Cal Bears Basketball - Game #3

Bears 77, SDSU Aztecs 69 on Saturday at Haas.

This was the toughest game in what has been a pretty weak schedule to date for the Bears, but 3-0 is better than 1-2 or 2-1. So I'll take it, especially with the Bears still on the mend. And besides, come Tournament selection time, this win against what was a 5-0 Aztec club could be viewed as a good win.

The player of the game was Jerome Randle who scored a career high 21 on his return game from a kidney biopsy. Without him, the Bears probably lose this game. I don't know what he does on his dribble, but he got whistled on a carry once again. He's got to get this corrected. This was also a common occurrence last year.

This was another game that the 2006-07 version of the Bears probably would've lost. The Bears were down 26-40 with about 3 minutes left in the first half, but fought back to 33-40 at the half. This 7-point run featured 3 lay-ups and a FT. This was a key sequence. The Bears did not panic and start hoisting threes, but scored inside. The last was a breakaway by Antioch's own Eddie Miller that went in even though it looked like goal tending by one of the lanky Aztecs. There was no whistle by the refs.

The 2nd half was dominated by the Bears. The Bears finally caught the Aztecs about 10 minutes into the second half on a 3-pointer by (yes, you guessed it) Randle. It finally got the somewhat subdued crowd into the game. SDSU never regained the lead after this although they did tie up the score once.

The tie score was at 66-66 with just over 6 minutes left in the game. Game symmetry: from the time the score was 26-40, the Bears countered with their own 40-26 run to tie the game at 66-66.

The Bears finished on a 11-3 run to finish the game, including a 7-point run to 73-66 to put the game away for all intents and purposes. This run featured Hardin's first basket of the game to break the tie. Followed by 2 clutch FTs and another layup by Christopher. This was followed by 1 of 2 from the charity stripe by Ryan. The Bears need to work on their FT-ing.

The Aztecs had a couple of amazing performances themselves. Kelvin Davis (#40) reminded me a lot of Ed Gray in his hey day with the Bears. Not only because of his build, but also the way he was hoisting and sinking threes, many with a hand right in his face. There was one where he fell back into his bench, with the shot hitting nothing but net. Another similarity, they both attended that junior college basketball outpost, College of Southern Idaho.

Part of the reason for the less than enthusiastic crowd was there was no band, no cheerleaders, no yell leaders, no nothing. At one point in the game, there was Jamal Boykin (former Duke Blue Devil sitting out a semester according to the NCAA transfer rules) jumping up and down trying to get the student section into the game. It looked out of place. I could see him thinking, "oh, wait, these aren't Cameron Crazies."

I have to give a shout out to Fondue Fred's on Telegraph for letting us use their restroom going against the grain that is "our restrooms are only available to paying customers."

Next up is Nevada on Wednesday, the Bears first road game. Will be a good test for the Bears, but it should be a winnable game for the Bears. The Wolfpack lost at UCF who lost to K-State (in the Old Spice Classic) who the Bears will see in December.

Stats Redux - November 22, 2007

Here's an update on stats first posted in November 2005, updated January 2006, June 2006, October 2006 and March 2007.

Price of Gas: $3.39 per gallon (up $0.26 since the March 2007 check-in; the price has held steady for the past week or so with crude oil prices hovering around $100 per barrel; reports yesterday indicated that the price go up another $0.75; and another sign of the times perhaps: one of the new sit-coms this year is one about carpoolers)
Price of Milk: $3.99 for hormone free milk at Trader Joe's ($1.00 price increase since March 2007)
Bridge Toll: $4 as of January 1, 2007 on all Bay Area bridges except Golden Gate Bridge
Today's High Temperature: 64 degrees F (overnight low of 38) and sunny!
Dow Jones Average: 12,799.04 (up 688.63 since March 2007); and this is with a 211 point drop yesterday
Shopping Days to Christmas: 32 days (http://eclecticesoterica.com/xmas_cnt.html)
Dinner Tonight: Thanksgiving dinner (turkey, ham, asparagus dish, salad, corn casserole, rice, and soup to name a few items)
Average Commute Time: still over an hour (in a 3-person carpool MWF and a 2-person carpool TuTh; added 1 person to MWF carpool and TuThu carpool is a new one with a fellow employee)
Cost of Area Homes: the median price has dropped from $620,000 to $556,000 in Concord since March of this year
Movie Ticket: still $9.50;
Time with My Kids: visit with Santa planned for tomorrow

Also, today is my parents' anniversary. Happy Anniversary to Mom and Dad!

Daylight Saving Time

This year, changing from Daylight Saving Time back to Standard Time occurred on the first Sunday in November instead of on the last Sunday in October. The impact for us was that instead of darkness falling a little after 5pm on Halloween, darkness fell after 6pm. This meant that trick-or-treating at least for our kids started a little later than in past years.

The following is a video that was shot at about 2am of our auto-setting clock running forward to adjust backwards by one hour.

Daylight Savings Time
Video sent by CEmoto

Great Road Trip Scavenger Hunt - Items 15 to 20

Item #15: An odd drive-through service

We thought that a drive-thru pharmacy to be an odd service, but guess what? Now such services are making their appearance in the Bay Area. This picture was taken near ojiichan and obaachan's place in Kent, WA. This pharmacy with its drive-thru window has been in business for several years now.



Item #16: The travelers playing a miniature golf course

The miniature golf course that we played was at the Seattle Center. Ryan didn't quite get it as he insisted on playing the same hole over and over and then thought it was a good idea to try to collect all the golf balls.



Item #17: Smokey Bear

Did you know that there's not a single National Park in the state of Oregon? This is what we learned during our search for Smokey Bear while in Oregon. We have to give kudos to the very friendly volunteers at the visitors' center in Medford, Oregon who directed us to the Oregon Department of Forestry building on the outskirts of Medford. A call was placed to verify that they had cut-outs of Smokey Bear. Not only did we get cut-outs, but also coloring books.



Item #18: A menu or sign selling root beer floats

This photo was taken at an A&W in Kent, WA. The place even had drive up service where you could place your order while parked in a parking space. No waiters on roller skates, but still retro. We couldn't think of such a drive-up restaurant near our home.



Item #19: Something very unusual not on this list

We had our choice of items that we could use just from the Fremont district of Seattle. The Fremont district of Seattle is the self-proclaimed Center of the Universe. There's the giant troll under the bridge.



Or the statue of people waiting for a bus (I think that's what this is).



But the unusual item that we submitted with our entry was the statue of Lenin. The story goes that the statue was rescued from Slovakia by a man from the Seattle area. The statue is believed to be the only one of Lenin surrounded by guns. The more usual statues show Lenin as an intellectual, carrying a book or two. The statue is now actually on sale for $250,000 by the family of the man who brought the statue back to the U.S. The proceeds of the sale are set to go to community art activities in the Fremont area.



Item #20: Farm machinery in a field

We had a great time hunting this one down. We got several photos of farm machinery, but what made this one unique was that the person driving the farm machinery in this case was a woman. We waved to her and she waved back!