There’s not much to say after this one. The Cal Golden Bears blitzed the Arizona Wildcats with a 29-11 run in the opening ten minutes. It was 41-17 with six minutes left in the half. Arizona’s defense was as invisible as the lettering on Cal’s white-on-silver uniforms.

Doesn’t the first game with the Bears seem like ages ago? After beating Cal to sit in a first-place tie the UA has dropped five of six. Now the Cats are closer to last place than first.

The Pac-10 game of the year will take place in Berkeley on Saturday and it will feature California and Arizona State. If the Bears win they clinch at least a share of the conference title. If the Sun Devils win they will be alone in first with two home games left.

It’s a dream scenario for two sets of long-suffering basketball fans (or, in ASU’s case, two long-suffering basketball fans).

As far as the JV game on Saturday, the Wildcats could obviously use a win against Stanford. But what they really need is to play with passion. Fire. Show some love for the game of basketball.

These guys need a dunk. They need a reason to chest-bump somebody. Attack the rim, attack the glass, and bring back No Easy Buckets. Buckets have been beyond easy the last couple weeks. On sale. Everything must go.

Now everything must stop.

Don’t use the freshman excuse as a reason to mail in the final three games. Show us why next year is going to be better. Give your teammates a reason to believe you will be the team playing for a championship in 2012.

Refuse to be invisible.

- – - – -

What do you do when your basketball team is fading in February? You watch baseball!

The undefeated BatCats take the field Friday night against Long Beach State. The Dirtbags are off to a slow start, having scored only six runs in four games. They did however pick up a 2-1 win last Friday thanks to a complete game from junior right-hander Jake Thompson.

Arizona will counter with a young pitching rotation that just got younger. Freshman Stephen Manthei will start in place of junior Daniel Workman on Sunday. Kurt Heyer and Kyle Simon will attempt to repeat their opening-weekend success as the first two hurlers.

Can the UA offense maintain its 11 runs per game average as they step up in competition? Game times are 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday with a noon start on Sunday at Kindall Field/Sancet Stadium if you’re looking for a place to enjoy the Tucson weather, or just escape from the basketball team.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 26th, 2010 at 12:36 AM and is filed under Sports. Tags for this post: ASU, Baseball, Basketball, Cal, Kurt Heyer, Kyle Simon, Long Beach State, Stephen Manthei. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.