Bit too much to bear

BERKELEY, Calif. – In a football game Washington State University had every opportunity to take away, the California Bears did just enough to hold off the Cougars 20-17 before a crowd of 55,711 in Memorial Stadium on Saturday night.

With the loss, WSU dropped to 3-6 overall, 1-5 and tied with Washington for last in the Pacific-10 Conference. Cal snapped a season-stifling three-game losing streak to improve to 6-3 overall, 3-3 in conference.

“We made too many mistakes,” said senior wide receiver Michael Bumpus, whose four catches for 47 yards allowed him to tie Hugh Campbell atop WSU’s career reception list. “We just didn’t execute when we had a chance to score. We had the right plays called, but either someone dropped a pass, or it was too high or we missed an assignment.”

Against a Bears team that had been ranked as high as second in the nation before the losing streak, the few mistakes the Cougars made were too many.

Cal jumped to a 10-0 lead on two time-consuming drives, but the WSU defense made some adjustments and limited the Bears to 211 yards over most of the final three quarters.

“We started off pretty slow, but I thought the ‘D’ came together like we always do,” nose tackle A’i Ahmu said. “But we just need to start off faster. And the last drive as well, I don’t know what happened.”

Ahmu was referring to Justin Forsett’s game-clinching 44-yard scoring run with 2 minutes, 42 seconds left that raised a four-point lead to 20-9. Forsett finished with 132 yards on 32 carries.

The Cougars had some kick left, however, scoring their lone touchdown with 19 seconds left on an Alex Brink 18-yard strike to Charles Dillon. They pulled within three thanks to another Brink pass, this one to Jed Collins for the two-point conversion.

But the Bears’ Lavelle Hawkins recovered Romeen Abdollmohammadi’s onside kick and Cal survived.

Brink passed for all but 138 of his 306 passing yards in the fourth quarter, including 60- and 55-yard throws to Brandon Gibson, the former setting up Abdollmohammadi’s third field goal – a career high – and the latter Dillon’s touchdown catch.

WSU faced a fourth-and-7 from the 12 with about 6 minutes left, and head coach Bill Doba decided to go with the field goal.

“We talked about it and decided to go with the field goal,” Doba said. “If it was later in the game, then obviously we would have gone for it, but the field goal got us within four and all we have to do is score (to win).”

But they also had to get another stop, and they couldn’t. Forsett made the strategy moot with his long run, displaying the speed Cal seemed to have at every position.

“Cal is a team with great speed, both defensively and offensively,” Doba said. “I think that was the difference in the game.

“They had good pressure on (Brink) all day. He didn’t have much time to sit and throw.”

Under the rush, Brink finished 22 of 46, many of the incompletions coming when he had to avoid a sack. The Cougars’ running game, with senior Kevin McCall filling in for Dwight Tardy (ACL tear), was almost nonexistent, as they finished with 52 yards after a 274-yard effort last week. McCall had 53 on 16 carries, while Brink was sacked once for a 13-yard loss.

Cal’s Nate Longshore was rarely pressured – he was not sacked – and he took advantage, hitting 26 of 39 passes for 213 yards. Hawkins was his favorite target with nine catches, but tight end Craig Stevens had three big third-down receptions as well. The Bears converted 12 of 19 third downs.

“They had this wall, we were calling it the Wall of China,” Ahmu said of Cal’s offensive line and its protection of the limping Longshore, who is recovering from an ankle sprain. “Our linebackers had trouble penetrating and that was really the big issue.”

The Bears took advantage of the lack of pressure, especially on their first drive, which started at their 20. Seventeen plays and nearly 8 minutes later, they had a 7-0 lead.

In number of plays and time, it was Cal’s longest drive of the season, by a wide margin.

But it held those distinctions for only about 20 minutes.

The Bears’ second drive, which started on their 2 after Reid Forrest’s rolling rugby punt, included 19 plays, lasted more than 10 minutes and covered 91 yards.

If not for a third-down, touchdown-saving tackle by safety Husain Abdullah, the drive would have put Cal up 14-0. Instead, Jordan Kay had to come on and connect from 24 yards to give the Bears a 10-0 lead.

Abdullah sliced in from the secondary on a third-and-goal from the 1 to tackle Forsett, who had received an option pitch from Longshore.

It was the Cougars’ second third-down stop in nine chances. The first came earlier in the drive, but Cal was successful on fourth down when Longshore connected with Hawkins.

For the second year in a row the Cougars’ offense was nearly nonexistent against the Bears.

Last year Cal yielded a second-quarter field goal in its 21-3 win in Pullman.

That was the last time Brink didn’t throw a touchdown pass, and he squandered a couple of first-half chances to break the six-quarter streak vs. the Bears.

But he was a tad long when Gibson broke free deep late in the first quarter, then was a bit short trying to find Dillon inside the Cal 10 with 2 minutes left before half. The latter was tipped by Dillon and Cal’s Bernard Hicks before it was intercepted by Syd’Quan Thompson at the 5 and returned to near midfield. The defense, however, forced a three-and-out.

With Brink off – he was 6 of 16 for 59 yards before intermission – the Cougars couldn’t control the clock like they did last week against UCLA.

At halftime Cal had more than an 11-minute edge in time of possession. The Bears finished with an almost 15-minute edge.