Cal rugby won its fifth straight UCLA tournament, beating USC, Oregon, Oregon St, Arizona, Wazzu, and UCLA (twice). Not only did they win, but they only yielded three penalty goals over the course of the tournament. Cal has yet to give up a try in its nine games this season. For those of you unfamiliar with rugby, that is comparable to holding a football opponent out of the endzone for nine straight games. Except rugby's feat is even more impressive because rugby teams typically find the try zone more often than their football counterparts.
Even more impressive: Cal fielded mostly teams of freshmen and sophomores as it won six tournament games on Saturday. The upperclassmen played the fewest minutes of the day, most of them against UCLA.
Here's a fun stat: Cal has outscored its opponents 501-9 this year.
If you don't have plans on January 30th, I highly recommend you head to Witter Rugby Field at 1pm to watch Cal take on (and likely dismantle) Stanford as they fight for the Scrum Axe.
After the jump, Cal may be the last great hope for Pac-10 postseason play, and the spring semester sports season is officially underway.
Cal Basketball
- Faraudo looks back on the weekend in Pac-10 basketball. The consensus? The league is still a mess.
- While Cal (and the rest of the Pac-10) still get no love from the humans, the kind, caring robots look upon us more favorably. Cal is 25th in the CollegeRPI.com ratings (with the no. 2 SoS) and 33rd in the current Sagarin ratings. In the Sagarin predictor ratings, we're 21st.
- Jerry Palm of CollegeRPI.com predicts Cal will be the only Pac-10 representative in the postseason, as a no. 13 seed, facing Kansas St in the opening round in Spokane. Meanwhile. Lunardi's bracketology, has Cal as a no. 11 seed facing off against Vanderbilt in N'awlins. Cal is on the bubble, though, as part of the "last four in."