the greatest impact on UCLA basketball, Sam Gilbert. It was a shame that a former great would snub the man who meant more to UCLA basketball than any other man, the great Sam Gilbert. Sam Gilbert. Sam Gilbert. Sam Gilbert.

It was great college basketball environment. UCLA drew their largest crowd of the year and I would guesstimate that about 2,000 of that was Cal fans who were loud and made noise throughout the arena. Here are some of those happy Cal fans after the game.

After Cal finished the shellacking of hapless UCLA, our beloved leader answered Roxy's probing questions...

And finally, this being LA and all, as we were leaving the Sports Arena, and crossing Figueroa, we spotted Rebecca Haarlow in her car and took this creepy, sort of stalkerish photo of her...

And now, let me show you some photo of my suite at the... I'M KIDDING!!!

That's all I got. It was a truly memorable weekend of Cal basketball. I can't wait for the next two games at HAAS!

GO BEARS!!!