1. While I'm not 100% sure teams should be traveling and playing at this point in the latest surge, I've been singing the Pandemic Blues lately and it helps to see a little Cal Football and Basketball. So this is good!

2. The good news: The two grad transfers are pretty good, both better than I had expected.

Ryan Betley, while not a great all-around player, is okay and he can shoot. If you want to compare him to a past player, try Jeff Powers. He is a better all-around player than Powers, no question.

Makale Foreman is a point guard who can also shoot. He is a decent athlete with decent skills. Compared to Kareem South (from last year), he is smaller, but a real PG with better skills and a better shot. He will play a lot, maybe more than Joel Brown.

Both these guys don't hesitate to launch the trey. Geez, how many did they take, between the two of them? Well, even their misses don't look too bad, so I'm fine with that. These are not guys who would be playing for a Sweet Sixteen type of team, but they will help us try and win half our games. That is where we're at, so good pick-ups, both.

3. The maybe not-so-good news: The sophomores (Thiemann, Thorpe, Brown, Kuany, Klanaras) don't look much better. Well, this was a terrible off-season in which to try and make that freshman-to-sophomore quantum leap. Plus, it's still damn early. Let's see what happens with them.

Bottom line: Let's see if we can can go .500 and continue to progress. Also, let's stay healthy and not spread the damn virus.

Kelly looks like he lost weight and moves quicker, but still not explosive athletically (blown dunk). I think he will continue to improve. Grant didn't shoot well today. This will be a must if we want to win a game. Bradley can't do it all.

It's clear that the way we win games is playing tough defense, fundamentals (horrible box outs today), and 2-3 guys besides Matt shooting well. We don't have much margin for error in any game and have to basically play to the best of our abilities.

One note, Joel Brown has to at least pretend to look for a shot. Or be willing to attack the basket (play like Ben Simmons). We cannot be a 4 v. 5 offense. Just can't. I believe he can do it, but he's got to get rid of that I will only pass mentality. He had a couple of nice back to back steals. I really think he should really leverage that part of his game.

some good things and some bad things ... team looked extremely rusty and unorganized which is understandable

bentley will be a good player for us, and foreman is an upgrade over south

Headline: we shot horribly, but the good news is our newcomers shot 7-17 (5-13 from deep = 38%)
... yet Bradley and Grant shot 7-23 (1-11 from deep) ... that's not going to continue

the real bad news is we got out rebounded by 5, including giving up 13 offensive boards to our 7 ... that looks to be a tougher problem to solve, although there was a general lack of boxing out (surprised to see an veteran Bentley just standing under the basket allowing Thompson to just flash in and get the rebound and outback)

Regarding the sophs ...agree with Big C. Disappointing outing for all of them.
- Thiemann did get badly hacked on the aim with a no call, and one of the inside passes to him was a terrible pass to a 7 footer, but overall he didn't look to make a major leap).
- Brown played strong defense, but also had some really bad turnovers, some unforced. I didn't see any improved offense from him which will be more of a problem then last year given we don't have Paris. I expect foreman will play more and more unless Brown shows some offense.
- I was hoping for a jump from 2K, but he hardly played
- Thorpe had the best game, but only played 7 minutes
- Kloanaras still looks like a bit role player

Kelly will be a key player again, and kudos for the monster block

OSU did not leave Grant, limiting his impact. Expect every opponent will do the same unless we burn them

Bowser had the confidence to take a 3, and I liked how he scored on a breakaway and didn't try to flush it. For his first bucket, he just needed to score, not make the highlights

Overall I think we will be a better shooting team, and a deeper team, and hopefully that will make us a better team than last year

Well it is always nice to see optimism, but quite frankly, it is hard for me anyway to be overly positive or overly negative after one game. I think I heard the announcers say Cal hadn't been able to be together or practice much prior to this game, and it sure showed. Either that, or OSU had plenty of practice time, because the way it looked to me, was generally, OSU ran plays and Cal played one-one-one. I saw precious little teamwork from our Bears.

The Bears shot like they did in a lot of games last year, below 40% overall and 24% beyond the arc. They were last in the league in assists and in assist to turnover ration last season, and in this game they had few assists and a negative A/TO ratio, like last year. The got killed on the boards at both ends. The amazing thing was they made it close at the end, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, as the saying goes.

Brown made some poor decisions on when to drive to the basket, and when he did, he usually ended up driving into a crowd and making a turnover. He should drive when he has a lane, not when the middle is all plugged up. He makes turnovers when he dribbles. He goes too much for the spectacular pass, especially cross-court bounce passes to a teammate about to shoot a three, which has maybe a 35% chance of going in. A bad percentage play for Brown and Cal. He's the team's best defender, but he seems to have little offense, so I don't know how long he can stay on the floor, as this team needs offense.

I like Thiemann, but unless he shows improvement, I would be thinking of giving Thorpe more minutes. He looked good in his cameo appearance, and he may have more potential than Thiemann. Grant, at least, was rebounding the ball, even though he missed all his threes. I wish he could mix in some drives and mid range shots, like last season.

Defensively, the Bears played hard, but seemed disorganized. They got burned on out of bounds plays. And Bettley, while he made some nice threes, nothing but net, along with a couple of assists, made some turnovers and was lost on defense, losing his man, especially on screens, where teammates could have helped, but didn't. I think he gave up more points on defense and TOs than he scored himself. Defense is a team thing, or it better be, because we don't have a lot of highly skilled individual defenders.

I thought Kelly played well, and held his own against taller and a little more athletic players. Bradley seems to be the team leader, He shot very poorly for him in this game. He will be fine, just rusty now.

Other than that, I liked Foreman, but I wouldn't say he was superior to South, just yet. South was a pretty good player in the pre-conference season, but his play slipped when he got into PAC12 play. He was a grad transfer who had experience at a much lower level, and Foreman may find the PAC12 a tough place to ply his wares. He looked pretty good in this game, but is a shoot-first point guard. He needs to be compared to Austin, and South was basically a two guard. Will he be as good or better than Austin? I hope so.

I liked what little I saw of Bowser. Looks athletic, and seemed to know what to do. I thought the three he took was rushed and off-balance. Need to see more of him. Kuany did little when he was in there, and I'd like to see more of him as well. Someone asked if Celestine was healthy, since he didn't play.

Once Cal gets some plays and understands their defensive sets, would be a better time to evaluate them,