In front of a record crowd, No. 12 women's volleyball notched a huge win over No. 10 Stanford. It was Cal's first Big Spike win at home since Halloween 2004.
The Bears out-blocked Stanford, 13.0-9.0, and put up a .250 attack percentage in the match (62k, 26e, 144att) while holding the Cardinal to a .204 attack rate on 152 attempts (58k, 27e). Stanford junior outside hitter Alix Klineman led the Cardinal with 23 kills (5e, 49att, .367) with junior outside hitter Cassidy Lichtman (14k, 6e, 35att, .229) and senior middle blocker Janet Okogbaa (14k, 4e, 27att, .370) adding 14 kills apiece. Lichtman also had 11 digs and was out-dug only by Stanford junior libero Gabi Ailes, who led the Cardinal with 13.
The Bears never trailed in the final set and went up by as many as four points on three occasions. The Cardinal stood fast and drew to within a point at 13-12, but Cutura's 21st kill of the night gave the Bears match point at 14-12. Cutura went back to serve for the match and after a furious rally, an attack by Okogbaa went long to give the Bears a 15-12 win in the fifth set. Cutura had four of Cal's 10 fifth-set kills while Murrey put in three without an error on seven attacks. Both teams had 10 kills with the Bears posting a .333 percentage on 24 attacks (2e) and the Cardinal posting a .318 percentage on 22 attacks (3e).
Daily Cal reports on the match, emphasizing the phenomenal play from true freshman Correy Johnson.
Now, if you are a sensitive reader or have children in the room, I warn you not to read the rest of this post. I have recaps, analysis, and quotes from yesterday's Autzen Massacre and none of it is pretty. You have been warned...
You can, however, skip all that and check out the results of several other Cal sports. They fared notably better than football did.
- Post-game quotes are a mix of "They were better than us" and "we're not going to go into a downward spiral." Tepper said he couldn't hear Riley or the snap counts.
- Cal took a nosedive in the rankings and fell to 24th in the AP poll and 19th in the coaches' poll. Sports Illustrated's George Schroeder says it's time to scratch a "vastly overrated" team from the top-10. Despite what Tedford and company may say, Cam Inman says yesterday's loss was no aberration, just a poor performance from a flawed team. In the same article he describes some of the postgame locker room behavior by the Bears as a little delusional, that they were still thinking of a Rose Bowl or a Pac-10 championship. Jahvid's last sentence is kind of bizarre.
- LATimes writer Chris Dufresne says the repeated failures when Cal knocks on the door of greatness seem like voodoo, or as our good friends at AtQ say, the JuJu.
- Schlabach predicts a Mizzou-Cal Sun Bowl and Feldman predicts a Cal-Utah...wait for it...Poinsettia Bowl. Looks like the Cal bandwagon is nothing more than an old Radio Flyer by now.
- Bob Gregory says Oregon did some things Cal hadn't scouted for and Cal was, as we all saw, caught by surprise by Oregon's offense.
- Oregon linebacker Spencer Paysinger called the Bears' offense "predictable" and Casey Matthews said "After we scored our second touchdown, it seemed like they quit." Defensive Coordinator Nick Aliotti said if Picasso was a defensive coordinator, yesterday's performance would be one of his works of art.
- USC is listed as 4 point favorites against the Bears in Vegas.
- No. 4 men's water polo defeated No. 16 Pacific 11-7.
- In their third straight top-three finish, men and women's cross-country finished second at the Stanford Invitational.
- No. 7 women's soccer suffers a 1-0 overtime loss to Cal Poly.
- No. 4/5 men's soccer lost a 2-1 match to New Mexico.