Golden Nuggets: Closing the Door on the Cheez-It Bowl

Football

I was in a rush on Thursday as I’m at a family reunion in South America, so I didn’t find every article about the Cheez-It Bowl that was published. Plus, some other stuff surfaced after I finished it too. So here’s a few more articles and then we can move on to something else... maybe some of these publications will write about basketball? Ahahahaha jk

• A few hours after my post, Cal finally uploaded the post-game presser. The Kunaszyk quote you’ve heard about (I think I posted it on Thursday) comes at the 9 minute mark.

• Nam’s final novel of the season didn’t focus much on the great defense and bad offense, since we already knew about that, he instead talked about some interesting factoids from the game and speculated on coaching changes.

So, I thought this up over lunch in Phoenix the next day:

Let’s assume that Coach Wilcox is a smart, competent coach.

If he is smart and competent – which we have multiple seasons worth of data to prove -- then he should know now that he can’t do nothing differently on offense, both because he is smart and competent, and because of the reasons we mentioned above regarding the donors.

Let’s also assume that the combination of recruiting and performance makes Steve Greatwood and Charlie Ragle safe, and the relatively new resume of Burl Toler gets the pass for another year too.

• Cal “promises improvement” after the bowl game.
• Our parent site SB Nation has a lot of fun facts about the Cheez-It Bowl in an article most of you probably already saw, but I didn’t think to post Thursday for some reason.

5. A Cal QB change (amid all the INTs) gave us this completely bizarre moment: when the only two QBs in the Power 5 who stayed with the same school through their senior years despite never starting ... were facing each other in a bowl.

• Jake Curtis notes that the only real way to fix the offense is to improve the QB position. He also defends Baldwin.

The offense? Ooh boy. There is no indication things will get significantly better unless one of four things happens: 1. Garbers improves significantly through spring ball; 2. Transfer Devon Modster or incoming freshman Spencer Brash [sic] is considerably better than his resume suggests; 3. Running back/wide receiver Brandon McIlwain is switched back to quarterback and suddenly learns how to avoid turnovers; 4. A talented graduate-transfer quarterback decides to come to Cal.

No. 4 is the most intriguing, and you can never tell when such a player can fall into your lap. Washington State seemed doomed to a mediocre 2018 season until last March, when coach Mike Leach convinced Gardner Minshew II to forsake his verbal commitment to Alabama and come to Pullman, Wash., instead. Not even a regular starter at East Carolina, Minshew became the Pac-12 offensive player of the year this season and enabled the Cougars to tie for first place in the Pac-12 North and finish the regular season ranked 13th.

It would be nice if Cal could find a Gardner Minshew III, though that admittedly is a long shot.

Basketball

• Take that bad taste out of your mouth and enjoy Cal WBB vs. Harvard today. Here’s a preview.

Beat the Crimson!