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Golden Medals: Big Futbol Weekend in Berkeley and Stellar Swim Recruiting Class

Big weekend of soccer in Berkeley: Cal Women's Soccer hosts their very first NCAA home match since 2000 when they play SDSU on Saturday at noon. Cal Men's Soccer play the home leg of the Bay Area Derby (looking to deny Furd of the Pac-12 title) on Sunday at 1pm. Both match is on the Pac-12 Networks. GOAL ON YOU BEARS!

By Ruey Yen
It's a big soccer weekend in Berkeley.
It's a big soccer weekend in Berkeley.
Cal Women's Soccer Facebook

Schedule:

Fri,
Nov 14
 Cross Country NCAA Regionals Stanford, CA 11:00 a.m.
Fri,
Nov 14
 Women's Swimming & Diving Utah at Salt Lake City, UT 1:00 p.m.
Fri,
Nov 14
 Men's Basketball 2K Classic vs Alcorn State Berkeley, CA 7:00 p.m.
Pac-12 Networks
Fri,
Nov 14
 Volleyball USC at Los Angeles, CA 7:00 p.m. Live Audio ▪ Live Event ▪ Live Event ▪ Live Stats
Sat,
Nov 15
 Men's Water Polo USC at Los Angeles, CA 10:30 a.m.
Pac-12 Networks
Sat,
Nov 15
 Women's Soccer NCAA First Round - San Diego State Berkeley, CA 12:00 p.m.
Pac-12 Networks
▪ Live Stats ▪Tickets ▪ Twitter
Sun,
Nov 16
 Volleyball UCLA at Los Angeles, CA 11:00 a.m. Live Stream ▪ Live Audio ▪ Live Event ▪Live Stats
Sun,
Nov 16
 Men's Soccer Stanford Berkeley, CA 1:00 p.m.
Pac-12 Networks
▪ Live Stats
Sun,
Nov 16
 Women's Basketball Pacific at Stockton, CA 4:00 p.m. Live Stream ▪ Live Event
Sun,
Nov 16
 Men's Basketball 2K Classic vs Kennesaw State Berkeley, CA 5:00 p.m. Pac-12 Bay Area
Tue,
Nov 18
 Women's Basketball Nevada Berkeley, CA 7:00 p.m.
Thu,
Nov 20
 Men's Swimming & Diving Texas Diving Invitational at Austin, TX All Day
Thu,
Nov 20
 Women's Swimming & Diving Texas Diving Invitational at Austin, TX All Day

Cal Women's Soccer: NCAA 1st round vs. SDSU on Saturday, Noon

Note that the time at the end of the video is now incorrect, the game time has been moved up to noon PT for TV.

For the first time since 2000, the Bears will be hosting a NCAA match. The team surely is very excited about this, although the Bears draw a very tough 2nd round opponent (if you look too far ahead in the NCAA bracket). We will worry about the Florida Gators, if we get there though.

I will have more on this matchup tomorrow.

GOAL ON YOU BEARS!

Cal Men's Soccer: look to deny Stanfurd the Pac-12 Title and snap losing streak on Sunday, 1 pm

It was a very tough week for the Golden Bears at home against the Pacific Northwest schools (Oregon State and Washington). It's the similar story for both matches as the Bears fell behind early and claw to find a way back.

Against Oregon State, the Bears actually managed to equalize in the 88th minute only to concede the deciding goal with 12 seconds left to lose 4-3 (#drop3 goals was not enough and the Bears #drop3 points in the standings). Gifs of the goals can be found the Gold Medal column from last week (link here). Yes, I do feel somewhat bad about possibly jinxing the Bears by talking about how the Bears can win the conference after the big upset victory at UCLA the week before. On the other hand, Furd's athletic department basically publicly said the same thing and the Furd team have followed that up by sweeping the same opponents as the Bears last week.

Against Washington, the Bears again find themselves in an early 0-3 deficit with the Huskies scoring 3 goals on merely 5 shots all match (Bears got 20+ shots). Bears eventually lost 3-2 (the link is to my live blog of the match).

What is particularly concerning is that the Bears lost both starting goalie Justin Taillole (who set a career and program best in save record against Furd earlier this year) and freshman striker Paul Salcedo to injuries in the UW match. Hopefully, it is not the end of the season for those two last week. During Bears' postseason run last year, Taillole actually was replaced by Alex Mangels due to a late season injury (that was not disclosed at the time).

We interrupt this soccer update with a feel good story about a Cal student-athlete:

Omid Jalali scored the first Cal goals of the matches against Oregon State and UW this past week.

Back to your regular programming:

Evil reigns at the top of the Pac-12 Men's Soccer standing and Cal is the only hope to save the world from Stanfurd's tyranny. While the top 4 and possibly even 5 of the Pac-12 standing are already guarantee a spot in the NCAA tournament, the Golden Bears can still get plenty of satisfaction in beating Stanfurd and also improve their potential seed.

pac-12 men's soccer table

Teams Pts Conf Overall
STANFORD 18 5-1-3 12-2-3
UCLA 17 5-2-2 10-4-4
WASHINGTON 16 5-3-1 12-4-1
CALIFORNIA 13 4-4-1 10-5-1
OREGON STATE 10 3-5-1 10-7-1
SAN DIEGO STATE 3 1-8-0 7-11-0

After the two losses last week, the Bears find themselves at 12th in RPI and 15th in the coaches' poll (down from 7th). Bears can climb up with a big win over Furd (2nd in RPI, 3rd in coaches) on Sunday.

So this is a big game and Cal's freshman Jose Carriga-Garcia wants YOU, THE CAL FANS to show up! (I will post the video of this in a later update okay, I lied, the sound is not as good as I had hoped).

In short, beat Stanfurd and snap the two match losing streak!

In case you missed it (ICYMI):

This Sunday (Nov. 23rd) and next Sunday (Nov. 30th), Stefan Frei and the Sounders will take on the LA Galaxy.

Cal Men's Water Polo

Bears may have had lost to USC on the gridiron on "THURDA", but the battle in the swimming pool will take place this Saturday at 10:30 AM on the Pac-12 Networks (right before the Women's Soccer match, for your half-Bearathon viewing pleasure).

Golden Bears have beaten the  6 time defending NCAA champs one time already in 2014, but this is the one that factors into the MPSF standings and mark the end of the regular season.

Bears are also trying to snap a 2 match losing streak after losing to Long Beach State two weeks ago and then falter in the Big Splash last Saturday. You can check out my Big Splash live-blogging here. Basically, the Bears missed out on chances to go up by 3 goals, and eventually allowed several quick counter attacks from Furd to be the difference in the decisive 4th quarter (where the Bears had a slim one goal lead heading in). Bears lost the Big Splash by an 11-9 result despite valiant effort from 5th year senior goalie Jon Sibley (whose head cutout is a part of the Senior Day celebration).

In the all-important MPSF tournament next weekend, where the top 3 finishers are basically going to gain a NCAA tournament berth, here is the current look at the conference standings which factor into the tournament seeding.

Should the Bears beat USC, I think they would gain the H2H edge and leapfrog the Trojans. Although the chance of Long Beach State losing to UCLA in this final weekend is kind of high, and Long Beach State did defeat the Bears two weeks ago.

2014 MPSF MEN'S WATER POLO STANDINGS

M P S F O V E R A L L
TEAM W L PCT HOME AWAY W L PCT HOME AWAY NEUT STREAK
#UCLA 7 0 1.000 3-0 4-0 24 2 .923 8-2 8-0 8-0 W6
Stanford 6 1 .857 3-0 3-1 21 3 .875 3-0 7-1 11-2 W4
USC 5 2 .714 2-1 3-1 20 4 .833 2-1 5-1 13-2 W2
Long Beach State 5 2 .714 3-1 2-1 18 5 .783 4-1 3-1 11-3 W1
Cal 4 3 .571 1-3 3-0 20 5 .800 3-3 4-0 13-2 L2
Pepperdine 2 5 .286 1-3 1-2 10 11 .476 3-5 2-2 5-4 W2
Pacific 1 5 .167 1-2 0-3 13 10 .565 4-4 1-3 8-3 L1
UC Irvine 1 6 .143 1-2 0-4 14 11 .560 2-2 1-5 11-4 W1
UCSB 0 7 .000 0-4 0-3 9 12 .429 1-4 2-3 6-5 L8

Standings Through 11/13/14

MPSF Champion and NCAA Automatic Qualifier determined at MPSF Tournament, Nov. 21-23 at Long Beach State...
Final Standings=MPSF Tournament Seeding...#UCLA No. 1 Seed

In short, Beat USC and snap the 2 match losing streak!

Swimming Recruiting

Tons of recruiting news across all the Cal Olympic sports this week since it's the fall signing period, we will just quickly touch on the swimming news this week.

With Missy Franklin expected to turn pro after this season (but will continue to train at Cal in addition to attending classes), coach Teri McKeever has prepared to compensate for the loss of Franklin and this year's productive group of seniors by getting 4 of SwimSwam's top 5 swimmers.

Most of them have already gave verbal commits before this week, but the No.2 ranked SwimSwam swimmer Abbey Weitzeil only announced her commitment this week, joining fellow top 5 swimmers in Kathleen Baker, Katie McLaughlin, and Amy Bilquist. All these girls are already posting times that would be good enough for top 8 of the NCAA's last year. This stellar group is joined by Jennifer Campbell and Phoebe Lamay.

Sure, the highest profile swimmer of the 2015 recruiting class and national team darling Katie Ledecky has decided to go to The Farm; yet, Cal fans should be really pleased with the Bears adding both quantity AND quality by basically getting all the top California recruits (which is huge given the limited scholarships at Cal) and more.

Meet the newest crop of Golden Bears:

On the men's side, there are also great news on the recruiting front.

Ignore the caption (though congrats to "Maria" and the other TJ athletes who got a D1 scholarship), and note that the guy in the Cal sweater - Andrew Seliskar will be joining the Bears.

Andrew Seliskar is SwimSwam's #1 recruit of the 2015 class. What is even better, Seliskar is so versatile that he can basically be plugged in anywhere that Dave Durden needs help. On the heel of the top recruiting class in the country last year, men's swimming is continuing the legacy/dynasty.

The Golden Bears have also got several other prominent swim recruits on the men's side (Carson Sand, David Puckowski, Ken Takahashi, Michael Thomas, and Nick Norman), but a more official announcement has yet to be released. We will probably have that by next week.

Given how well Cal Swimming is reloading, how big will the National Championship rings get in a few years?


Cal Men and Women's Swimming

Given the extra attention on the program with stars like Missy Franklin, Liz Pelton, and Rachel Bootsma on the team, Cal Women's Swimming has finally up their social media game. They just joined Twitter a week plus ago. They have also posted a few cool behind the scene videos, made by freshman Maija Rose.

From valued reader/contributor CalBears81, here are a few videos of races from the double Cal dual meet victories over Wisconsin last Friday:

Men sweeps the 400 free relay

Ryan Murphy wins 100 free

Missy Franklin wins 100 back

The Cal women take on Utah on the road today and will join the men in visiting Austin, TX to take on the Longhorns next week. Oops, Cal actually concluded the fall season today with the win at Utah, the competition at Texas is diving only.

Cal Volleyball

Men's Water Polo is not the only one taking on USC Trojans this weekend. Cal Volleyball is down in LA for the always tough leg of the Pac-12 season. The Bears will take on the Trojans tonight and the Bruins on Sunday.

In case you missed it, Cal Volleyball is still searching for their 1st Pac-12 conference win on the year. It's been a trying season, record-wise, for the mostly young Cal Volleyball squad. They are fairly competitive in most matches and sets, but just can't find a way to breakthrough.

More help is on the way for Volleyball, as Cal has announced the signing of 3 really tall players for next year.

The key get here is Savannah Rennie, who played high school volleyball with Cal's Maddy Kerr. Rennie is the 20th ranked player in the country and is expected to step right into the Opposite spot that will be vacated by senior Christina Higgins after her graduation.

GO BEARS!

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