Cal began the game with 4 wins for the season: 3 at the Dennis Storer Classic at UCLA (beating UCSD 94-0, Cal Poly 33-7 and UCLA 21-0), and one a couple of days ago at Santa Clara (91-0). This was UCSB's second game of the season, in their first they trounced Stanford 68-7.
It was raining before the game, but the precipitation stopped just before opening kickoff, and never returned. Cal was decidedly faster and bigger than the Gauchos. We dominated in the scrums as well as in the lineouts (I think we stole the ball from 1 or 2 of their lineouts). We also had speed: both Solomon Williams and Caleb Tomasin each had a beautiful long run, outstripping the defenders. And our conditioning showed up well - in the last moments of the game a Santa Barbara defender had his arms around a Cal ballcarrier, and our guy just shrugged him off.
Cal got the ball first and scored a pair of tries rather quickly. A Gaucho then got a yellow card and so they were down a man for the middle of the 1st period. At about the 26 minute mark, Cal was up 46-0, and Coach Clark pulled most, if not all, of the starters, and from there on we went with our second team. That brought a little more equality to the game, and for about 10 minutes of game time, play was mostly in our half of the field, with Santa Barbara threatening to score at least twice. But the Bears finally held firm and turned back the attack. At the end of the half, we led 60-0.
The second half was basically more of the same. Cal scored early and often, while Santa Barbara got the ball on our half of the field only a couple of times. On three separate occasions, the Gauchos failed to get the kickoff 10 meters downfield, so Cal got to start with a scrum at midfield. I think the game was notable by the lack of kicks during the game. Setting aside the "standard" kicking (for conversions, or after a score or penalty) I saw only 4 instances of a player kicking during the flow of the game - twice by Santa Barbara, and twice by us. However our second such kick was quite unusual, and a thing of beauty: we had the ball, just short of the Gaucho's goal line, and most of the players (of both teams) were at the south end of the field. A Cal man kicked a lovely high arching ball ... across to the north end of the field, where it was fielded by a Cal man who fought off one or two defenders to score a try. I don't remember seeing anything like that ever before.
Oh yes, I almost forgot, final score: 119-0.
It was raining before the game, but the precipitation stopped just before opening kickoff, and never returned. Cal was decidedly faster and bigger than the Gauchos. We dominated in the scrums as well as in the lineouts (I think we stole the ball from 1 or 2 of their lineouts). We also had speed: both Solomon Williams and Caleb Tomasin each had a beautiful long run, outstripping the defenders. And our conditioning showed up well - in the last moments of the game a Santa Barbara defender had his arms around a Cal ballcarrier, and our guy just shrugged him off.
Cal got the ball first and scored a pair of tries rather quickly. A Gaucho then got a yellow card and so they were down a man for the middle of the 1st period. At about the 26 minute mark, Cal was up 46-0, and Coach Clark pulled most, if not all, of the starters, and from there on we went with our second team. That brought a little more equality to the game, and for about 10 minutes of game time, play was mostly in our half of the field, with Santa Barbara threatening to score at least twice. But the Bears finally held firm and turned back the attack. At the end of the half, we led 60-0.
The second half was basically more of the same. Cal scored early and often, while Santa Barbara got the ball on our half of the field only a couple of times. On three separate occasions, the Gauchos failed to get the kickoff 10 meters downfield, so Cal got to start with a scrum at midfield. I think the game was notable by the lack of kicks during the game. Setting aside the "standard" kicking (for conversions, or after a score or penalty) I saw only 4 instances of a player kicking during the flow of the game - twice by Santa Barbara, and twice by us. However our second such kick was quite unusual, and a thing of beauty: we had the ball, just short of the Gaucho's goal line, and most of the players (of both teams) were at the south end of the field. A Cal man kicked a lovely high arching ball ... across to the north end of the field, where it was fielded by a Cal man who fought off one or two defenders to score a try. I don't remember seeing anything like that ever before.
Oh yes, I almost forgot, final score: 119-0.