Golden Nuggets: Saturday’s Game Personal For Mississippi Native Jordan Duncan

Football

• We have video of the Cal team following a mid-week practice. All videos are from Rivals/Golden Bear Report while the transcript excerpts of Justin Wilcox is from Scout/Bear Territory (the other transcripts are under paywalls... so if you can’t watch the videos, give them your money as both sites deserve it!)

Ross Bowers (September 12)

Beau Baldwin (September 12)

Justin Wilcox (September 13)

Full Transcript from Ryan Gorcey. Some highlights below.

They've had some trouble, defensively, stopping the run. Do you go into a game with a similar plan on offense, or is that something you look for against a team like this: "We got into every game trying to be balanced. Some games will take you one way or the other, just based on how the game is going, so we'll try to be balanced on offense, always. The run schemes that we use, there will be certain things that carry over from week to week, but maybe the picture changes. Full confidence in Beau [Baldwin] and our entire offensive staff, and coach Greatwood to get those guys ready to play."

How have the young running backs been looking this week in practice: "It'll be Pat [Laird], Vic [Enwere], potentially Fabiano Hale and Derrick Clark. Having DC back in there, he's done some really good things this week. He runs really hard. We'll see. Those'll probably be the group of guys that we're going with this weekend."

Ole Miss plays at tempo, and you run a lot of tempo. How confident do you feel in your guys to handle that: "Well, we have to do a great job. When you're on defense, you're not in charge of how fast the ball is snapped. The offense is. So, you've got to prepare for that. It's much easier when the game slows down, but we practice at tempo, and it's obviously great to practice against our offense, because things happen fast, and you have to make quick decisions on getting the call, your alignment, any pre-snap checks or identifications that we need to make. That's a really big part of what we do on defense. Obviously, we've got to continue to get better at it, and we're not perfect at it now, but I know we've had a good three days so far. We've got to finish the week and we'll be ready for that on Saturday."

Tim DeRuyter (September 13)

• Saturday’s game is “Personal” for Jordan Duncan, as he is a Mississippi native. From the San Francisco Chronicle.

This week is personal for Duncan because Saturday he’ll play against Mississippi, the school he most closely followed during his childhood and a squad that will come to Berkeley sporting a roster filled with his friends.

The 6-foot-1, 210-pound sophomore receiver grew up in Hattiesburg, Miss., about four hours south of the Ole Miss campus in Oxford. Duncan regularly made the drive on Saturdays to see the Rebels play, and he considered going there after a stellar prep career.

“I’m always focused, but this is a different type of focus,” Duncan said. “I actually know the guys I’m going to be on the field with. There are going to be a lot of emotions. I’m just going to try to use my emotions in my actions.

“It’s a big week.”

• Make sure you’re caught up on all the information regarding Saturday’s game vs. Ole Miss including the time, network, the teams doing the play by play, and facts about the two teams in Cal’s official preview.
• Picks: Jon Wilner picks the Pac-12 games. As usual, he’s pretty neg... wait, he actually picked Cal to win! Meanwhile, ESPN is split with Edward Aschoff picking Cal and Kyle Bonagura picking Ole Miss. For whatever its worth, Yahoo Fantasy Pickem players worldwide are split 50/50 between the two teams (when the Ole Miss +3.5 spread is factored in. EDIT: Ole Miss is MINUS (-) 3.5, my bad.) when I checked this morning...
• Catch up with Cal players in the NFL, including great performances from Giorgio Tavecchio and Jared Goff!

Olympic Sport Awards

• Field Hockey: All three weekly awards the America East conference gives out went to Cal this week! Megan Rodgers took home the Rookie and general Player of the Week awards while goalie Danielle Mentink is the Defensive Player of the Week. Cal went 2-0 in their most recent roadtrip with wins over Northeastern and Bryant.
• Men’s Soccer: Goalie Drake Callender was named this week’s Pac-12 Player of the Week after a great performance in Cal’s 2OT win over Portland where he made 9 out of 10 saves including a save on a Penalty Kick (pretty rare for those not into soccer) in the final minute of regulation.

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