On heels of dominant performance in every phase of game, California dominates Oregon State to snap four-game losing streak
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com)
Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Berkeley-A good game can be just what the doctor ordered. It’s even more needed when conference play has seen you get the wrong end of the stick in every game.
So it’s only fitting in Saturday afternoon’s old Pac-12 matchup at California Memorial Stadium, the Bears jumped on Oregon State from the opening drive to roll to a monster victory by a score of 44-7.
“Well, I thought we played pretty clean for the most part,” California head coach Justin Wilcox said of the beatdown. “You know, all three phases of the game limited some of the penalties that had been hurting us, especially offensively.”
The Golden Bears had been in the middle of a rough stretch where they lost their ACC games by a combined 9 points total. This was most definitely the get-right game California (4-4) needed.
“Build confidence,” Wilcox said of the importance of the win coming off of some extremely tight games. “Confidence is a really important part of football, and we talked about that last night.”
It also helped that Fernando Mendoza could do whatever he wanted from the pocket all game long as he carved the Beavers’ defense up all game long to the tune of a nice 27-36 for 2 touchdowns, and a whopping 364 yards through the air.
Mendoza also was part of a very interesting touchdown to open up the game as he threw and completed a pass to Jaivian Thomas who then lateralled it back to Mendoza for a 15-yard score. The lateral from Thomas came as he was about to go down.
That off-the-whim trick type play came to cap off a 9-play, 75-yard drive that took just over three minutes off the clock.
“The play wasn’t really planned out like that,” Mendoza said of the crazy first touchdown score. “But I got the ball down to jet (Thomas) in the red zone and the defender made a great play. But Jet was smart enough to have a heads-up play and we kind of communicated that and said ‘Hey, pitch it.’ And he pitched the ball and I scored.”
The Bears added another score when Mendoza found Nyziah Hunter for a 20-yard score with 8:59 left in the first quarter.
Another standout in the game was kicker Derek Morris who nailed five field goals in the game. The kicker made field goals from 33, 46, 19, 25, and 38 in the contest. He also tied the record for most field goals in a game by a Bears kicker.
The only other two scores for the Bears came on the ground. One of those came when Thomas scored from two yards out with 5:09 left in the first half.
Finally, the only other score came on a Jamaal Wiley one-yard run with 36 ticks left in the third quarter.
It was also a dominating day for the Bears defense. After all, they limited Oregon State (4-4) to just 200 total yards.
The Beaver’s lone score of the game came on a Trent Walker 2-yard reception from backup signal caller Ben Gulbranson with 5:00 left in the game.
“I think this defense played well today,” California defensive back Craig Woodson said. “The goal was to pitch a shutout and we didn’t do that. To stop them the way that we did in that fashion, I think we were dominant all day.”
With the win, California also carries tons of momentum into its bye week before visiting Wake Forest in North Carolina on November 8th in ACC play.
