When it rains, it pours on miserable Cal season
CORVALLIS, Ore. — Cal’s worst football season in more than a decade came to a merciless conclusion on a rainy Saturday night when No. 15 Oregon State pasted the Bears 62-14 at Reser Stadium.
For Cal it was a dismal and desultory effort pockmarked by personal fouls and turnovers in what likely was coach Jeff Tedford’s final game. In losing five games in a row, the Bears finished at 3-9 and 2-7 in the Pac-12.
Tedford is expected to meet with athletic director Sandy Barbour early in the week, perhaps as soon as Sunday or Monday, to discuss his job status.
“I don’t know,” Tedford said when asked if he would be returning in 2013. “My job is to develop players. We have work to do. I’ll go back to work tomorrow and get ready to keep going.”
Oregon State (8-2, 6-2) did most of the heavy lifting in the first half as it stretched out to a 35-7 lead on the strength of Pleasanton native Sean Mannion’s four touchdown passes and 239 passing yards.
Yet the final indignity came late in the third quarter when running back Terron Ward of Antioch and De La Salle High School shredded an indifferent Cal defense in the course of a 47-yard touchdown run that swelled Oregon State’s lead to 49-7. Ward, who carried 14 times for 128 yards and two touchdowns, kept his feet moving as he broke several feeble attempted tackles.
The Bears finished with 15 penalties for 172 yards and turned the ball over four times.
If this was Tedford’s last game, the end came on a cold and wet night wrapping up a miserable season, his worst record in 11 years and Cal’s poorest finish since the rock-bottom (1-10) year of 2001.
“Not very good,” Tedford said in summing up the season. “It’s not something we’re used to. It’s obvious we have work to do. I will say this about these kids — they’re good kids. These were tough times. They kept it together. I appreciate them a lot.”
Tedford’s record is 82-57, the most wins in school history by the longest-tenured coach in school history. But the story of his demise, if it comes, will be written in his last three seasons, when he went 15-22, including 9-18 in conference games and 0-3 against Stanford.
His slide has been six seasons in the making, as Tedford has a record of 37-37 since Sept. 15, 2007, after starting out 45-22.
More damning still, the most recent NCAA figures showed that Cal has the worst graduation rate in Pac-12 football.
While Tedford has given his critics plenty to howl about over the course of the last three seasons, it’s also a fact that the renovation and seismic retrofit of Memorial Stadium along with the Simpson Center for high performance would not have happened without the work he did earlier in his tenure.
From 35-7 at halftime, the Beavers added to their largesse when they went on a 75-yard drive that culminated in Storm Woods’ (an appropriate name given the weather conditions) 1-yard touchdown run for 42-7 early in the third quarter.
The Beavers put the game away halfway through the second quarter when Connor Hamlett hauled in a 14-yard touchdown pass from Mannion to increase their lead to 28-7. For Cal the drive was low-lighted by two personal fouls, one on Josh Hill for a hit to the head and the other on Deandre Coleman for hands to the face.
Cal’s Isi Sofele, who ran for 104 yards, ran for a 9-yard score in the first quarter tied it 7-7, but the Beavers took off from there.
In a sublime moment for Oregon State fans, Brandin Cooks scored on a 48-yard touchdown pass at the precise moment Stanford defeated Oregon in Eugene on a field goal in overtime. Cooks’ TD in the second quarter pushed the Beavers’ lead to 21-7.