Bear Down Wildcats

Our first game against Cal since the Hill Mary in 2014.

You hoping we win or lose?

Puerco wrote:You hoping we win or lose?

.... you tell me. There's only 1 I would ever pick. And it's quite obvious. But you're just being a douche for the sake of being one so you'll probably pick the wrong one.

Merkin wrote:

Was wondering what the line would open at. Kinda surprised at this

Man, Tate has elevated us to the point where we are a road favorite over a team that has 3 quality home wins

azcat49 wrote:Man, Tate has elevated us to the point where we are a road favorite over a team that has 3 quality home wins

And this is Cal we're talking about. So Pick 'Em as far as I'm concerned.

Honestly no idea what will happen. We definitely have new life and so does Cal. Never strikes me as an overwhelmingly intimidating atmosphere there but crazy shit happens with Cal.

They have far better looking unis than we do.

I would have said we would do well, but then they anihilated WSU.

Spaceman Spiff wrote:They have far better looking unis than we do.

I would have said we would do well, but then they anihilated WSU.

I heard people comparing that game to our destruction of #7 UCLA in 2005 for whatthefuckness. Seems for all the good (and there is a lot of good) Mike Leach gives a program, his teams seem to have one of these every year.

EVCat wrote:

Spaceman Spiff wrote:They have far better looking unis than we do.

I would have said we would do well, but then they anihilated WSU.

I heard people comparing that game to our destruction of #7 UCLA in 2005 for whatthefuckness. Seems for all the good (and there is a lot of good) Mike Leach gives a program, his teams seem to have one of these every year.

Hopefully Cal follows up their 2017 win over top 10 WSU how we followed up our win over UCLA in 2005 (shit the bed at home against a 1-8 UW team 38-14)

This team will battle for K-Tate, no fucking way we lose at Cal. That last pick showed me a lot as the very first player over to offer up a head butt was K-Tate. That's the kind of leader the entire team gets behind.

We have a fiercely, competitive SOB leading this team.....let's enjoy this ride!

Guys are playing hard behind Tate. I haven't seen Wilson run this hard since his freshman years. They believe. IF they win this road game I am not sure they wouldn't run the table, he is that special.

I think what we are seeing is very special. This guybis going to make history for us. Very, very special

So, I headed over to espn cause I was going to read up a little on Cal, and on the AZ football page i noticed this:

Well, we do control our own destiny.

Don't want to get to far ahead but man I want to stay on this role and play Wazzu and Oregon and just run it up on both those teams

Wsu definitely needs some payback for 69-7.

azcat49 wrote:Don't want to get to far ahead but man I want to stay on this role and play Wazzu and Oregon and just run it up on both those teams

Me either, but......I'm calling espn college game day for sc/Arizona

PieceOfMeat wrote:So, I headed over to espn cause I was going to read up a little on Cal, and on the AZ football page i noticed this:

So you're telling me there's a chance...

I think the UCLA win was a wake-up call for the P12. The CU win was a surprise but their D is bad and didn't even know KT was going to play. Even though the UCLA D isn't that good, they had a week to plan and they have some athletes who KT just made look silly at times. Cal's D is ranked 8th in the P12 right now, just a notch above Colorado(UCLA's is ranked 12th right now). I think we should be able to score but they are gonna key on stopping KT's running. We need to step up KT's passing since Cal's Passing D is ranked 11th. We need to win this because the competition is about to take a step up with Wazzu and USC.

This is one crazy year for the PAC12. If you look at every school we have left on our schedule, on a good day we're capable of beating any of them. On the flip side, we're also capable of losing to every one of them. I think Cal is going to be a tough game for us. Their confidence is soaring right now and so is ours. I think playing them away gives Cal a real edge. I think this team has exceeded a lot of expectations and will continue to do so but I think running the table may be reaching for a bridge to far so to speak. Sooner or later some team will stop our running game and we do have to work on that passing game. That being said in case PieceofMeat is listening, we'll beat Cal by a field goal.

Ucla's defense is bottom 10 nationally. They were bottom 10 in turnover margin as well. They aren't a great team.

Well they just throttled a pass heavy offense. Wazzu had like 7 turnovers and gave up 9 sacks. Might be best just to keep it on the ground

Here's the deal: take care of the ball, win the game. If there's one thing Cal is good at its feasting on turnovers. You can run on them. You can throw on them. But they're really good at swiping the ball and that is where they trip up teams.

azpenguin wrote:Here's the deal: take care of the ball, win the game. If there's one thing Cal is good at its feasting on turnovers. You can run on them. You can throw on them. But they're really good at swiping the ball and that is where they trip up teams.

This. Cal is 4-0 when they win the turnover battle and 0-3 when they don't.

The line is now at AZ -2.5

P.S. Can a mod fix the thread title? The lack of a space between the @ and Cal is killing my OCD.

Finally.

Is Cal for real or is it one of those weekday games that everything gets thrown out?

The Cal team vs Oregon and Washington I think U of A wins 45-34

Cal team on Friday U of A loses 40-30

azgreg wrote:The line is now at AZ -2.5

In reference to our game last week, a friend of mine who is a degenerate gambler said that if the line came out of Vegas about even and the public money pushes it towards the visiting team, put all your money on the home team. He told me that if the line last week went to UCLA -3 to put my kid's college funds on Arizona to win. Wish I had listened.

So going by that logic, I don't like this game for the Cats.

My buddy was also big on Cal winning last week and won a bunch of money taking them and 14 points. He was raving about how tough Cal is at home and I thought he was nuts by that standard alone. Guess I should listen to degenerate gamblers more often.

Isn't college fb more inconsistent than NFL for the true degenerate gambler?

Trust me...cal is tough at home. The crowd is right on the field practically

wyo-cat wrote:Isn't college fb more inconsistent than NFL for the true degenerate gambler?

Not really sure why that would be.

Chicat wrote:

azgreg wrote:The line is now at AZ -2.5

In reference to our game last week, a friend of mine who is a degenerate gambler said that if the line came out of Vegas about even and the public money pushes it towards the visiting team, put all your money on the home team. He told me that if the line last week went to UCLA -3 to put my kid's college funds on Arizona to win. Wish I had listened.

Not sure how that works, tho, because books don't move lines based on casual/public money. If a book sees dumb casual money, they will take a stand against it, and try to make their year. Sharps and offshore whales move lines. Vegas knows the public, in general, are idiots. That's why they shade national teams like the Cowboys and Notre Dame...

In a game like ours, the handle is tiny, so books aren't worried about shifting money 50/50. They are way more worried about a bad line getting pounded by a sharp for a huge loss. If they moved the line based on public money to UCLA and the sharps know it is bad, the book would expose themselves to a huge hit, like a $50,000 play or more just to even up $3,000 on this side and $3,000 on the other.

The line move tells me some big time players jumped UCLA. Didn't think we were for real, thought Rosen would throw for 500. Because there is just no incentive for a book to worry about trying to middle a tiny Arizona/UCLA football handle at the possibility of getting backdoored...

wyo-cat wrote:Isn't college fb more inconsistent than NFL for the true degenerate gambler?

I don't think so. NFL has more parity and the gap between wins and losses and relative athletic talent is low. I'm a Steelers fan and the last two weeks were getting drilled by the Jags at home and beating the Chiefs on the road.

EVCat wrote:

Chicat wrote:

azgreg wrote:The line is now at AZ -2.5

In reference to our game last week, a friend of mine who is a degenerate gambler said that if the line came out of Vegas about even and the public money pushes it towards the visiting team, put all your money on the home team. He told me that if the line last week went to UCLA -3 to put my kid's college funds on Arizona to win. Wish I had listened.

Not sure how that works, tho, because books don't move lines based on casual/public money. If a book sees dumb casual money, they will take a stand against it, and try to make their year. Sharps and offshore whales move lines. Vegas knows the public, in general, are idiots. That's why they shade national teams like the Cowboys and Notre Dame...

In a game like ours, the handle is tiny, so books aren't worried about shifting money 50/50. They are way more worried about a bad line getting pounded by a sharp for a huge loss. If they moved the line based on public money to UCLA and the sharps know it is bad, the book would expose themselves to a huge hit, like a $50,000 play or more just to even up $3,000 on this side and $3,000 on the other.

The line move tells me some big time players jumped UCLA. Didn't think we were for real, thought Rosen would throw for 500. Because there is just no incentive for a book to worry about trying to middle a tiny Arizona/UCLA football handle at the possibility of getting backdoored...

I was always under the impression that line moves early in the week were the result of public money and any movement late was because of the sharps.

In my buddy's mind at least, it was dumbass casual gamblers who moved the line heavy to UCLA. His suggestion was to fade the morons.

Leading tackler

A little history because I know how much you all love learnin.

First meeting: 1978 at home (33-20 Cal)
last meeting: 2014 at home (49-45 AZ in a typical boring AZ vs Cal type of game)

At home: AZ 9-7
Away: Tie 7-7-2
Overall: AZ 16-14-2

Cal 28
AZ 40

While Cal looked good against Wazzou I'm still not sold. The loss of their best linebacker is going to hurt and they got after Falk a lot and he played an uncharacteristically bad game. I think they had 7 turnovers? So, the key to the game is simple. Don't turn the ball over and Arizona should be fine.

First of all, Cal's defense while they did look all-world against Wazzou isn't anything special. They are 96th in the country in total defense allowing about 422 yards a game. Cal allows about 150 yards on the ground a game. Ross Bowers is ehh. If Tate comes in and plays decent and doesn't turn the ball over it should be a W, but Arizona-Cal games tend to get wacky.

Cal had one scoring drive of over 50 yards against Wazzou. They scored off turnovers and short field
FG 3 plays 11 yards
TD 3 plays 23 yards
TD 8 plays 45 yards
FG 4 plays 7 yards
TD 10 plays 77 yards
FG 9 plays 29 yards
TD 6 plays 1 yard (Scoop and Score defensive TD)

Don't turn the ball over and Tate should be able to out play their offense. The other 3 conference losses were by 10 points, 31 points, and 21 points. The wins against UNC don't look as good anymore (there 1-6) and Ole Miss doesn't look too good either (3-3 and gotten smacked by every good team they played)

Arizona is probably going to win this game.

I think our confidence is sky high and when you get young kids believing and when they have a leader they can follow great things generally can and do happen. I really think they could run the table and at least I can see a scenario where they are in every game given good health of course

azgreg wrote:A little history because I know how much you all love learnin.

First meeting: 1978 at home (33-20 Cal)
last meeting: 2014 at home (49-45 AZ in a typical boring AZ vs Cal type of game)

At home: AZ 9-7
Away: Tie 7-7-2
Overall: AZ 16-14-2

5 game stretch from '96-'02 the average game score was 42.6-36.4 in favor of AZ.

2014 was a fun one. I refused to leave the game for some reason, even though I wanted to. One of the wildest endings I remember in Az Stadium.

2006 was fun too, all but ended Cal's shot at the Rose Bowl. Jackson stepping out of bounds.

Anyway, I think Cal wins this one in a close shootout.

Will be a close one, seems like the recent games up in Berkeley have been


2013 UA33 Cal 28
2009 Cal 24 UA16 (Foles Double Pass Game)

azcat49 wrote:I think our confidence is sky high and when you get young kids believing and when they have a leader they can follow great things generally can and do happen. I really think they could run the table and at least I can see a scenario where they are in every game given good health of course

Here's something that I've seen in the games, that nobody's talking about. The young guys on defense seem to be playing better and better in every game. Call it confidence in themselves or that they know Tate is killing it, so they are pressing less, but whatever it is I like it.

The PAC-12 Arizona network is replaying the 2006 Cal game. Cal was 8-1 and ranked 8th going into that game.

I was at that game. Cason stepped in front for the winning pick-six five rows away from me. My whole section literally saw it coming. A thing of beauty.

catgrad97 wrote:I was at that game. Cason stepped in front for the winning pick-six five rows away from me. My whole section literally saw it coming. A thing of beauty.

Same here. I was in the zona zoo and rushed the field for that one. After Desean Jackson had that 95 yard punt return for a TD like 3 minutes into the game it seemed like it would be one of those games but Cason and Chris Henry pulled it out.