Well, that game didn't turn out exactly the way we hoped. But the Bears did show that they are more than capable of playing with Stanford, and they have another shot at them in just a few days. Meanwhile, enjoy some photos and videos of the good stuff that went on at Tuesday night's game.

Hmmmm . . . maybe next time we shouldn't welcome them?

The pre-game stuff was great. The Straw Hat Band of course entered Haas to the immortal strains of Fight for California:

Prior to the game, Cal Head Coach Lindsay Gottlieb explained to Tara VanDerveer some of the fine points of how this game called Basket Ball is played. (Next time, Lindsay, maybe you should let her figure it out herself.)

The Bears looked loose, excited, and ready to play, although Brittany Boyd shows maybe the tiniest bit of nerves (on the other hand, that could just be a reaction to the horror that is the Stanfurd Banned plus The Tree).

The California coaching staff had their "Shoes of California" proudly on display:

When the Stanford Tree took to the floor at Haas in a pathetic attempt to "dance," one of the Cal mic men had to show her what this thing called "dancing" is all about. Even when the person who lives in The Tree (is that you, Dumpster Muffin?) abandoned it and tried to dance on her own, the result was an abject failure. Not to mention that she proved for once and for all time that The Tree is really nothing more than . . . an empty suit:

As it should be, the good guys were dressed in white, the bad guys were dressed in black (even bad guys now apparently being ashamed to wear red). But maybe there was a sign that things weren't going to be All-Bears, All-the-Time, when Cal seemed to win the tip-off, but lost it because of a "tip-off violation":

But the Bears looked good in the first half. Here, Eliza Pierre takes it to the Stanford defense for a basket and one:

And in this sequence, the Bears took a 6-point lead, which would turn out to be their biggest lead of the game:

The result was that at the half, the Bears held a 2-point lead:

There was a way cool half-time show to keep the fans excited:

The Bears kept it very close until late in the second half. They were monsters on the offensive boards and, with some better shooting from three-point land, the Bears would have won this thing. However, this sequence gives a pretty good idea of what went wrong late in the game. Lots of great rebounding. Not so much good shooting:

The final result, a 9-point Stanford win. But these Bears clearly have the ability to beat the Cardinal, and will get another chance to do just that in Palo Alto on Sunday!

GO BEARS!