Golden Nuggets: Catch Up On Past, Present and Future Football Bears

You can check our great recaps of the San Diego State game on the site, but I don’t have much on it today except for other pages’ recaps.

Basketball

• This recap from Ryan Gorcey is the only one I can find with postgame quotes.

Cal -- the same team that lost to Division II Chaminade in Maui, and just lost by 27 to Central Arkansas -- escaped with a win in one of the most hostile arenas in college basketball, 63-62, in its first true road game of the season, breaking a two-game losing streak.

"Juhwan grew today," said fellow freshman Darius McNeill. "We all grew today."

Even with senior forward Marcus Lee in foul trouble most of the night (after going 2-for-2 in the first minute, he went 1-for-2 the rest of the game, fouling out with 4:56 remaining), Cal was able to out-score the Aztecs 30-24 in the paint, as Kingsley Okoroh ably filled the void. The 7-foot-1 Brit played 33 minutes, scoring nine points on 4-of-10 shooting, with a game-high 10 rebounds, as the Bears out-rebounded San Diego State 33-24.

''It was a complete team effort,'' head coach Wyking Jones said. ''The guys absolutely followed the game plan. We wanted to slow things up a little bit. We just said to our guys, `If we play that 2-3 zone, we're going to make them shoot us out of it. Keep it tight, try to limit penetration.' The main thing was not letting them get offensive rebounds or get out in transition and we did a great job in that.''

• Women’s Basketball is off to Stockton today (and unfortunately I’m not), but on Monday (during the week affectionately known as “dead week”) the team invited the African American Student Development group to Haas to join in on a special practice.

Football

Past

• Three NFL players from Cal were nominated for the Walter Payton Man of the Year award given to the player that excels both on and off the field. A player from each NFL team is nominated and three teams (Washington, New Orleans and Buffalo) had Cal alums represented. They are Nick Sundberg, Cameron Jordan, and Lorenzo Alexander respectively.
• Jared Goff and the Rams host the Eagles today, in a game that will be televised in the Bay Area on FOX. Check out this video the Rams made on the game, which includes quotes from and about Goff.

Present

• Trace Travers talks about what Wilcox’s decision to not seek the Oregon job means for the program.

In my dealings with Wilcox this year, he's had a plan for everything. A plan to hire assistants with a careful eye for how they would fit together. A plan to fix the tackling, which paid dividends early. A plan for how the defense would transition from a 4-3 to a 3-4 effectively.

Even in recruiting he has a plan, and that's to recruit size and length up front to build a base, something they've done particularly well in the current class, as they're sitting in the top 25 in recruiting by Rivals team rankings at the moment. Wilcox has been the guy to extend the offer to the vast majority of the class for the most part, with many recruits noting that he talked to them for a good 15-20 minutes before extending the offer, mostly talking about their aspirations and likes outside of football. These are his guys, they know it, and staying in Berkeley reinforces that.

The plan requires Wilcox to stay in Berkeley, and he did it in a way that sends the best message to his players, to his recruits, and to the fanbase. 'Finish what you start,' is a common ethos in football, and with a coach that's bought in, it's that much easier to get players to buy in, to get fans to buy in, and to get recruits to buy in.

• Jon Wilner, going full Jon Wilner, is a little more pessimistic about the Bears future, predicting Wilcox will leave for the Ducks once Cristobal does. He does have Cal as one of the big winners of the off-season so far for keeping Wilcox and Baldwin.

Future

• Linebacker Colt Doughty, a key junior-transfer commit from the College of San Mateo, and his family have done some (successful) apartment hunting in Berkeley and recently took another official visit to Cal.

The Doughty family met DeRuyter's wife -- Kara -- with whom Doughty's mother got along famously.

"I'm so happy," Doughty said. "Now, my parents are super-confident with me leaving. They think I'm in good hands, and I think I'm in good hands."

The biggest difference between Doughty's official visit and his previous two -- including one game day -- was the sheer amount of people he met.

"I met probably 150 people that weekend," said Doughty, including his hosts, Gavin Reinwald and Jake Ashton. "I got to know them, and that was awesome. It made me really confident going in, that I'd be able to make friends, and also enjoy school more than the program, having good guys to hang out with."

While Doughty did meet Evan Weaver ("super nice dude"), he was disappointed he didn't get to meet Gerran Brown and Jordan Kunaszyk.

"I didn't get to meet 59 or 41, sadly. I wanted to," Doughty said. "I wanted to get to know some of the guys I'm going to be running around with, but it's OK. I'll see them in a month.

• Unfortunately, Atonio Mafi’s brief playoff run came to an early end when he suffered an injury early against Serra. He received well wishes from future teammate Nick Alftin and coaches Wilcox and Tony Tuioti. Mafi, Alftin, and a few other recruits are on a visit to Cal this weekend.

While defensive line coach Jerry Azzinaro has left Cal to become the defensive coordinator at UCLA, the Bears have moved Tuioti -- Mafi's primary recruiter -- to defensive line.

“We've bonded a lot, actually, since I remember, back in May, when he first contacted me," Mafi said. "He started recruiting me, I talked with him, then he got me out to go to the camp, and offered, he's been there every step of the way, and he's been real with me. It's been awesome to get to really know him.”

The former Hawaii defensive tackle co-coached the line and outside linebackers with Azzinaro last season, and allows the Bears to bring on an outside linebackers coach.

Misc.

• Congrats to Aravind Sivakumar who made the CoSIDA Academic All-America Third Team for Men’s Soccer, with a 3.9 GPA in Computer Science. He will graduate in the spring.
• The Daily Cal has a profile on track star Brie Oakley, who switched from soccer to track late in her high school career.... but that hasn’t stopped her from setting milestones at Cal.

Go Bears.