Golden Nuggets: Cheez-It Bowl Articles, Hope for Men’s Basketball

Football

• Trace Travers reviews the freshmen’s performances (including redshirts and transfers) from this season, plus an insightful look at how TCU fared this year.
• Bears returned to practice on Friday, and Patrick Laird had some humor after learning of Wilcox’s extension.

The Cal football team returned to practice Friday night, almost a week after its Big Game loss and just a day after the university announced the new five-year contract of head coach Justin Wilcox.

“After two years, I thought it was a little too soon. I want to see what he can do. I think we need another year of evaluation,” senior running back Patrick Laird joked. “... No, it’s awesome for the program. He’s the right guy to take Cal football to the highest level of college football.”

• The Daily Cal ranked the defense’s best performances of 2018. Of course USC and UW topped the list.
• TCU’s experience has them as a slight favorite against Cal despite their 6-6 record. The Daily Cal elaborates on that experience.
• The Daily Cal’s Andrew Wild weighs in on the big contentious topic, and sides with the fire Baldwin crowd.
• Cal Bears Maven ranks the 22 all-time Cal bowl games. Presented here are the bottom 10.
• Cal has a surprisingly high ranking in Athlon Sports’ 130 team power ranking..

Basketball

Overall thoughts: ”First of all, I would like to thank the students and fans that came out tonight. The atmosphere tonight was terrific, and really helped my team play well. Obviously, I was very happy with the win tonight. I love the way our team played. It started with Paris Austin making sure his teammates got great looks. He did a great job running the team tonight. He made all the right decisions which helped him open up and score later in the game. That’s what we’ve been preaching all year. To me, having 18 assists was the difference tonight. We got a chance to see what we’ve wanted the whole time. Our guys played together, and that was the difference in the win.”

On Grant Anticevich’s performance tonight: ”When Grant went in the game, I decided to go with a bigger lineup tonight…Grant was the first big off the bench to replace Connor (Vanover), and definitely provided size, strength and toughness down there. He ended up having a really game, despite not really playing very much this season. Having him be able to give what he gave us tonight was great.”

On Anticevich’s development: ”We’ve been on him. He’s a big, strong, physical kid. As a staff we challenge him to use it. We’ve been challenging him to use this in the game, not just in practice. We want him to provide that against competition. I told him before the game tonight, ‘You’re going to play great tonight. I know you will play great tonight,’ and he did.”

California Forward Grant Anticevich

On Playing Larger Role tonight:

”Coach let me know to be ready, that he was going to play me. He’s been pushing me lately more aggressively to get me ready to play.”

On SDSU Defense’s and his Confidence to Shoot: ”It wasn’t so much the San Diego State defense, it was mostly my coaches and teammates -- my coaches giving me that confidence to play.”

On opportunity to play tonight: ”It feels terrific, especially getting such a great win for the team. It feels really great, I don’t want to keep reiterating myself but it really is the coaches pushing me to be more aggressive, pushing me to be more confident in practice, and my teammates being really supportive of me along with my coaches.”

California Forward Justice Sueing

On Grant Anticevich’s Performance: ”He really made a difference. Our team is already hyped he came in got a couple of shots. He fed into us and the crowd as well. Everyone is getting their groove on and really helped us.”

On shooting slump: ”My coaches and my teammates were giving me that confidence, I’ve been hesitating a little bit too much and not play with a free mind. I came into this game knowing what I was going to do, knowing how I was going to play it.

On 3-Pointers:”We were just trusting each other I think. Matt had a huge shot at the end and we all trust him. He’s one of the best 3-point shooters in the country. All of us just trusting each other, feeding off of each other.”

• Post-game notes over the win over SDSU
• Prior to SDSU game, the Daily Cal noted that the newcomers have given new hope that the Bears can become a quality team.
• Published before the Saint Mary’s game, the SF Chronicle noticed what we all have: that Reece Caldwell has been instrumental in the women’s undefeated start.

“She’s like a coach on the floor,” Gottlieb said of Caldwell, who earned a business degree from Texas Tech in May and arrived at Cal as the program’s first graduate transfer.

The 5-foot-9 guard tops the team in minutes per game (33.8) and assists per game (five), is tied for the team lead in steals (seven) and chips in 4.9 points and 3.6 rebounds per game. Those numbers say nothing of her real impact.