Cal women kick off their postseason against the Huskies, who have been dismantled by the Bears the two times they've played. UW women's basketball is frankly a mess. They're 8-21 this season. Somehow they beat Oregon by 20 despite their current state of mess. If they did lines for women's hoops on a regular basis, Cal would probably be favored by 30, considering they've lost in their two matchups by a combined total of 58 points.
However, the Bears did limp into the tournament with pretty painful losses to the Bruins and Sun Devils, and even Coach Boyle knows this is a huge game to reestablish Cal's confidence going into the tourney (also a podcast included in the link by Daily Cal Beat writer Jimmy Tran analyzing their road to the finals).
Now, holding a team accountable for two losses to ranked opponents in the second month of the season doesn't seem fair.
But even Bears coach Joanne Boyle admitted to the harsh ramifications of two other losses-a pair of late-season ones to teams that Cal had already defeated earlier this year.
"What makes it more dramatic is when they happened," she said of the Bears' recent defeats at the hands of Arizona State and UCLA. "They happened back-to-back, which we haven't done (during conference play since 2005-06), and they happened at the end of the season.
"If you have a loss at the beginning of the season and the middle of the season, everyone just moves forward. But back-to-back at the end of the season, we've got a lot at stake."
With the clock ticking on the collegiate careers of Ashley Walker and Devanei Hampton, it is an understatement that Boyle's squad has a lot at stake.
A solid beatdown here followed by an impressive showing in the conference tourney could very well do the trick.
Tipoff is scheduled for 1:15 PST. You should be able to view the action by going to the Pac-10 woman's tournament site here and clicking on the side where the Windows Media Player box is located. If you guys and gals have trouble with that I'll try and find alternate feeds, but that's your best bet.