It's a win! We'll take it! One at a time and only 3 more til a bowl game.
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Cal Football
Bears Edge Sun Devils, 24-21
The Bears got a win and looked pretty good in several areas, like the running game and special teams. But the prevailing attitude following Saturday’s 24-21 win over Arizona State was that it wasn’t good enough and there’s plenty of room for improvement.
The breakdowns came all over, too, from broken plays on offense to missed tackles and blown assignments on defense.
“Liked the win, that’s what we needed badly,” California head coach Justin Wilcox said. “We just have to learn how to eliminate some of these things that are giving us so much trouble. Defensively it’s like playing good, playing good, then a bust. It was really throughout the game.”
It wasn’t just the coaching staff that was frustrated by the mistakes that slowed the Bears’ roll against the Sun Devils and the same ones that have cropped up and bogged the entire team down all season.
Offensively, Cal looked fairly well. Running back Jaydn Ott was in beast mode much of the afternoon at Memorial Stadium, grinding his way to 167 yards and a touchdown while averaging nearly six yards a carry. Nearly half of Ott’s yards, 77, came in the fourth quarter while Cal was clinging to a slim lead and was trying to milk the clock.
“That’s all offensive line, they came out ready to play,” Ott said. “They were getting movement on the first level onto the second level. That opened up the holes and we were able to chunk away four- or five-yard runs every time.”
Yet even Ott found fault in the game. He was stopped short of the end zone on a 4th-and-goal play from the ASU 1-yard line, a score that, had it happened, would have given the Bears some needed breathing room in the close game.
Instead Ott blamed himself for not getting into the end zone and spoke about some of the other problems facing the Bears.
“I’m actually kind of upset,” he said. “There’s a lot we need to work on on offense. We need to come out with fire next week. That wasn’t good enough at all. We just left too much out on the field. That’s been the story of the season.”
Jackson, who became the first Cal quarterback this season to start and play the entire game, had a decent afternoon with 130 yards and a touchdown passing. But he completed fewer than half of his throws (12-for-29) and was sacked twice.
Afterward, Jackson pointed the finger of blame at himself for Cal’s offensive problems. The Sun Devils held a 430-326 advantage in total offense and were 4-for-4 in the red zone, while the Bears came away with three scores on their four trips inside the Arizona State 20-yard line.
“It starts with me and we kind of came out a little flat,” Jackson said. “That’s been the story of the season. I don’t think I played too well. I just have to slow the game down for myself. I just have to let some of the plays develop as far as the passing game. I was playing too fast. I knew what I had, got excited, and I just missed a lot of throws.”
Jackson had been sharing playing time with Ben Finley through the first four games but Finley did not practice this week and was held out against Arizona State.
“That position, we’re still growing there,” Wilcox said. “Sam did some good things today. We have to continue to get better there.”
Cal’s defense had its moments, like when defensive back Matthew Littlejohn intercepted a pass by Sun Devils QB Trenton Bourguet early in the fourth quarter, a turnover that led to Ott’s short touchdown.
“A win’s a win at the end of the day but we have to go back in the drawing room and fix up the wrinkles that showed up today,” Littlejohn said.
The Bears also stopped Arizona State on the final drive of the game to seal the win, although linebacker Jackson Sirmon, like his teammates, took more notice of the mistakes than the positive plays Cal made.
“We played well 90 percent of the plays then we’d have a busted play that went a long way,” Sirmon said. “There’s a couple reasons for that. There’s having young guys out there that get confused. We have to fix that. Somebody doesn’t make the call loud enough, somebody doesn’t hear. We can’t have those costing us games.”
Cal’s defense came up big in key moments, as Arizona State went for it five times on fourth down but only converted twice.’
“We knew going into the game they were going to be really aggressive,” Wilcox said. “The way we need to approach that is if somebody’s going to be that aggressive, we have to stop them then we have to put the ball in the end zone. That’s how we look at it. If you’re going to go for it that many times, there needs to be a consequence. If we stop them on fourth down we have to, in turn, put the ball in the end zone. That’s momentum.”
Two of the bright spots came on special teams. Freshman kicker Mateen Bhaghani converted his only field goal attempt (37 yards) and was spotless on PATs while also handling kickoff duties, a job the Bears earlier this week said would be handled by Michael Luckhurst.
Punter Lachlan Wilson also had a tremendous afternoon, carrying an average of 49.7 yards on seven punts.
“He was the most valuable player for us today,” Wilcox said.
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