By John Sleeper
Herald Writer
BERKELEY, Calif. – Even if it could recreate football realistically, Hollywood would never tackle the Washington-California series.
There’s fiction and there’s wild fantasy. The redundant ending. And really, where’s the attraction if the underdog constantly gets whipped?
Honestly, who would buy it?
It was ridiculously predictable. Thirteenth-ranked Washington (1-0 Pacific-10 Conference, 3-0 overall) struggled to a 31-28 victory over Cal (0-2, 0-4), which blew a fourth-quarter lead for the third straight year to the Huskies Saturday at Memorial Stadium.
“Every one of these games seem like they’re the same,” said UW offensive coordinator Keith Gilbertson, who knows a little about the series, having been the Bears’ head coach from 1992 to 1995. “They jump out and take a lead. We stumble around, look like we don’t know what we’re doing, then bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Touchdown. We have the lead. Game’s over.”
And over. And over. It was Washington’s 19th consecutive vicory over the Bears, who haven’t beaten the Huskies since 1976 and not since 1975 in Berkeley.
“There was a little bit of that deja vu thing out there,” UW defensive tackle Larry Tripplett said. “They jumped on us a little bit, and we had to go make a Husky comeback.”
The Bears led by as many as 14, 21-7, in the second quarter. In that time, Cal held a mastery over the Huskies as it had so many times before.
Quarterback Kyle Boller, who hasn’t even completed half his career passes at Cal in his two-plus years, suddenly was fulfilling all the promise he had coming out as a hotly-contested recruit.
Cal’s defense blew up Washington’s option, treated UW quarterback Cody Pickett as though he’d stolen from California, and the Bears rolled up enough acreage to start a mid-sized country.
UW coach Rick Neuheisel blamed himself for a failure to get his team ready to play.
“I need to talk to my young team so that they bring their full attention in all situations,” he said. “I did not get them ready to play. It’s a great lesson for me. Hopefully, I’m not going to forget it soon.”
But then, as quickly as Cal jumped on the Huskies, it fizzled just as fast.
While the defense finally figured out the Cal offense, Pickett himself broke through in just his third career start. Pickett was 18-for-33 passing for 291 yards and two touchdowns, all career highs.
Pickett threw for 201 yards of his total in the second half, when he engineered three touchdown drives that rallied the Huskies from a 21-10 halftime deficit. His 62-yard scoring strike to Paul Arnold got the Huskies to within 21-17. From there, tailback Rich Alexis scored on a pair of 1-yard runs as the Bears meekly withered away.
“Offensively, we had everything going for us in the first half and couldn’t continue that in the second half,” Cal coach Tom Holmoe said. “And it came down to plays. We had to make plays. We had a lot of key, key first downs that we missed. We dropped balls.
“When you play a team like Washington, you cannot spit the ball around and drop passes and jump offside or whatever it might be. You have to play clean, and we can’t do that now.”
The Huskies didn’t need stunning heroics from the defense and special teams this time. Yes, the defense was stout in the final 30 minutes and special teams were solid, if not spectacular, but this was the time for the offense, ranked last in the Pac-10, to finally break through.
Even when Washington was down 21-7, Pickett said something was different, more positive.
“I felt good,” Pickett said. “I just knew we were going to be able to stay calm and stay patient and get things cookin’.”
But not before the coaching staff was able to dissect what the Bears were doing on defense and translating it to the players. The Bears were causing problems with blitzing and giving the young offensive line different looks, looks they hadn’t shown on film.
“Our game plan had to evolve as the game went on,” Neuheisel said. “The intricacies of what their defense was doing were new for us. With an experienced team, like the one a year ago, I think we would have settled into our plan much earlier. But as you try to change things for younger players, it becomes difficult. We’ve just got to continue to grow up.”
They were mature enough. Enough to keep the string alive. Enough to again turn away the Bears. Just as it has been since 1976.
Which must seem forever to Cal.
“I can’t imagine what they’re thinking on the other side,” Neuheisel said.
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